When Faith Begins to Fade
When Builders lose their strong sense of faith, the Builder’s negative cycle begins. When a Builder’s sense of personal power is undermined, they cannot act. They cannot continue to invest their power unless they have a healthy sense of faith. Their self-respect begins to shrink. They begin to experience anxiety, still trying harder to use power to make things happen.
This loss of faith operates for the Builder like a dimmer switch on your dining room wall. As the experience of intuitive faith is lost, the amount of power that flows into the room is automatically, unconsciously decreased.
The Fear of Powerlessness
When reliance upon power is proven to be ineffective, power-based people slip from a feeling of anxiety into an overpowering fear that maybe they are really not powerful after all. They lose their sense of faith that they actually know intuitively what needs to be done. They begin to fear that they don’t know what to do now, or that maybe, after taking the next action, they won’t know what to do.
Since this all happens at an intuitive, non-logical level, there is no way for Builders to truly know whether their power is what is needed in the current situation, or whether their power will be sufficient. There is only their lost faith. The world, it seems to them, can no longer be shaped by power. But power is the strategy they know and trust.
Builders are just as vulnerable in many situations as people who have other core values as their dominant motivation. That’s why they hate so much to admit it. Their vulnerability feels like the opposite of power and makes them extremely nervous and fearful.
The Rise of the Intimidator
As the feeling of faith gets turned down lower and lower by failures or restrictions on one’s power urges, the faith that personal power will be sufficient becomes very dim, until no power is allowed into the room. This excites the fear of being powerless. This brings out the Intimidator.
The Builder Intimidator goes into battle willing to risk everything in order to regain control. They threaten, intimidate, physically rise above you, rage, charge through open spaces, and invade anyone’s space who defies them. Builders try to regain their confidence through escalating their perceived power. They expect immediate and absolute compliance.
These commands and expectations often give the Builder the illusion of power, since others tend to cower under the intimidating assault. The Builder regains their sense of being in control of the results they are seeking. Slowly they regain their sense of faith in their own power. The intimidation strategy is an effective conflict strategy much of the time—at least in the short term.
The Cost of Intimidation
Once the sense of faith is re-established, the Builder will immediately return to hard work. However, they may not recognize or understand the harm that may have been done to a relationship, either temporarily or permanently. They may not realize how much more often they are likely going to be required to use intimidation in the future due to their use of intimidation today.
Power, when misapplied by the Builder to gain and keep control over others, becomes a sledge hammer applied to a finishing nail. It may drive the nail home, but it can ruin the walls of the house it is meant to help build. Since power appears to have a self-sufficient quality, Builders also tend to be independent and unwilling to rely on others.
Their foundation in power, if not balanced by the other cornerstones of knowledge, love, and wisdom, will yield business results for a time; but the experience of success will be spoiled by the absence of a team to share the glory. The unbalanced Builder may find themselves like the marching band leader with no band following behind.
Builders Under Pressure
When Builders do not feel confident, they may turn to the dark side of power. Builders under pressure will tend to elbow people out of their way. They will take charge and overpower others. They may require absolute compliance to their commands, and if compliance is not immediate, they may raise their voices or invade the space of others. They want to set the pace, control the focus of activity, and do one thing after the next.
Merchants, Innovators, and Bankers are very wary of the Builder because the idea of doing things just because someone says to do it is not rational or comfortable for them. They have trouble discerning real innocent power from the occasional intimidation and push of overly emotional Builders.
Beware of the Builder who has decided you are “not worth very much.” They have spent a lifetime learning how to be of value to their society and they are impatient with others who are not willing to work at the pace and with the total commitment they tend to embody.
The Path of the Mature Builder
The mature Builder, however, becomes an almost unstoppable force for good. Since faith remains constant, encouraging continued positive action until faith is proven right, the mature Builder knows to ask for help, to enlist others into service, and to remain constant in their faith.
The mature Builder also knows that power is not always the right strategic energy. So they shift into their secondary, tertiary, or even their minor Core Value Strategy. This mature flexibility increases the Builder’s willingness to exert powerful action even in the face of risk and failure.
The Builder can be the most loyal and self-sacrificing person on the team. But if they feel controlled and thwarted in their efforts to make things happen, or if you make them doubt their own power, you may experience the feeling of getting into the boxing ring with Mike Tyson. The key is to understand that Builders do not resort to negative strategies unless their sense of potency is threatened, whether the threat is real or imagined.
Breaking the Negative Cycle
The self-respect of a Builder is almost entirely based in their sense of being the power in the room and being perceived as an undefeatable person. When a Builder feels impotent or vulnerable, the commitment to acting on faith is tossed away. Unconsciously, the Builder strategy decides that any means required to regain the sense of limitless power is okay.
Understanding this cycle is the first step to breaking it. When Builders recognize the early signs of fading faith—the anxiety, the frustration, the urge to escalate—they can consciously choose a different path. They can lean on their secondary values, ask for help, and remember that true power comes not from domination but from the ability to achieve meaningful results with and through others.
Understand Your Builder Profile
Knowing your complete core values profile—including your secondary and tertiary values—helps you develop the flexibility that mature Builders use to maintain their effectiveness without resorting to intimidation. Take the Core Values Index today.