Ethical ground rules when using 4MAT profiles
Practice and ethics
4MAT profiles may be used
only by persons who have passed a 4MAT Mastering Training Design
education and can display documentation for this. If a 4MAT Master
further wishes to use 4MAT profiles as a basis for personal
development sessions, the 4MAT Master also needs aquired personal
skills that allows him/her to supply and implement individual
development sessions in an ethical responsible matter - in relation
to the 4MAT profiles.
Personal skills
It is solely the 4MAT Master's own responsibility to meet
these personal skills in order to be able to conduct personal
sessions in an ethical responsible way. The 4MAT Partner is solely
responsible for training the 4MAT Master in the concrete
theoretical skills regarding the 4MAT profiling tools - in a way
that allows the 4MAT Master to use them in a normal 4MAT training
setting. It is therefore solely the 4MAT Master's own
responsibility to ensure he's or her's own personal skills in order
to undertake development work on an individual level.
The basic ethical position
1. The intention of the 4MAT profiles are to uncover some basic preferences of people (that may influence on many of everyday life situations and contexts) - not to measure specific abilities, skills and behavioral traits.
2. The 4MAT profiles are tools designed for insight, understanding and development - not tools to categorize or evaluate people in relation to eg. job requirements. Therefore the 4MAT profiles must NOT be used for recruiting or other specific selection.
3. As with any self-reporting instrument the result of any 4MAT profile analysis depends of the person's self-knowledge, the current life situation and the context in which the person sees himself when answering the questionare. The results of a 4MAT profile analysis must therefore never be regarded or used as an exact, complete picture of the person, but only as a basic starting point for a dialogue to a joint exploration and clarification.
4. The special value of the 4MAT profiles lies within the concrete usefulness as tools for insight and understanding in relation to learning and communication.
Ethical principles
1. A person who is requested/invited to fill out one or more of the 4MAT profiling
questionares must be informed about the purpose and expected use of the result(s) before having to fill out the
questionares.
2. Further more the person who is requested/invited to fill one or more 4MAT profiles, also HAS TO BE informed that participation is completely voluntary. This means that the person - at ANY time during the process - is free to refuse participation and/or leave the session.
3. Any 4MAT profile result is always the property of the participant (the person who fills out the questionare), regardless of who paid for it.
4. A 4MAT profile result may under NO circumstances be held back from the person who filled out the profile questionares.
5. The 4MAT profile result(s) may only be used within the agreed framework with the person.
6. The 4MAT Master must communicate a person's
4MAT profile result(s) in such a way that the
person will gain
a basic understanding
of 4MAT, the four basic learning
styles, hemispheric preferences and acting/watching - and the combination of these
perspectives which constitutes the person
indicated learning style.
Within this conversation, there must be opportunity for dialogue.
4MAT
Trainer - responsibility and personal approach
Besides meeting
these fundamental ethics rules and principles, any
4MAT Trainer has
a great responsibility in relation to teaching, coaching and
sharing informations where personal/sensitive
information is part of the dialogue framework.
It is a big task and balancing act to disseminate the form and content of the 4MAT method in a clear and defined way, while at the same time being able to handle a varied and open approach to all learning styles and brain hemisphere preferences. Therefore - in addition to these basic ethics rules - we have defined some basic (not exhaustive) guidelines of the responsibilities for any 4MAT Trainer in relation to teaching, coaching and sharing within the 4MAT framework.
