Nine Natures
The Nine Natures describe how a person tends to engage with situations. They are not personality types and not fixed identities. They describe what kinds of engagement feel natural versus effortful for a given student.
Tip: A high Nature score indicates that mode tends to feel energizing for the student. A low score indicates that mode tends to take more effort — not that the student is incapable of it, and not that anything is wrong.
The Nine Natures
Section titled “The Nine Natures”| Nature | What it means |
|---|---|
| Administrative | Drawn to building systems and creating order. Organizing things and keeping processes running smoothly feels genuinely satisfying. |
| Adventurous | Drawn to novelty, challenge, and the unknown. New situations are energizing rather than threatening. |
| Creative | Drawn to making, inventing, and expressing. The act of bringing something new into existence feels natural. |
| Educative | Drawn to sharing knowledge and helping others understand. Explaining, teaching, and mentoring feel engaging. |
| Entertaining | Drawn to shaping the energy in a group — performing, animating, holding attention. Group settings tend to be energizing. |
| Entrepreneurial | Drawn to building, initiating, and taking calculated risks. Starting something from scratch feels motivating. |
| Healing | Drawn to moving toward difficulty — supporting others, being present with struggle. Care-oriented roles feel sustaining. |
| Protective | Drawn to keeping people, things, or ideas safe. When something or someone the student cares about is at risk, they move to protect it. |
| Providing | Drawn to noticing needs and moving to fill them. Service and support feel naturally satisfying. |
How to read the scores
Section titled “How to read the scores”Each Nature is shown on a scale in the student’s profile. The scale reflects how consistently and naturally that mode feels to the student based on their own responses.
High scores indicate that mode tends to be an asset for the student — they tend to feel energized when engaging through it.
Low scores do not indicate a problem. They indicate that mode tends to require more conscious effort. A student with a low Educative Nature can still explain things to others — it tends to take more energy than it does for a student with a high Educative Nature.
What the Natures are not
Section titled “What the Natures are not”- They are not a measure of skill or ability
- They are not a prediction of behavior
- They are not fixed — a student’s engagement profile can shift as they develop and their circumstances change
- They are not a diagnostic label for any condition
Using the Natures in practice
Section titled “Using the Natures in practice”The most common use is identifying mismatches. A student who has low Administrative but has been placed in a leadership role with heavy coordination responsibilities may find that role draining rather than motivating — not because they cannot do the work, but because the engagement style required does not align with their natural mode.
Similarly, a student with high Healing and high Interpersonal Intelligence in a very individual-focused, competitive environment may not be struggling because they lack ability — they may be struggling because the environment is running against their grain.
Understanding the Natures helps staff ask better questions: “What is this student naturally drawn toward, and how does the current situation fit that?”