Who were you when you were seven?

I have found that during assessments, a surprising amount can be learned about how we manage our relationships and professional lives by considering what our lives were like when we were seven years old. To some degree the age seven is arbitrary, but there is a tradition from the Jesuits onwards of thinking of that age as particular.

We can learn much by taking time to consider what the shape of the family we lived in was like? Who did we live with? How many siblings did you have? Are you the oldest? Youngest? Were you an only child? Furthermore, what was the nature of how nurturing that family felt? What was the nature of the way discipline was administered?

I have found that these questions can be used to elicit important information about how we relate to and manage others now. It can raise subtle issues of how we learned to speak our minds.