I’ve had “get MBTI qualified” on my list of goals for several years now (if you haven’t guessed, that’s a dead give away that I’m definitely not a “J” – I like to keep things pretty open ended!). I’m happy to say that I’ve now finally bit the bullet and signed up for a training class in September.
I really started to get into type and temperament when Brian and I took a couples workshop in 1999 through Susan Nash, author of Turning Team Performance Inside Out. My friend Courtney introduced me to her back in our change management consulting days at Accenture while she was helping Susan co-author the book Dating, Mating and Relating. Brian and I learned so much about each other’s preferences and styles. That really helped shed light on the dynamics in our relationship and helped bring us closer together. We discovered that we don’t share any functions – he senses and I intuit, he thinks and I feel. Let’s just say this can make for interesting conversations and decision-making! So once we understood our natural modes of operating, we gained an appreciation for the different perspectives and strengths we both bring to the table.
I’ve started to bring MBTI into my coaching with clients who already know their type. We’ve uncovered lots of juicy insights about natural gifts and tendencies. Plus, it’s helped to shed light on places to grow into more. YOU: Being More Effective in Your MBTI Type is a great book that provides specific suggestions and development plans to be more effective on the job.
Some of my other favorite MBTI-related books are:
- What Type Am I?: The Myers-Brigg Type Indication Made Easy
- The 16 Personality Types
- Please Understand Me II
Being the INFP that I am, I’m always seeking to discover more about myself and to find meaning in the world around me. I want to make a positive difference according to my values and I want to help people. Given all that, it makes total sense that I’m pursuing this valuable personal growth tool and am wanting to share it with others.
[tags]MBTI, Myers-Briggs, temperament, personality types, INFP, life coaching, team building[/tags]
Well, no wonder we get along so well. We share the NFP perspective of the world! As for the E/I, this score has fluctuated for me over time and most recently I am right on the line. Have you done the StrengthsFinder assessment? I have found it so useful and many of my clients have as well.
I instantly recoiled when I saw MBTI… 😉 Michelle at Tangled Wings recently did a generous thing. She’s been writing about blogging and what it means for her. And she’s been writing about comments (a complex issue for all of us). She wrote a post asking her readers to leave a link to a post that was meaningful to them, but didn’t get a lot of comments. A post where they felt they really wanted to be seen and heard. My link was to a 2-years-old post about roles…and labels. So I guess this recoiling at labeling is a constant for me. 🙂 In my Portland years I carved out a nice little freelance temping thing for myself…and one of the places I did several stints (as training coordinator, helping to organize events, etc.) was in an Organizational Development group at a large corporation. I always felt like one of the OD Consultants didn’t like me–she was always rather gruff and short with me. And then one day, she said she knew EXACTLY what my type was, and challenged me to take an abbreviated Myers-Briggs. I can’t even tell you now how it came out (because I LOATHE the idea of being labeled and tried immediately to forget it)…but at least two areas were the opposite of what she’d written down in her prediction. She was shocked…until I brought in a Polaroid of what my home desk looked like (the opposite of my anally neat work one). She was a little nicer to me after that. Maybe she just didn’t like the type she thought I was. 😉