Welcome to the Need Press Assessment System!
The need-press inventory is a psychologically grounded tool for understanding people’s behavior in the work place. The tool consists of three sets of questions which can be answered either in 1 or 2 and 3 sessions. The questions deal with a person’s self conduct, approach to tasks, and interpersonal perspective [or emotional intelligence], respectively. Since 2000, the questionnaire has become an integral part of Otto Laske’s Constructive Developmental Framework (CDF) within which it is used to interpret the behavioral data output by the questionnaire from an adult-developmental perspective.
A Short History
Over several decades, the need-press inventory has been administered to hundreds of managers at several client organizations. Beginning in the early 70's Dr. Aderman began consulting with clients around the need-press. At that time, it appeared to be the only and truly worked-related inventory. The inventory consisted of the individual need analysis, ideal organizational inventory and the organizational climate inventory. These three inventories were probably the precursors to what has become known as the 360 assessment process. In the 1960's, Dr. Aderman became disenchanted with the testing process for organizations and managers. During that period in history many consultants were still using traditional psychological tests which did not hold up well in corporate America. So, he set out with his graduate students to develop the first work-related inventory.
Dr. Aderman consulted with several large organizations such as Motorola, Signode Continental Bank, Sears Roebuck & Co., Rand McNally, American Tourister, General Foods, RJR Nabisco, to name a few. He consulted for several years with these organizations and assisted many managers in their career development and growth within their companies.
In addition to the larger companies, several other companies experienced his work-related inventory and consulting. Companies like Chicago Bar Association, American Hospital Supply, Schwinn, Sequist Group, Right Associates, and National Safety Council. In addition to these the Secretary of the US Department of Transportation invited Dr. Aderman to lead a retreat of senior Government officials using the need-press as his assessment tool. The retreat received high marks from the Secretary at that time who was Sam Skinner, who later became Chief of Staff at the White House.
More recently, the need-press has been used with organizations like 3M, DSM Desotech (Holland), Newlyweds Foods, Cal-Compack Foods (Div of Conagra), Former First Chicago Bank, New Beginnings, Inc.
The need-press has been utilized in working not only with individuals and their careers but also with team development and organizational climate change at all levels, including, for example, hourly paid dock workers.
Integration of the Need-Press System into CDF
Research in adult-development since the 1970’s has considerably broadened the relevance of behavioral data as provided by the Need-Press System. That research has made it clear that behavioral data needs to be interpreted not only in itself, but also in the context of an assessment of social-emotional meaning making and cognitive sense making.
These two strands of adult development have been combined in Laske’s CDF. As a consequence, it has become possible for those mastering CDF, to give feedback on how developed (mature) a person presently is, and on whether the two lines of development –social-emotional and cognitive -- are, or are not, in balance.
Students at the Interdevelopmental Institute (IDM) who take the Certification Program also learn in case studies how to interpret Need-Press data in a developmental light. This refines the feedback a person can be given by the user of Need-Press. The notion is that the NP profile of a person has different meanings, especially for coaching and development, depending on how advanced a person’s way of making meaning of his/her experiences is, and how developed the person’s thinking is in the journey from logical to holistic and systemic (“dialectical”) thinking.
Learning to Use the Need-Press System in the Context of CDF
If you are a coach or consultant, and are interested in learning to administer the NP System yourself, particularly within the context of developmental assessment, go to http://www.interdevelopmentals.org/certification-module-c.php. There you will find a short description of Module C in which NP is taught. To see how NP is actually integrated into a developmental assessment based on CDF, download http://www.interdevelopmentals.org/publications-papers.php.