A couple weeks ago, Marc and I recorded a podcast about Hardwiring. In our Quadrant 3 Leadership Coach Certification, one week focuses on knowing your hardwiring, recognizing the hardwiring of the people you lead, and learning how to work with those in a way that supports each individuals strength and creativity.

When we talk about Hardwiring, we usually link it to some assessment. DiSC assessment is linked to behaviors, Highlands Ability Batteries to abilities, and the Enneagram to motivations. (There are plenty of other assessments, these just happen to be the ones we focus on for simplicity.)

Hardwiring is how you behave or respond naturally. Hardwiring is tied to both personality wiring and your experiences when you are in your formative years.

When I began to think about working with Dad in construction a couple weeks ago, I considered the hardwiring of a home and how it serves to make a home a home.

There are industry standards about what kind of wiring needs to be in a home. These are meant to keep not just the house running efficiently and safely, but also the community around them. Occasionally an industry rule will make it so you can’t have an outlet where you want it, or you can’t have a light hung without making other accommodations. But what the house is going to look like when people move in is not going to be determined by the electric, the plumbing, or the heating. Yes, they will inform some of the layout. But they are not what is seen.

Now that we live in a the land of HOA’s in South Carolina, we are familiar with a home that is constructed over and over again by a builder. I can walk through the neighborhood and guess which homes have my layout.

Yet, they are not my home. And they will look and feel nothing like my home. There will be paint and wallpaper. There will be window dressings. Different areas of the home will have been updated. Flooring will be varied.

Further, the furniture will be different. Lamps and wall art will reflect the people living there. There will be scuffs on walls or the floors. The sounds will be different. The smells will be varied.

Even in a home with an identical floorplan to mine, our homes will be entirely different.

Hardwiring is the same way. I am a 9 on the enneagram – typically called the peacemaker. Understanding the enneagram, knowing me as a 9, isn’t meant to give either of us a free easy pass to ‘getting’ someone. 

We don’t get to assume that we know all there is to know about someone just because we recognize the floorplan. And we don’t get to use our floorplan as an excuse to not grow and learn.

The floorplan – hardwiring –  is the starting point for self understanding and growth. Just like you wouldn’t move into a new home and not bring any furniture  or decorations, you aren’t meant to just sit in the middle of the empty room of your hardwiring. You will move things in, shuffle things around, learn how your rhythm of living demands or invites different layouts of furniture.

And when you get to go into one of the homes that has the same plan as yours, you will notice the differences of how the homes are set up. But you aren’t going to go in and tell someone that they’ve put the wrong lamp in the wrong place. Because it isn’t your home.

Recognizing hardwiring in ourselves and others is not a straightforward equation with only one answer. Our hardwiring is simply one beginning of the adventure of human connection.