FIRO-B®– An Excellent Instrument to Assess Your Interpersonal Behavioral Needs

I read “Echo in mountain story” recently – it says ‘you will get what you say/show’. This suits in every interactions in our life. If you smile, other person will also smile. If you get angry, other person will also get angry.

All human interactions are based on expectations in mind. Simple example – “I expected Govind to invite me for his dinner party and he did. But when there was a dinner part in my house, I didn’t invite him.” Our expectations & actions are different hence “what we want & what we are” is different. If we bring absolute synergy between these two, world will say ‘There you are!’. FIRO-B® is such a kind of test which brings out the fire within you.

It is more easier to say the acronym FIRO-B® than in its whole form – “Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation-Behavior“. This tool assesses how an individual’s personal needs affect that person’s behavior towards other individuals.

FIRO-B®? What is it?

The FIRO-B® instrument was developed in 1958 by Will Schutz for the purpose of establishing high performance teams in the US Military and is often used in several research initiatives, including the prediction of team performance, leadership orientation research, and therapist-client compatibility research. Nowadays, FIRO-B® instrument is often used in the professional development of managers.

As such, the FIRO-B® instrument examines behaviors derived from interpersonal needs in an attempt to increase interpersonal effectiveness and ultimately improve relationships with others (Hammer & Schnell, 2000).

The FIRO-B® measures a person’s needs for:

Wanted Behavior (W) – how much a person wants others to initiate action, and how much that person wants to be the recipient
Expressed Behavior (E) – what a person prefers to do, and how much that person wants to initiate action

As per FIRO-B®, each one of us has some fundamental interpersonal relation needs which is represented as 3 dimensions:

Inclusion (I) – needs related to forming new relations, recognition, belonging, and participation
Control (C) – needs that are related to decision making influence, power or dominance, leading, and responsibility
Affection (A) – needs related to emotional ties, closeness, warmth, and sensitivity

About assessment

There are 54 items in the assessment test for which you need to rate in a scale of 1 to 6 that best suited for you. With answer keys provided, you need to get the different boxes filled in above picture. Possible values for each box is 0-9. There are several ways your scores on this questionnaire can be analyzed and interpreted. You can compare your expressed total with your wanted total to determine the extent to which you are willing to give as much behavior as you want to get.

Video

I came across this YouTube video that gives you general overview of FIRO-B® instrument.