The British psychologist Michael Kirton identified two main styles of thinking, ‘adaptive’ and ‘innovative’. I first learned about his research at a facilitators’ conference in Ottawa some years ago. The session facilitators invited us to self-select into groups – moderate adaptors, high adaptors, moderate innovators, and high innovators.

You would have thought that, as facilitators, we would have avoided the temptation to label others. But not so, at least initially, and that helped me realize how deeply embedded these notions are in our culture. Innovators looked over at adaptors, and thought ‘bean counters’. Adaptors looked at innovators, and thought ‘loose cannons who will shoot a hole in the bottom of the boat’. Of course we soon realized we needed both – someone has to plan the program, and someone has to book the room.