Core Values Index (CVI)

Take it here.


It's mostly a business test, as is evident by the type names: Banker, Builder, Merchant, Innovator.


Here is my result.

Note: This is the short version. On the results page it will go into much more depth on each of the types and even the interaction of two.

Who I Am

Your scores indicate you have INNOVATOR/MERCHANT tendencies. When you enter a room there is more wisdom and love energy suddenly in that room. You are the presence of loving wisdom. This is your assignment, to be the effective presence of loving wisdom. You look at the circumstances and situations around you through the eyes of compassion and truth. You operate from reason and intuition, seeing the way things are. Asking questions and deriving the right responses, best strategies and most workable solutions. This is balanced by your intuitive and reasoning capacity to see who people really are. You try to understanding their needs and wants. You work to nurture and support them and yourself. Your highest and best contribution can only be made in situations in which there is a significant and constant need for loving wisdom.
Who you are at the deepest innate level of your human nature is the most important element in your life. Who you are at this deep level, is, after all, the only thing you really contribute to this world. It is through right assignment and effective choices that you make your highest and best contribution. This is the universal mission of all people.
The more you learn about who you really are, and how to optimize your presence in this world, the greater will be your success, happiness and life effectiveness.
Your dominant Innovator value energy is balanced by your Merchant secondary value energy. Your actions are routinely, almost equally, guided by these two core energies. In times of distress you will usually rely on the conflict strategies of your dominant core energy. In less critical conflicts you may use either conflict strategy given the situation.
Your unique dominant INNOVATOR core energy causes you to rely upon the following strategies for success and fulfillment.

Your cornerstone core value is wisdom. Understanding and compassion are central to your life strategy.
Strategic thinking is your forte. People see your ingenuity and resourcefulness. You pride yourself in seeing and understanding people and situations. Development of effective responses to situations is one of your primary contributions. You consistently observe and measure the worth of people and things. If different things can be brought together from different resources, you will do it. You strive to cause people and things to function well together.
You like to maintain a good mix of people, activities and things in your life. You like to communicate with visuals and descriptions. To invent new systems, processes and things is pure pleasure. You never quit. You have wit and creativity in your thinking. It is important for you to watch, look and listen before you act. Complicated situations and problems are not a threat to you.
Finding the best solution is one of your primary contributions. Your tastes are varied and diverse. You like to consider all the options. Rapid and clever exchange of ideas is a personal joy and a method of work for you. You are able to see the ways things are, and you know what to do about it. You are seen as a valuable resource for leading people toward the right ideas and the right direction. Acting foolishly or illogically is not a common experience for you.
Your use everything that is available to meet requirements. You value and rely upon your mental abilities. Understanding others and working with them is a key asset of yours.
Your unique secondary MERCHANT core energy supports your dominant INNOVATOR core energy.

Your second cornerstone core value is love. Building and sustaining relationships is central to your life's strategy. You are constantly working to know and understand the truth about yourself and others.
Absolute proof, knowledge and understanding are not required in order for you to act. Nothing feels right when the people you value are distant or are in conflict. You want to receive good rewards and appreciation for time and energy spent. No potential plan, idea or possibility gets by you. A core strategy for you is to work effectively with others. You like to work and others enjoy working with you. Share your knowledge and information with others; you enjoy it and others appreciate it.
You are good at getting others to work for and with you. You like a new charge in your life and you like to be the charge in the lives of others. You like to trust people and to share yourself with them freely. You enjoy lots of different people and activities. Charm and enthusiasm are part of your arsenal for success. Too much formality is boring and restrictive. Motivating others with your visions and ideas is very satisfying.
Talking with others is your way to learn and to teach. Being of high value to others and seeing high value in others is a prime concern. You seldom feel defeated; you see good potential in most situations. You have the ability to help people feel hopeful and courageous. Your commitment to others and to your own life is an encouragement to others. It is important for you to see people and things as they really are.

Innovator/Bankers


Innovator/bankers lead through creative solutions, careful analysis, facts, details, steady work and clear thinking. Innovator/bankers are rationally based, working from fact, provable systems, and logical flow. This core energy can rapidly assess a situation and come up with multiple solutions or systems to support the stated objectives. Once conceived, the ideas are analyzed, organized, proven on paper and perfected in documentation.


Any business that needs creative solutions in a highly demanding, practical situation will appreciate the contributions of an innovator/banker. When the situation calls for reduction of good concepts to design, and then the further reduction to documentation and quality control, the innovator/banker becomes irreplaceable.


The power of innovator/bankers in areas of product, or system design echoes the strengths of the merchant/banker in risky business situations. The innovator/banker is prone to push the technological or systems horizons. As the Innovator struggles to create the best possible end product, the banker half of the core energy is constantly worrying the details.


Innovator/bankers, therefore, are the most likely core energy to push the limits of new product or system development, coming up with true innovations that actually work. There is nothing more valuable to an engineering design team than unlimited innovation balanced by the ability to design such an innovation to perfection, ending up with documentation that carries all the way through production, test and quality assurance.


It is my suspicion that innovator/bankers developed Calls and Puts in the stock brokerage arena. This is a prime example of innovation for the sake of risk reduction.


Innovator/bankers, however, have a difficult time making decisions. Saying "no" without thought is not making a decision. Information provides evidence to create new solutions, and new solutions need proof, which can only be derived from further information, making the process loop endless. If you are an innovator/banker and the president of a company (or head of a department), your only way to success is through attracting merchants and builders with strong enough personalities to act on their own authority and not wait for you to make a decision. They also must be willing to tell you that some of the information you "need" is not needed in order to get things done.


When innovator/bankers go into their "no decision today" lock-up, there is no way to get them out of it. The innovator side gets stubborn and isolates from others until "I can figure this out," and the banker side sets into motion a protracted data gathering and analysis cycle which "only I can manage." This posture is impenetrable, unless a courageous builder simply puts herself at risk and takes unauthorized action, and the merchant stays in the resulting fracas to help resolve relationships and keep everyone focused on the corporate goals.


It's practically impossible to try and get an innovator/banker to commit a spontaneous action. Even merchants don't envision that ever happening, at least not more than once in a lifetime.

Your scores indicate you have MERCHANT/INNOVATOR tendencies.

When you enter a room there is more love and wisdom energy suddenly in that room. You are the presence of wise love. This is your assignment, to be the effective presence of wise love. You look at the circumstances and situations around you through the eyes of truth and compassion. You operate from reason and cognitive thinking, to learn who people really are, and what they need and want. You focus on nurturing and supporting others and yourself. This is balanced by your intuitive/reasoning capacity to see the ways things are. You observe situations until you understand, providing the best responses, strategies and solutions. Your highest and best contribution can only be made in situations in which there is a significant and constant need for wise love.


Who you are at the deepest innate level of your human nature is the most important element in your life. Who you are at this deep level, is, after all, the only thing you really contribute to this world. It is through right assignment and effective choices that you make your highest and best contribution. This is the universal mission of all people.

The more you learn about who you really are, and how to optimize your presence in this world, the greater will be your success, happiness and life effectiveness.

Your dominant Merchant value energy is balanced by your Innovator secondary value energy. Your actions are routinely, almost equally, guided by these two core energies. In times of distress you will usually rely on the conflict strategies of your dominant core energy. In less critical conflicts you may use either conflict strategy given the situation.

67% of your core value energy comes from Wisdom and Knowledge.

Your scores indicate you have INNOVATOR/BANKER tendencies. When you enter a room there is more wisdom and knowledge energy suddenly in that room. You are the presence ofknowledgeable wisdom. This is your assignment, to be the effective presence of knowledgeablewisdom. You look at the circumstances and situations around you through the eyes of compassion and justice. You operate from intuitive and cognitive thinking, observing the way things are and deciding what solutions, strategies and tactics are best. This is balanced by your pure cognitive capacity to learn facts and information. You work to create standards and efficiency and avoid waste of resources. Your highest and best contribution can only be made in situations in which there is a significant and constant need for knowledgeable.
Who you are at the deepest innate level of your human nature is the most important element in your life. Who you are at this deep level, is, after all, the only thing you really contribute to this world. It is through right assignment and effective choices that you make your highest and best contribution. This is the universal mission of all people.
The more you learn about who you really are, and how to optimize your presence in this world, the greater will be your success, happiness and life effectiveness.
Your dominant Innovator value energy is balanced by your Banker secondary value energy. Your actions are routinely, almost equally, guided by these two core energies. In times of distress you will usually rely on the conflict strategies of your dominant core energy. In less critical conflicts you may use either conflict strategy given the situation.

58% Innovator/Banker

Thanks for posting this, there's a lot to read from this test.

Merchant-Innovator

Innovator/Builders

Innovator/builders pay attention to thinking ahead, solving problems, knowing the best response, taking action, making demands, and causing desired results. Business situations that require lasting structures or systems to be built must have an innovator/builder power at the helm. Whether the requirement is to make something that is complex simple, or to take a simple system and make it more robust and responsive to current needs, theinnovator/builder is the person for the job.
Innovator/builders conceive appropriate solutions and take immediate action. Implementing a solution to a problem is a rich form of reward for the builder,and seeing a new product or system put into effect is the highest praise for an innovator. In the innovator/builder, we have a person who designs a monument and then builds it.
These powerful personalities are good in isolation. They thrive on independence and chaff under someone else's management. If given a general idea of the problem to be solved or the monument to build, they will find a way to get it done. Just give them their head and stand back. Without an open range to work in, their energy turns from creativity and action to clever evasion of restrictions, anger and invisibility.
"What is he designing now?" and "Where is he now?" are questions sometimes asked about innovator/builders by the people around them.
Innovator/builders are not intimidated by much of anything except intimate relationships and speaking to crowds. They tend to be resourceful, clever and inventive. They are usually able to teach others (innovator), and are powerful in command (builder). They derive their own solutions and put them into action without hesitation.
In fast-changing environments, failing situations and extreme growth opportunities, innovator/builders are leaders.
Innovator/builders believe that they have the answer to every question and the power to do anything. Their innovator core energy develops one irrefutably valid solution after the next, and the builder in them either pushes everyone out of the way while they implement the plan, or they pronounce their edict, "Just get it done." They often add, "If you can't do it, I'll get someone who can.
Since builders are impatient with the world, they consider any teaching time to be "baby-sitting." Innovator/builders are convinced they are self-sufficient. Since they are impatient, they also do not have time to be taught or challenged, so they may feel their ideas are the only ones with any merit.

Innovator/banker

Banker-Innovator

I value Knowledge and Wisdom (as opposed to Power and Love). I was doing this from a business/work standpoint, but I think I take an "informed" approach to life as well.

Your scores indicate you have INNOVATOR/BANKER tendencies. When you enter a room there is more wisdom and knowledge energy suddenly in that room. You are the presence of knowledgeable wisdom. This is your assignment, to be the effective presence of knowledgeable wisdom. You look at the circumstances and situations around you through the eyes of compassion and justice. You operate from intuitive and cognitive thinking, observing the way things are and deciding what solutions, strategies and tactics are best. This is balanced by your pure cognitive capacity to learn facts and information. You work to create standards and efficiency and avoid waste of resources. Your highest and best contribution can only be made in situations in which there is a significant and constant need for knowledgeable.
Who you are at the deepest innate level of your human nature is the most important element in your life. Who you are at this deep level, is, after all, the only thing you really contribute to this world. It is through right assignment and effective choices that you make your highest and best contribution. This is the universal mission of all people.
The more you learn about who you really are, and how to optimize your presence in this world, the greater will be your success, happiness and life effectiveness.
Your dominant Innovator value energy is balanced by your Banker secondary value energy. Your actions are routinely, almost equally, guided by these two core energies. In times of distress you will usually rely on the conflict strategies of your dominant core energy. In less critical conflicts you may use either conflict strategy given the situation.
Your unique dominant INNOVATOR core energy causes you to rely upon the following strategies for success and fulfillment.

Your cornerstone core value is wisdom. Understanding and compassion are central to your life strategy.
Strategic thinking is your forte. You see and understand the relative worth of people and things. You pride yourself in seeing and understanding people and situations. You consistently observe and measure the worth of people and things. If different things can be brought together from different resources, you will do it. You strive to cause people and things to function well together. You like to maintain a good mix of people, activities and things in your life.
Your willingness to see things through and wait things out is a primary asset. You like to communicate with visuals and descriptions. To invent new systems, processes and things is pure pleasure. People look to you for the creation and improvement of work flow and procedures. You can always see another way to put things together. Finding the best solution is one of your primary contributions. Rapid and clever exchange of ideas is a personal joy and a method of work for you.
You are able to see the ways things are, and you know what to do about it. You are seen as a valuable resource for leading people toward the right ideas and the right direction. You like to lead through presentation of intelligent alternatives. Acting foolishly or illogically is not a common experience for you. Your use everything that is available to meet requirements. You value and rely upon your mental abilities. Understanding others and working with them is a key asset of yours.
Your unique secondary BANKER core energy supports your dominant INNOVATOR core energy.

Your second cornerstone core value is knowledge, supported by your strong desire to create justice in the world.
You like to follow a prescribed course, especially when you are involved with setting the course. You like to act in accordance with specific knowledge and historic evidence. Having the right information is important to you. You do what you say you will do. The reliability of your words and actions is critical to your sense of self-respect. When things get messy, you may get testy. You surround yourself with facts, figures and data.
You enjoy being the source of information and proven methodology. Knowing the past provides evidence for the future. You believe in measurement and in the presentation of measurement and data as an effective leadership tool. Having all of the information is important to you, even the small things. Social structure and appropriate mannerisms are good for the soul. You enjoy the work of keeping systems and processes running smoothly. You like to understand the details of situations and issues.
Zero wasted motion, zero wasted resources, zero wasted effort; this is what you strive for. You like to provide others with proven ideas and methodology. You strive for exacting control of action and words. You like to be the one who knows; being right and being able to prove it is important to you.
INNOVATORS-Your Dominant Core Energy

Innovators are the solution creators in this world. They can always think of another approach. "There's got to be a better way," is more than their motto; it is pre-programmed ROM chips in their brain's reticular receiver. Innovators enjoy the challenge of a problem, especially on a large scale. They are problem solvers. They enjoy this so much that they hate to settle on any one solution --"There's got to be an even better way." The statement, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" has no place in their awareness.
The power of innovators comes from their unwillingness to accept that there is anything they can't figure out. They are willing to put their ego at risk over and over again, staking their reputation that they will be able to come up with a plan, a solution, or an idea that will make things better.
Then, to top things off, innovators love to develop systems which insure the continuation of their plans. These systems are the "monuments" of innovator creativity just as much as a pyramid is the monument of a builder.
When everyone around them is in a panic, the builder shouting orders, the merchant whining or up selling, and the banker preaching justice or patience, the innovator tends to isolate, grab a computer or white board and set to work.
They are highly creative in their approach to problem solving. They inevitably are able to come at things from a new angle by adding elements, systems, or technologies that no one else has thought to add to the mix in order to achieve a true innovation.
While the solutions and systems that innovators create can be well founded and practical in concept, innovators themselves are not highly practical in their approach. They do not make good implementers because they want to perfect everything before acting. Taking action to them means coming up with another innovation, again delaying the implementation of their systems or new products.
Innovators love to have people around. This is not for team building. This is an audience for their creativity and a way for them to bounce new ideas around. They love to explore their latest ideas with people. They are so fascinated with each personally conceived "potential" solution that they want everyone to appreciate each and every subtlety. Just when they have their audience convinced that this new solution is brilliant, they love to add, "Wait, what if we...?"
Innovators may create problems just for the pleasure of working them out. Builders lean on innovators but often leave them standing in the hallway, halfway through an explanation about a possible solution. Banker's constantly feed challenges to an innovator's proposed strategies, keeping the innovator charged with new problems to face. Merchants listen attentively to innovators and lean on them constantly. This makes the innovator feel "heard." Since the merchant would never consider leaving an innovator standing in the hallway, innovators and merchants often become great friends. Their brainstorming parties can be endless. If left unchecked, they can actually become an endless drain of company resources.
Innovators are invaluable. They create new products and put together systems to solve production and administrative problems. They are never defeated and are able to come up with new strategies and approaches when everyone else has given up. They enjoy this so much that they hate making decisions, and they occasionally add confusion to the system by always inventing a better way. Nothing is ever good enough, especially if it was conceived by someone else, or if the solution has been in place for more than a few months.
Entrepreneur innovators can be highly successful. They are the people that create the mousetrap that brings the world to their door. The problem is, they really believe the world will come to their door. And since they love the process of problem solving more than the process of actually building and selling something, as soon as one product or service idea is implemented, they are off to create another better solution.
Innovator Challenges

The most deadly sin of innovators is their desperate need to continue perfecting a product or system long after it would fully serve its purpose. They get hooked on a specific solution or an interesting problem long after there has been a resolution to the problem.
Active innovators need a builder in them or around them to insist that they settle on one solution and complete it. They need merchants who will actually make someone else understand the value of the "solution" being sold. And they need bankers who will support them by completing the details, help them control costs and make profits.
Innovators can be very stubborn people. They may refuse to be moved until they feel their solutions are perfected. And since they also value assessment very highly, they not only like to create a new solution, but they want to be the one who assesses its appropriateness, its correctness, its cleverness and its perfection. In fact, they are certain that no one else could ever understand all the subtlety and complexity of their solution so they hate to let others really get into it and explore, for fear they may have overlooked some small detail.
Decisions for an innovator become a marathon of adding one more consideration into the equation, testing its full ramifications and announcing, "I can see how that will fit." Then, when everyone else considers the decision to have been made, the innovator may announce another level of considerations that must be explored prior to finalizing the decision. Innovators can be infuriating to merchants and builders who want to move on.
Innovators are very perceptive and open to change if they see and understand the tensions they cause. They are willing to act differently if they can only see how the different action is going to produce better results. For this reason, innovators and builders make wonderful teammates. They tend to keep good balance in the drive for action versus the drive for perfection.
The adaptiveness of innovators is also highly prized by all other players. Innovators make little distinction between what problems they are asked to solve. The process of deriving a solution is sufficient to make them happy. Innovators are a key element in every business situation where change is occurring. Their resourcefulness brings new methods, tools, systems, and mechanisms to bear. Innovators are always opening new opportunities for success.
An opposite tendency is also true for many innovators. They tend to become highly skilled at solving certain types of problems. Innovator engineers, for instance, may be geniuses when designing a new electronic circuit, but more like absentminded professors when it comes to developing business solutions for their departments.
When innovators are out of control, they get stubborn. They look for another way to go around you or to make you reconsider. They reconsider and may go on the defensive and resist making a decision. They may add another wrinkle to the equation to confuse you. They deny facts, challenge the validity or relevance of existing data, and refuse to take action, or sometimes just quit which may infuriate other core energy groups.
When all else fails, innovators resort to interrogation. They like to confuse the issue with side questions and tangents. They know how to ask questions, which are more accusation than question. They know how to get under the skin of other people, asking questions that shame and embarrass, that show the ignorance of others, or simply make others feel ignorant or confused and inadequate. Interrogation is just as powerful a strategy as the intimidation of builders, the "poor me" victim caretaking role of merchants, or the aloof, resistant, judgmental positioning of bankers.
Innovator/Bankers

Innovator/bankers lead through creative solutions, careful analysis, facts, details, steady work and clear thinking. Innovator/bankers are rationally based, working from fact, provable systems, and logical flow. This core energy can rapidly assess a situation and come up with multiple solutions or systems to support the stated objectives. Once conceived, the ideas are analyzed, organized, proven on paper and perfected in documentation.
Any business that needs creative solutions in a highly demanding, practical situation will appreciate the contributions of an innovator/banker. When the situation calls for reduction of good concepts to design, and then the further reduction to documentation and quality control, the innovator/banker becomes irreplaceable.
The power of innovator/bankers in areas of product, or system design echoes the strengths of the merchant/banker in risky business situations. The innovator/banker is prone to push the technological or systems horizons. As the Innovator struggles to create the best possible end product, the banker half of the core energy is constantly worrying the details.
Innovator/bankers, therefore, are the most likely core energy to push the limits of new product or system development, coming up with true innovations that actually work. There is nothing more valuable to an engineering design team than unlimited innovation balanced by the ability to design such an innovation to perfection, ending up with documentation that carries all the way through production, test and quality assurance.
It is my suspicion that innovator/bankers developed Calls and Puts in the stock brokerage arena. This is a prime example of innovation for the sake of risk reduction.
Innovator/bankers, however, have a difficult time making decisions. Saying "no" without thought is not making a decision. Information provides evidence to create new solutions, and new solutions need proof, which can only be derived from further information, making the process loop endless. If you are an innovator/banker and the president of a company (or head of a department), your only way to success is through attracting merchants and builders with strong enough personalities to act on their own authority and not wait for you to make a decision. They also must be willing to tell you that some of the information you "need" is not needed in order to get things done.
When innovator/bankers go into their "no decision today" lock-up, there is no way to get them out of it. The innovator side gets stubborn and isolates from others until "I can figure this out," and the banker side sets into motion a protracted data gathering and analysis cycle which "only I can manage." This posture is impenetrable, unless a courageous builder simply puts herself at risk and takes unauthorized action, and the merchant stays in the resulting fracas to help resolve relationships and keep everyone focused on the corporate goals.
It's practically impossible to try and get an innovator/banker to commit a spontaneous action. Even merchants don't envision that ever happening, at least not more than once in a lifetime.