Guidance

Guidance measures how much support you prefer at the beginning of learning or on a topic you do not yet master: explore and test for yourself first, or rely from the outset on someone who knows the topic, on examples or on a method. Research on learning explains why this choice weighs at the start: on a new topic, working memory saturates quickly, and whatever lightens that load helps build the foundations [1]. Among trade apprentices, studying worked examples led to more progress than searching alone early in training, and that advantage disappeared with experience [2]. Your position therefore describes your way into a topic, not how you learn in general.

The axis matters in a new role, a new skill, a new tool or any assignment where you do not yet have a solid mental model. Its particularity is that it is temporary: the same guidance that helps at the beginning loses its value, and can become a hindrance, once the topic is mastered [1]. Among the apprentices studied, the advantage of examples reversed as experience grew [2]. The gap between what you expect and what you receive is therefore felt mostly in the first weeks of a topic, then moves on: Guidance no longer counts, Latitude does, the space you are given once mastery is acquired. Scientific scope: the cited studies examine workplace behaviours, conditions or outcomes. They do not directly validate this preference scale or an individual PIMPmyBOSS compatibility score.

The score describes a situated preference or a perceived behaviour. It is neither a personality diagnosis, a norm nor a verdict on professional quality.