The Bridgineer CoreDrill: A Bridge Worth Crossing

The forty people I stood in front of were all unemployed professionals helping each other find work in a cooperative job seekers network. I was asked to speak about how to use your strengths in your job search. When I offered to do a free one-hour coaching session at the end of my presentation, six people signed up. When I processed their talents through our CoreClarity process I was surprised to see all six of them had the same CoreDrill. All their talents were on the interactive side of the key in the Connect and Reflect quadrants. This is when I learned how to coach Bridgineers.

Bridgineers show up about 8% of the time in our CoreClarity database. Their talents are all on the interactive side of the CoreClarity key and have a drive for depth - whether it is deeper relationship with those they know or deeper understanding within their mental world. They naturally build bridges between knowledge, solutions or plans to the people who need it or will implement it. 

Their knowledge, experiences and people skills make them easy to talk to and a dispensary of sage wisdom. Most reflect an exterior presence of calm in the storms of circumstances and life. But as my Bridgineer friend Tim says those looks can be deceiving. “I feel like a duck swimming upstream. You see the calm, composed fowl gently floating on top of the water but underneath the surface those feet are paddling non-stop in a flurry.” It’s that constant processing that adds intellectual depth and relational glue with those people Bridgineers do life with.  

A challenge for many Bridgineers is the lack of Energize and Mobilize in their Top Five. Getting started and moving towards accomplishments doesn’t come naturally unless they have Responsibility in their Top 5. Lacking the internal motivation of an Energize talent means looking for external motivation from others.

And that brings us back to the rest of my job seeker story. At first I was surprised that all those who signed up for coaching were Bridgineers. But then I learned that this job seeker group was started after the 2008 recession by several members who were laid off at a national technology firm. Many of them had been project managers in the IT field. Their jobs involved getting the right information and resources to the right people, both internally to team members and externally to clients. This is what Bridgineers do naturally. 

When hard times hit, these Bridgineers assumed that what worked for them on the job would work for them in the job search and started this networking group. The big “Aha!” for all of those I met with was that pursuing and landing a new job demanded engaging talents on the motivational side of the CoreClarity key. Readjusting their job search from a research project to a strategic networking plan gave them new traction towards their new jobs.

The greatness of the Bridgineer is seen when they break through that roadblock of inertia. They bring a deep level of cohesion, wisdom, and poise to those in their presence that allows everyone to keep calm and carry on.