As leaders, knowing ourselves is an important aspect of
leadership that is too often overlooked.
Do you have a good understand of what ‘type’ of person you are? Are you an extrovert or an introvert? Do you like working with people or with
things? Are you more a thinker or a
doer? Have you put any thought into the
fact that the people you often like to work with or be around have similar
traits to you, and that the people you don’t like to work with have different
traits? This is usually all lumped into
the broad concept of “personality types” or “interaction styles”, of which here
are many models. While many people may
get the chance to take a personality/interaction test at work or maybe school,
not everyone gets the chance.
I should say that I am not a psychologist, and I have no
training in this field. I have been
exposed to some of these concepts, and have spent some time doing further
research for these articles, and so I encourage those who have an interest to
seek out some of the resources I mention and take this further if they want to
learn more. This will be the first of a
series on this topic.
For me, my first real exposure to this was at work when I
completed the “L-E-A-D Personality Inventory”, which was developed by Dr.
Walter Lacey. It focuses on 4 types:
Leader, Expresser, Analyst, and Dependable, and the inventory then ranks these
four. (if you are interested in this inventory,
it’s available from the Church Growth Institute) In this area of personality/interaction
tests, the main 3 tests seem to be Myers-Briggs, DiSC, and Social Styles. In addition, I feel that StrenghtsFinder
should also be touched on as many may have also heard of it. We will look at each of these over the next
few articles, and wrap things up with the final article.
The Myers-Briggs Type
Indicator (MBTI) is probably well known, even among people who haven’t
taken the test. The materials are
controlled by the MBTI Trust and sold by CCP.
MBTI was developed to make the psychological theories of C.
G. Jung understandable. Jung came up
with 4 basic personality types, which he called Thinkers, Feelers, Intuiters, and Sensors. MBTI was developed
by the mother-daughter team of Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers,
and attempts to measure a person’s preferences with 4 pairs of attributes. These attributes are Extraversion/Introversion, Sensing/Intuition, Thinking/Feeling and Judging/Perceiving. This gives 16 possible personality
types. As noted, MBTI specifically
measures personality, not behavior (interaction). It identifies a person’s
preferences, not their actions, which is sometimes misunderstood.
So, what are these 4 pairings about?
Extraversion/Introversion-
is your focus outwards or inwards?
Sensing/Intuition-
do you focus on information you have or do you prefer to interpret it?
Thinking/Feeling-
when making decisions, do you base it on fact and logic, or people and
situations?
Judging/Perceiving-
when dealing with the outside world, do you prefer a decision is made, or be
open to new information or options?
Depending on which of each pairing is your major one gives
you your personality type, for a total of 16 different possible ones. You may be EIFP or ISTJ or the like.
Of course, to find out where you are, you need to take the
test. I’ve tried to find accessible
information on this, but wasn’t that successful. Most of the material developed by CCP is
aimed at professionals providing testing services. They DO offer an on-line assessment, but it
costs money. I tried to find some work
that could be read that could help. One
I came across that may be useful is Do What You Are (2007, 4th edition) by
Paul Tieger and Barbara Barron. It
deals with MBTI, and gives a simplified assessment to find out your personality
type, then spends time on each one.
No comments:
Post a Comment