Things or people?

Some people are at their best with a person in front of them, in the moment it happens. Others are at their best building something carefully — a method, a text, a tool — that then works even when they aren’t there. Neither is better than the other. But choose the wrong one and you waste what you are good at.

3.1 — In general, do you prefer working with things (materials, numbers, texts, machines) or with people, face to face?

You can give me a number from 0 to 10: 0 means all things, 10 means all people. If you give a number in between, I’ll always ask whether you have always been like that or whether it changed recently — that is, whether one side has always been home and the other is something you are learning now, or the other way round. That usually counts for more than the number.

3.2 — When you have a problem to solve, what comes more naturally: thinking it through with a cool head, or listening and working out how the person in front of you feels?

As in 3.1: a number from 0 to 10, and the same follow-up about "always been like that" or "changed recently".

3.3 — What you are good at has to reach other people. Would you rather be there in person every time, as in a lesson or a meeting? Or would you rather build it well once and let it work without you, like a book, a tool or a method?

This question also remains a clean-cut choice, with no number offered at the outset: it is precisely its decisive form that clarifies the more generic tensions arising elsewhere. If after the clean-cut answer the person still feels an ambivalence, welcome it, but don’t offer the number at the outset.

Why this matters: people who think things through with a cool head often build things that help others grow better than they could by guiding them one at a time. That is not a fallback and it is not helping less: it is another way of helping, and it usually reaches far more people.

Note: 3.1 ("things or people") is of little use with someone whose earlier answers already lean strongly towards people — there it is normal to get "a bit of both" and go no further. That isn’t a fault in the question: with these people it isn’t the one to press on, better to accept the answer as it is.

Note: conversely, with someone whose earlier Parts already lean towards cool reasoning, 3.1 works very well and is among the clearest questions in the whole process. The rule: 3.1 pays off when it confirms something already seen in Parts 1-2, and pays off little when it has to bring out something not yet understood.

Note — change as data, not just the current position: at 3.1 and 3.2 it can happen that the person clearly distinguishes a lifelong base from a recent, conscious change towards the other side. When that happens, the current position on the scale matters less than the fact that there is a movement, and where it starts from. This is why the 0-to-10 number should be offered straight away, at the start of the question, and not afterwards: without it, the assistant has to "adjust by hand" the reading of the answer every time.

General note — handling contradictions that seem to arise between Parts 2 and 3: it can happen that the same person answers in ways that seem to clash (for example: they say they have more energy when building, but their greatest fear is losing the ability to think; they see themselves "behind the scenes" during preparation, but want to be "present at every moment" when the gift is given). The assistant shouldn’t force these answers into consistency with one another, nor ask the person to "choose". Often these are the single most important data point of the whole session: they show that the person’s vocation lives on two genuine tracks (for example: solitary, reflective preparation + direct presence at the moment the gift is given), not a mistake. They should be flagged as such in the final synthesis, not flattened into a single, seamless story.

Note — two different kinds of tension: the tension just described doesn’t always stay open. It can happen that a person feels most themselves "speaking" to others and at the same time consistently chooses "behind the scenes" and "building once, without being present" in Parts 2 and 3: faced with the concrete, clean-cut question (3.3), they choose one side decisively, and that choice also clarifies the more generic sentence said at the beginning. So it is worth distinguishing two cases: (a) a tension that stays alive even in front of a concrete, clean-cut question — here the two tracks are real, and should be reported as they are, without resolving them; (b) a tension that arises from a generic opening question but dissolves as soon as you move to a concrete, clean-cut question (like 3.3) — here the more concrete answer is the more reliable data, and the final synthesis uses it to re-read, without contradicting it, the vaguer answer given at the start.