So, just yesterday I read Keredria’s post over on Tree of Life called Blog Personalities and was rather amused.  I’m familiar with the MBTI since during my first year of medical school they had all of us students take the “quiz/exam” to determine all our personality types.  I believe the goal in the end is to correlate our personality types with medical specialties and also to see if they change at all during the course of medical school (we have to take it again in our 4th year I believe).  Needless to say, my results indicated that I am an ISTJ.

ISTJs (Introversion, Sensing, Thinking, Judgment):

“ISTJs thrive on organization. They keep their lives and environments well-regulated. They bring painstaking attention to detail in their work and will not rest until a job is well completed. They are often dissatisfied with unresolved issues, whether in life or in fiction.

ISTJs are faithful, logical, organized, sensible, and earnest traditionalists. They earn success by thoroughness and dependability. Shutting out distractions, they take a practical, logical approach to their endeavors. Realistic and responsible, they work steadily toward their goals. They enjoy creating order in both their professional and personal lives.

Despite their focus on their internal world, ISTJs prefer dealing with the present and the factual. Keen observers of life, they weigh various options when making decisions. ISTJs are well-prepared for most eventualities and have a good understanding of most situations. They believe in practical objectives, and they value traditions and loyalty.”

So apparently, according to the Keirsey Temperament Sorter I’m an Inspector:

“Inspectors are careful and thorough in examining people and institutions. Comprising about 6 to 10 percent of the population, Inspectors are decisive in practical affairs. These guardians of institutions are perhaps best described as dependable: Inspectors are people of their word, intent on preserving social and family values. At home and at work, Inspectors reliably examine the people and products that fall under their responsibility—unobtrusively ensuring uniform quality and demanding that certain standards of conduct are maintained.

In both their professional and personal lives, individuals of this type are rather quiet and serious. Inspectors are extraordinarily persevering and dependable. The thought of dishonoring a contract would appall a person of this type. When they give their word, they give their honor. Inspectors can be counted on to conserve the resources of the institution they serve and bring to their work a practical point of view. They perform their duties without flourish or fanfare; therefore, the dedication they bring to their work can go unnoticed and unappreciated.

While not directly seeking leadership positions, Inspectors are often placed in such roles. They build a reputation for reliable, stable, and consistent performance that inspires others to select them to lead. Inspectors use their past experience and their factual knowledge in their decision making.

For Inspectors, love means commitment, steadiness, and consistency. Inspectors expect themselves and their mates to be responsible, practical, and dependable. When in a relationship, they behave appropriately for what the situation or their role demands. For example, if the relationship is in the courting stage, the Inspector will exhibit courting behaviors, such as giving boxes of candy, red roses, and presents. These are worthwhile and important traditions to uphold and observe because they give direct evidence of commitment.”

Now to get to the actual point of this post….Keredria found an interesting tool called the Typealyzer.  Basically, you can type in the website of a blog and it analyzes the writing style to spit back out a MBTI for the blogsite.  Kind of interesting, not scientifically validated, but fun nonetheless.  I find personalities deeply interesting and so I thought it was fascinating to see what kind of “personality” my blog site has.  So, my results indicated that Tree Haelz is of the INTP variety or “The Thinkers.”

INTPs (The Analyzer as I would call them) are:

“The logical and analytical type. They are especially attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.

They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about.”

“INTPs are pensive, analytical folks. They may venture so deeply into thought as to seem detached, and often actually are oblivious to the world around them.

Precise about their descriptions, INTPs will often correct others (or be sorely tempted to) if the shade of meaning is a bit off. While annoying to the less concise, this fine discrimination ability gives INTPs so inclined a natural advantage as, for example, grammarians and linguists.

INTPs are relatively easy-going and amenable to almost anything until their principles are violated, about which they may become outspoken and inflexible. They prefer to return, however, to a reserved albeit benign ambiance, not wishing to make spectacles of themselves.”

I don’t know about you guys, but the descriptions of ISTJ and INTP aren’t really all that different.  I can see portions of both that may or may not be evident either in my personal life and/or my blog.  Guess it goes to show you that we all exhibit certain aspects of different personality types.  In addition, all things like this are a range, no one is entirely one or the other.  What I mean by this is that no one is completely an extrovert or only introverted.  We display a range of behavior that is somewhere in between the two extremes.

I think I learned a little bit about myself from this activity.  In addition, I hope that you guys as my readers also learned a little bit about me and about what you can expect from my blog.  I do tend to analyze the game, healing, and healing-styles.  In general, I believe those are the types of things I think about related to WoW and the types of things you can expect to see me blogging about.  I love to talk about resto druid healing, especially in light of the upcoming changes with patch 3.3.  There are a lot of changes to be made, not only with gearing, but also gems, our preferred stats, and healing-styles.  I know my blog is relatively new, so if logical, analytical discussions about the new upcoming ICC bosses interests you, stick around!  Suggestions are also welcome and I would love to hear from any of my readers – feel free to email me at treehaelz@gmail.com.

So my question to my readers is:  What class/spec of healer do you play and do you know what your MBTI is?

Fîrewood

In case I ever need to do a quick lookup, the MBTI personality types are:

ISTJ – The Duty Fulfillers
ESTJ – The Guardians
ISFJ – The Nurturers
ESFJ – The Caregivers
ISTP – The Mechanics
ESTP – The Doers
ESFP – The Performers
ISFP – The Artists
ENTJ – The Executives
INTJ – The Scientists
ENTP – The Visionaries
INTP – The Thinkers
ENFJ – The Givers
INFJ – The Protectors
ENFP – The Inspirers
INFP – The Idealists

 I wanted to start the Striving Styles Blog by explaining the differences between the Striving Styles Self Assessment and the Quiz in the November issue of The Oprah “O” Magazine.  The people at O approached me mid August as they were looking for someone who could put together a quiz to help people find out who they were meant to be. I had 10 days to write the quiz and the descriptions for each of the types. Fortunately, I had much of the groundwork completed.

The main differences in between the “Who Are You Meant to Be” Quiz and the Striving Styles Self Assessment is the length of each quiz, the number of Striving Styles and the accuracy of the assessments. The primary reason for the differences was because of the amount of space they had for the article in the magazine. They had been thinking of including 5 or 6 different styles of people. We were able to include 7 and we had to leave one out. They had a limit of 30 questions for the quiz so I cut down the questions from the 64 in the Striving Styles Self Assessment.  The longer assessment and tends to have greater accuracy, although people report being impressed with how accurate the O Quiz was.

During the past several years, I had been researching how emotional energy and personality type worked together. While I have used Psychological Type (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) in my work with individuals, teams and organizations, I recognized its limitations. It determines predictable behaviour based on functional preferences, but does not include how people use their emotional energy or whether they are self-aware or self-protective.  This is extremely important as people can behave noticeably different based on which of the two is their objective.

Along with my associate, Heather Hilliard, at Caliber Leadership Systems, we began using the Emotional Quotient Inventory with the MBTI when conducting assessments to try to get a sense of where a person’s emotional energy would most likely be used. Although it vastly improved our ability to interpret emotional and social functioning within each type, there was a good degree of inaccuracy. Most people do not know the difference between their thoughts, value judgments and emotions and would score themselves based on what they thought they were like instead of what they were actually like. In addition, it increased the cost of the assessment substantially.

The Striving Styles System is based on the premise that each of us is born with a dominant pattern of energy or Striving Style that determines what our primary need or striving is and how we will behave in order to get that need met.  In addition to this, our emotional maturity, life experience, conditioning and stress levels determine whether we are more focused on self-actualizing or on self-protection.  Although we have access to all 8 Striving energies, there are usually 2 or 3 we tend to use most. We need more conscious thought and energy to use those we least prefer.

The Striving Styles Blog is to help people understand the Striving Styles System and its applications for:

• SELF-AWARENESS; help people understand themselves, how they are most likely to behave when self activating or when they are self-protective.
• EMPATHY: help people better understand others.
• PERSONAL EFFECTIVENESS: help people learn to use their particular striving style to their own best advantage in dealing with others.
• SELF-FULFILMENT: help people improve their ability to get their needs met.
• RELATIONSHIP SATISFACTION: gives real understanding of reactions and behaviour patterns that cause difficulty, conflict and pain within relationships.
• PARENTING: enables parents to better understand their children.
• COUNSELLING\COACHING: invaluable for those in counselling, therapeutic, or healing professions including traditional medical fields.
• WORKING RELATIONSHIPS: improves working relationships.
• WORKPLACE EFFECTIVENESS: increases understanding in the workplace.

At the end of the Who Are You Meant to Be Quiz, there are descriptions of each of the Striving Styles that are about 3 paragraphs long. However, you can get more information about your Striving Style by going to my website, annedranitsaris.com. These reports are approximately 20 pages long with information about how each style is at home, at work, in relationship, during stress, and much more. 

It is my hope that by helping people build greater awareness of their primary needs, helping them recognize the difference between self-actualizing and self-protective behaviours in their personality, they can gradually learn to shift from just surviving to striving to be the person they are meant to be.

I welcome your comments, questions and input and hope you will follow the Striving Styles Blog to support you in your growth and development.  

 Anne Dranitsaris, Ph.D.

Like I’ve mentioned before in my first post on LiveJournal (to read it click here), I should be working on this final-assignment-proposal but I don’t because somehow I can’t concentrate on it. This final-assignment I’m working on is about arranging teamwork based on members’ personalities. Believe me.. you don’t wanna know about it

This personality type I’m using is based on Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). There are 16 types of personality and each of it has its unique combination of Extrovert(E)/Introvert(I), Sensing(S)/(iNtuition(N), Thinking(T)/Feeling(F), and Judging(J)/Perceiving(P). If you’re interest to know what type of personality you’re in you could do the test here. For further information about the personality types click here.

Each of us has our unique-innate-blueprint that won’t change by time. What would change is our behaviour. But the basic kind of person who we truly are won’t (easily) change by time. Therefore the type of person we are remain the same. Me for example. From everytime I could remember I (am still and) always be the strong-willing, perfectionist, goal-minded, and ambitious person. I might have soften a bit but inside I’m still that better-be-good person.

Whilst human’s preferences consist of abillity, interest, and value. Threrefore it’s natural if human’s preferences would change by time. We gather new ability by the time we learn something. We gain new interest by the time we find something new. We share new value by the time our experiences accumulated. My preference of colour for example. When I was on senior high school, I don’t see pink or red as colours. I won’t ever easily stand around those colours. But at the moment I’m in college, I even wear clothes on pink or red.

We might change as persons. There are some part of us we could easily change if we want to be better persons. But there are some part that we have to work real hard to change these, because those part which defined who we are. What’s important is we live lifes for what we are, not pretend to be someone else.

Happy living!

-nafariza

So, seeing as I haven’t actually posted anything on this yet here it is…

MBTI: INTJ (although I’m only about 51/49 N over S)

What this means:
I feel like I can help by using strategic long-term planning and thinking through actions/approaches from many different angles. I read somewhere that INTJs apply the ruthless question of “does it work?” to everything they do. I think that this is true of me. Optimistically pragmatic I suppose.

On the other hand the closeness to S makes me fairly detail oriented. I find that I operate differently based on the needs of the teams and/or the other personalities present. Also, I sometimes need to be reminded if I’m getting too far one way or the other because what I perceive to be the needs of the team may not be accurate (so let me know when this happens).

Change Questions:
What is one change I’d like to see in myself this semester through my participation in ARA?
I would like to become more comfortable operating in a system where short-term gains may have to be sacrificed for long-term success. I would like to learn more about impact and to better be able to articulate the idea of impact and our potential for creating change.

What is one assumption about creating change (either organization change or behaviour change or both) that I make?
Change is possible. I know that this is an assumption but I would really like to continue to make it.

What is a change I would like to see through my actions (inside and outside of ARA, big or small) this semester?
I would like to see an increase in thought and longer term goal setting in myself and the chapter as a whole. I’m not sure how this could be measured. Perhaps it’s just a general feeling or some collective reflection.

What is one skill that I would like to develop to be a more effective agent of change?
I would like to be better at asking questions and finding the thing I need to connect to the other person.

In my experience with EWB or other organizations what is an internal roadblock to change I have seen? How could this roadblock be navigated?
One of the big things I have seen in the past as a big problem is lack of follow-through. Looking back at my notebook I see that I wrote “lack of commitment” but I don’t thing that this is really the main problem. Recently I have been asking myself what commitment is exactly and where it comes from. I don’t know but I don’t think that I can assume that a lack of action is always a lack of commitment or a symptom of not caring.

For me I feel that what I can do to increase the amount of actual follow-through on a team is to help us all remember why we are here and how our work may contribute to the world. Also, perhaps I should do a better job of telling the people around me how inspiring it is to see them all working toward a world of opportunity…

Um dos maiores desafios atuais da vida é encontrar alternativas que conciliem os interesses profissionais com as aspirações pessoais dos indivíduos. Para atender essa demanda, desenvolvo programas personalizados de orientação profissional e gestão de carreira que apóiem as pessoas a encontrarem satisfação na vida profissional e equilíbrio em sua vida pessoal.  

Nestes programas adaptamos e transformamos conhecimentos e experiências e em aprendizagem que resulte em mudança comportamental.

A METODOLOGIA é baseada na aprendizagem vivencial desenvolvida a partir das idéias de David Kolb. Essa metodologia coloca o participante num ambiente quase real ou simulado. Em resumo, pode ser explicada em 4 etapas:

1. Desafio – Ao participante é colocado um desafio a partir do qual deve agir.

2. Reflexão – Depois de realizada a ação, o participante analisa como agiu e se sentiu, refletindo sobre o antes e o depois.

3. Conclusão – Após a comparação (e constatações), o participante chega a uma determinada conclusão (insight), elaborando uma resposta nova e criativa para o problema.

4. A nova resposta é levada para sua vida real, incorporando o novo jeito de fazer.

During the first few weeks of work at a new company I witnessed the two highest ranking Sales people in our division get into a heated argument about Starbucks and Dunkin Doughnuts. As strange as it is, the disagreement really came down to a difference in type. Working in a small organization is a  great opportunity to observe type differences within the highest levels of a company. One of the biggest differences I saw on a day-to-day basis is the interaction between the ESTJ National Sales Director and the ENFP VP of Sales.

Both individuals are long-time employees and are not afraid to share their opinion (E), although usually they are on opposite sides of every interaction. For example during our monthly sales meeting, a discussion broke out on the importance of using analogies outside of our industry to better explain our solution to customers.The ESTJ Sales Director begins to point out, we must all use the same analogy of Dunkin Doughnuts and Starbucks because it makes the most sense. Besides, he continues, if we try to make one up of our own we could screw it up and the customers will be confused.

The ENFP VP butts in… “Not so fast Chris, although I definitely think we should use an analogy, I think we should leave it up to each sales person to decide what makes sense for them and the customer they are talking to. I don’t care what is said, as long as the proper idea is conveyed”They continued to go back and fourth debating if there should be one established, practiced, and structured analogy (SJ) or a variety of different analogies each individual can choose, based off of the conversation they are having at the moment (NP).

This is typical behavior of an SJ wanted to follow an established proven method of explaining something, and the NFP wanting to give each person the freedom to describe things how they choose (as long as the overarching idea is conveyed). What both parties couldn’t understand is that this disagreement arouse from their personal preferences of established routine vs. spontaneous individual expression arouse from differences in type, NOT differences in best practice.

Most types will typically project their type on others because it is the thing they are most comfortable with themselves. The SJ, feeling more comfortable wish established routines insists that this way is how everyone should do it, because he is most comfortable with it. On the other hard the NP can find the single explanation limiting and boring, why not come up with a NEW idea on the spot! Now THAT is something you and your customer will be excited about!

MBTIguy Tip: Don’t establish routines and standards based on one type preference.

It’s so important to understand yourself and the personality traits which will impact your likeliness to succeed or fail at various careers.

Yes, I know, I know that. but I can’t. It’s really hard, isn’t it? What am I? Obviously, It’s just, I’m just an another looser, maybe, more exactly, I’m the King of Looser. Well, I like that sound pretty much.

I guess I am the one of ENTP where I can tell the difference between the people who are ENFPs and me.

ENTPs are like that:

ENTPs are logical, innovative, curious and downright inventive. They see possibilities for improvement everywhere and possess the ability to understand complex concepts. ENTPs are introspective and carefree nonconformists. They often neglect the more common areas of life while pursuing new solutions. ENTPs can be good conversationalists and exciting company.

“ENTPs are idea people. Their perceptive abilities cause them to see possibilities everywhere. They get excited and enthusiastic about their ideas, and are able to spread their enthusiasm to others. In this way, they get the support that they need to fulfill their visions” – Portrait of an ENTP (The Personality Page)

“It is so natural for these individuals to practice devising gadgets and mechanisms, that they start doing it even as young children. And they get such a kick out of it that they really never stop exercising their inventive bent” – The Portrait of the Inventor Rational (Keirsey)

“ENTPs are usually verbally as well as cerebrally quick, and generally love to argue–both for its own sake, and to show off their often-impressive skills… argument as a sport.” – ENTP Profile (TypeLogic)

“ENTPs contribute an innovative, versatile, and enterprising approach to work. They view limitations as challenges to be overcome and look for new ways to do things. They need to find a niche for themselves in order to be free to maneuver. They prefer the start-up phase of a project rather than the followthrough or maintenance phase. Once the project is designed, they prefer to turn it over to someone else.” – ENTP – The Innovator (Lifexplore)

“…attention seeking, experience junky, insensitive, adaptable, not easily offended, messy, carefree, dangerous, fearless, careless…” – Jung Type Descriptions (ENTP) (similarminds.com)

ENTP Career Matches:

Oops, look at this, Computer Relatives are there. Dose it means that as a programmer for a living ain’t bad enough? Got more OTLs.

Phrases that set off my coaching radar:

“I’m the type or person who…”

“I’ve always been someone who…”

“That’s just the way I do things.”

Once someone has drawn that conclusion about himself/herself, the doors of possibility are getting closed, and his/her potential paths forward are being limited.

The distinction I’d make here is between knowledge and awareness. We treat knowledge as fixed and unchangeable. If I know I’m in introvert, then I predict that I will need to go to great lengths for the rest of my life to hoard my energy. If I am aware of my energy level, though, I’m able to react in the moment and do what I need, regardless of whether I know my MBTI type, or enneagram type, or what my boss said on my last performance evaluation. (Of course, I still am a fan of all three – MBTI, enneagram, and performance evals!)

Rather than draw conclusions about who we are and how we act, I work with my clients to heighten their awareness: their awareness of what they are feeling, what they are choosing, and what is important to them in the near-term, the short-term, and the long-term.

Let’s not be so quick to decide who we are. Let’s keep the doors open. What self-knowledge do you have that you’d like to let go of? What limiting beliefs are you hanging on to?

*

A reminder that Coach Buffet is fast approaching! Sign up now to meet the coach of your dreams on Nov.17.

Yesterday I had lunch with some friends. I was feeling guarded about one of them, who will often fly off the handle in the passion of presenting his positions on things. I have quite an even temperament and I don’t always do so well with people who are the opposite from me in that regard. I tend to feel overwhelmed by their emotions and lose track of myself. So before we met I felt uneasy considering what I might do about this. But as I observed him talking to another member of our group I noticed what an emotional person he is–and I let it in that this has nothing to do with me. I think I’ve been seeing him as intimidating me all too readily. As it turned out, he never did go into a rage that day. Now that I have greater insight into myself, I have time to work on my own attitude before we meet again in a few weeks. I will try to accept him as a person who is unlike me; he is emotionally based. Hopefully I have tender feelings, but I would never express them so dramatically. Either it’s not my in-born style or maybe I’m too timid. He probably represents my shadow.

As often happens, this breakthrough (I call it a breakthrough because I had been struggling with this person’s temper for a long time) didn’t come out of the blue. It comes on the heels of a much larger breakthrough concerning a family member. Being mindful was a help to me in both cases. After receiving a wrongfully accusing letter from a relative, I had plunged into a negative feeling state and started to obsess about how to react. Several times I considered pushing my feelings away and trying to forget the whole thing, but my energy was so intense I decided something productive might be percolating inside of me. I had felt similarly when in on the verge of creative breakthroughs in the past. Sure enough, in another couple of weeks I had solved a big puzzle. After trying to be open and waiting, things came together and the story of this tangled relationship started to make sense. I was glad I had stuck it out, including working hard on the dreams I had during this period, and able to make more progress on this situation than I ever expected. So taking the “positive” route doesn’t always achieve the best results. Sometimes hanging out in an uncertain or even negative place turns out to be the best in the long run.

Intuition by Sandy McMullen

I’m fortunate to work with a very smart team. One of them has had a lot of experience and training with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), and led a session at a recent offsite.  (If you’re not familiar with MBTI, there’s a good description on Wikipedia, but essentially a series of questions are used to diagnose a preference for Introversion or Extroversion, Intuition or Sensing, Thinking or Feeling, and Judging or Perception.  This test gives each individual one of 16 types, such as ENTJ, made up of all combinations of the 4 pairs of opposites.)  It’s all very clever and fascinating, and remarkably popular, but I’m constantly struck by its complexity and the question: What can you actually do with it?

You may not be aware that a score on one of the four axes simply indicates the clarity of preference, not ability.  It also is not a score of the strength of the preference (I interpret this as: not how much you prefer introversion for example, but how reliable the prediction is likely to be accurate that you are actually an introvert).  On the T-F dichotomy the test indicates (most times) that I have a slight preference for F.  Having low clarity can be due to cultural, social, family, or other reasons.  My colleague has explained that if someone scores an even split, e.g. 12 for T, 12 for F, then the tie is broken in the opposite direction of the governing societal bias.  In America this means ties are broken in the direction of I, N, F or P.  So given that MBTI doesn’t predict preference or ability, just because you score I, doesn’t mean you can’t either be a brilliant presenter (once of my B-school’s favorite lecturers fell into this camp) and/or enjoying being in a crowd.  Wikipedia puts it bluntly “Someone reporting a high score for extraversion over introversion cannot be correctly described as more extraverted: they simply have a clear preference.” Hence my question, what should I actually do with this?

I’ve gone through MBTI testing and workshops about 5 times in the last 11 years.  I’ve never seen anyone do anything useful with it.  I’ve have seen it create fear and doubt in the participants, wondering what it will be actually used for.  The workshops have typically been lively affairs, as people enjoy typecasting their colleagues and chuckle nervously as their intimate inner workings are potentially revealed.  There are labels applied to each of the 16 types such as Author (INFJ) or Field Marshall (ENTJ)  that people latch onto (as they are much easier to remember, and create a potential story).  The presenter typically throws up a grid of the 16 types with the team’s names in each of the boxes and people not sagely and ruminate on the potential implications.  By the next day, every participant has forgotten at least their colleagues’ types, and perhaps even their own, can’t remember the difference between everything except I and E, and there are no ongoing action items.  Is this symptomatic of a weakness with how MBTI is taught or the underlying methodology or both?

Circling back to the key question: if it doesn’t indicate strength of preference or ability what do you do with it?   Our current team has too many ENTJ’s and ENTP’s and only 1 person with a dominant S (our only female consultant).  I’m sure this means we have too many white upper-middle class males on the team, but I didn’t need a MBTI test to tell me we lack diversity.  We can’t use the MBTI for hiring, so we need another tool to decide what we are looking for to fill in these blind spots.  Perhaps I should ask the Meebo team (at Failcon they spoke about their explicit policy to hire those not like them.)  As I mentioned in that post, my experience at RSM with highly diverse teams was mixed – I’m not sure how you get the optimal amount of dissonance to drive creativity and fill blind spots yet still play nice together.

I was intrigued by the idea that in times of stress MBTI could be used to predict what behavior one would revert too.  If you knew a colleague’s type and their likely behavior under stress you could potentially develop the capability to detect they were stressed and a method for addressing it.  That does mean you have to know them pretty well, but its certainly possible.  I’ve actually found the best resource for dealing for stressful situations is outlined Crucial Conversations.  In this brilliant book, the authors describe how, when people get stressed, the amygdala section of the brain (the primitive “fight or flight” instinct governor) kicks in resulting in emotional and dangerous communication in which people invariably say things in ways they ultimately regret, typically escalating rather than resolving situations.  We’ve all experienced this in our professional and personal lives.  Some of us let it all out, and some run away or shut down.  Neither of these approaches is very effective.  Crucial Conversations provides some practical tools for detecting these situations as they occur, and then helping whoever is no-longer in a safe place (yourself or the other party) get back there by searching for and stating common objectives and using these to guide the conversation back to a productive place.  I’ve found it to be tremendously helpful both at work and home, but it does take practice.

The most useful workshop I ever went to on personality typing was led by a sales guy.   We all love to typecast salespeople as ADD, and maybe that characteristic (plus being a sales guy) resulted in his promotion of a simple and effective set of tools.   After you meet someone in a sales situation, you have to rapidly decide how best to communicate with them.  The best way to do this is to meet them on their side of the differences.  In other words, be more like them, and you’ll get along better.  The well-known aspects of this include searching for areas of commonality (a sporting interest, kids, people you’ve known, locations you’ve lived in) and echoing physical position.  You’ve probably met someone who likes to talk before getting down to business and others who are the opposite.  In this workshop, we learnt how to read those first responses to opening questions (expansive vs. short) to gauge when to start talking shop.  My takeaway is that in the vast majority of interactions you can’t whip out the MBTI test, you’ve got to make a snap assessment based on a few indicators and go with that.

Over the years, I’ve noticed that people typically tend to prefer to either work collaboratively: thinking aloud, in public and on a whiteboard or projector, or to work privately and use meetings for review cycles.  This can be hard to read, but when someone is quiet or getting uncomfortable in a group session its usually an indicator of the latter.  Likewise understanding whether people prefer numbers and factual evidence to anecdotes and stories is hard to read, but typically comes from reading the non-verbal communication – are they nodding heads or frowning, arms crossed or even not paying attention.  Of course there could be some other personal or work crisis weighing on their mind, but at least these are indicators worth investigating directly.

Apologies to the legions of MBTI fans out there, but my conclusion is that MBTI is great for amateur Jungians and psychiatrists, but too complex and inconclusive for the rest of us.  It may have some nuggets in it, and with this much time invested, I’d love to know what they are.  What would be great is tools for:

• Understanding rapidly the key dimensions that affect how we should interact and work with others,
• How to deal with situations when emotions get out of control (like Crucial Conversations)
• Indicating true strength of preference and ability (to help put people in the right jobs)

I’d really like to hear from anyone who has experience with tools that attempt to measure strength of preference and strength of ability,  or that can be used to help in difficult conversations.

*Every week I send a goofy email out to an e-list for my Christian fellowship. Since some of the stuff in them is somewhat funny, I thought it would be worth posting them on here. Note that names have been changed to preserve privacy.

Table of Contents

I. Introduction

II. The Stuff of Villains

III. Senior Advice

I. Introduction

Hey guys I’m jPothen, I like to wear collared shirts and intellectually dissect pop culture. I’m also a Senior in Navs who has made it part of his mission to send a weekly humorous email to the entire E-list. Now, believe it or not I do have serious moments when I ask myself: Why are you wasting your senior year on goofy emails, giving purely vapid entertainment?

Well, believe it or not there I try to work in some hidden layers. And while writing I try to remember old Shakespeare and pack some useful content into a seemingly nonsensical missive to make it slightly avant-garde.

And though there are many failures along the path to laughs, I hope these emails are sort of like frosting on a cupcake: completely unnecessary yet incredibly delightful.

II. The Stuff of Villains

1.   If anyone gets that X-Men Evolution reference, you have just won $5 from me.

2.   How many villains in movies are evil masterminds?

3.   Is it possible for people to scheme and plot good things?

While I was on my gap year, preparing to do missionary work in Belgium, I had to take a personality test as part of preparation for joining a church planting team. I took the Myers-Briggs test and learned that I was an INTJ: Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, and Judging.

Years later I did more research and found out that the reason I like the villains in many stories (like Iago, Dr. Robotnik, or the Phantom of the Opera) was that they were all Masterminds, like me. An INTJ is known as the mastermind, always cooking up plots, working alone, and not always liking people.

And while it is nice to know that I share the same personality profile of Mr. Darcy, not liking people can be a huge problem when it comes to working with people. And how many good guys in movies and stories are schemers? It seems like so often the good guys are some happy-go-lucky extrovert, not a brooding/somewhat arrogant plotting type.

So how (to use Spider-Man’s terms) can an INTJ use their powers for good? How can someone who can often be callous, intelligent, and intellectually absorbed be good? Are there any examples? I found one in Tolkein’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy: Gandalf the Grey.

Gandalf, if you think about it, is always up to something. If he’s not helping Frodo with that ring, he’s hanging out with his eagle friends or hunting down Gollum with Aragorn. He can be very curt:

“Fool of a Took!”

“Fly you fools!”

“Be quiet! Keep your forked tongue behind your teeth.”

but he is also a natural leader, planner, and parent figure. (I know I shed a tear when he died in the first movie.)

It was the beginning of redemption. Of seeing how someone with villainous qualities (like me) could be one of the greatest heroes of Western Literature.

III. Senior Advice

Senior Advice #6: Listen More than You Speak:

• While it is always fun to hear someone who is eloquent with words talk for an hour (I’m thinking standup comics here), most of us want to be heard, not to hear what someone else is saying. So this week, try to limit your words and learn to ask questions. Make other people feel like they are cared about because you took the time to hear how they are feeling.

Minns ni min gamla postning om min Myers-Briggs-profil – INFP? Jag skrev där att jag tyckte sista motsatsparet, J och P, som står för Judging respektive Perceiving, var abstrakt och svårt att riktigt få grepp om.

“…relaterar till de föregående tre, och handlar om hur man relaterar till händelser och skeenden i sitt eget liv. Judgement-personer vill planera, strukturera och skapa kontrollfaktorer i tillvaron. Perception-personer föredrar att improvisera och ta situationen som den kommer. Man är en obotlig tidsoptimist och föredrar att hålla möjligheter öppna.”

Rätt luddigt, eller hur? Men så häromdan, apropå en helt annan diskussion, skrev en väninna till mig:

“Jag tolkar det ena (J) som att man drivs av att nå resultat och att utifrån det bedöma om man kom någon vart eller inte. Det andra (P) mer som att man drivs av upplevelsen i sig, av att följa det som sker utan förväntning, njuta i stunden. /…/ Skapa i stunden.”

Låt mig utveckla:
Person J vill någonstans, vill ha ett resultat eller nå ett mål. Hon eller han befinner sig vid punkt A och målet är punkt Ö. Hon eller han gör upp en  handlingsplan med prydliga punkter, strategier, steg på vägen: B, C, D osv. En slags karta över Vägen till Ö. När person J når målet – Ö – utvärderar hon eller han. Nådde jag mitt mål? Ja. Bra. Nådde jag inte mitt mål? Inte bra, något stämmer inte – jag måste omvärdera, lägga ny strategi – hitta en annan Väg till Ö.

J-personen bedömer alltså “läget” i relation till målet. Alltid. Målet är fixstjärnan, referenspunkten. Inom organisations- och ledarskapsteorin är fenomenet även känt som resultatorientering.

Person P är istället processorienterad. Process är ett modernt ord, nästan trendigt, ett ord man nästan reflexmässigt vill slå ifrån sig – bara för att det är så söndertjatat. Men härda ut lite – det finns faktiskt en poäng här. Någonstans.

En process är något som händer, dynamiskt, föränderligt, oändlig rörelse (hade någon slags metafysisk poäng om att all rörelse är oändlig, att rörelsen i sig inte upphör, utan bara “kroppen” som slutar befinna sig i den… men jag tror vi skippar den idag, va?).

För P är den där processen en naturlig “miljö” att befinna sig i. Den dynamiska, ständigt föränderliga världen är ett flöde, och mitt i det står P-personen och bildar sin referensram i realtid – som en del av det flöde hon befinner sig i. Och för P finns ingen anledning att försöka styra eller kontrollera den där processen – hon är ju DÄR, när det händer, tar in intrycken efter hand som de kommer och orienterar sig i tillvaron genom upplevelser här och nu.

Superflummigt, jag vet. Men samtidigt är ju “kontroll” ett annat slitet uttryck, som vi egentligen vet saknar betydelse. Vi “behöver” kontroll, fast vi egentligen vet att kontroll är en illusion – vi kan inte kontrollera någonting, bara inbilla oss att vi kan. Och den “kontrollen” yttrar sig i en förvanskning av verkligheten, ett upprepat mönster som för varje upprepning alltmer skiljer sig från verklighetens. Kontroll? Eller chimär?

Hur mycket kan ni om kaosteori? Jag kan nästan ingenting, förutom att jag vet att det är kaosteori, om än på lightnivå, vi är på väg in i nu. Ett kontrollerat mönster med en pytteliten avvikelse, som upprepas till dess avvikelsen blir ENORM – det är kaosteori.

Ett system (exempelvis ett J-samhälle) som bygger på den inbillade kontrollens princip, är ett sådant system. J-personerna ritar upp sina kartor och strukturer, och de leder dem en bit på väg, men det som var ett litet fel från början – innebär att de hamnar käpprätt åt helvete i slutet.

P-personerna däremot – de tenderar fastna i processen, och når inget “mål” alls. Det finns inget mål – processen, här och nu, är allt som betyder något. Att detta här och nu är en dynamiskt kaotisk och okontrollerbar plats, det gör P-personen alls ingenting – tvärtom. Det är hennes eller hans rätta element, ingenting får P-personen att känna sig så levande som att vara en del av en dynamisk, flödande, levande process.

Två saker tänker jag kring det här:
För det första – ingen människa är en vandrande arketyp. Ingen människa är J eller är P, fullt ut och till 100 %. Om man tror att världen fungerar så, eller att Myers-Briggs bygger på ett sådant antagande (och MBTI har fått stora mått av just den sortens kritik) - då har man inte förstått hur man ska använda metoden, eller arketyperna.

En arketyp anger en generell riktning, skulle jag vilja säga – snarare än en fixerad punkt. Arketyperna HAR heller inga tydliga gränser sinsemellan. De flyter ihop, går i varandra. På NextEvent-eventet jag var på för några veckor sedan var Per Robert Öhlin en av talarna, och höll ett föredrag på temat arketyper och storytelling i reklamspråket. (Otroligt intressant, för övrigt.) Utan att fördjupa mig i reklamspråk vill jag bara dra parallellen till storytelling. En arketyp är som en berättelse eller en saga som berättar något om dig – trots att den inte alls handlar om dig.

Berättelsen om den kartläggande, målorienterade J-personen och ögonblickets självklara kaospilot, person P, kan berätta något om dig – även om du inte ÄR vare sig person J eller person P. Du är du, och du bär antagligen delar av både person J och person P inom dig. Men genom att lära känna dem som renodlade “sagofigurer”, kan du kanske bättre förstå hur dessa sidor samverkar inom dig själv – och i andra.

För det andra – världen behöver båda delar. Inte enbart den lilla mixen var och en bär med oss, utan även mixen av att en är mycket  P och lite J, medan någon annan är mycket J och mindre P. För mycket J innebär att man aldrig når längre än man kan föreställa sig på förhand.

Sätt en P vid rodret så kan du hamna var som helst. För en J-person är det “fel” att hamna var som helst. “Rätt” är att hamna vid Ö, vid målet. Men tänk om det inte finns något “rätt” eller “fel”? Tänk om var som helst faktiskt visar sig “bättre” än det vi kunnat föreställa oss från början…? Att rita upp kartan från början är att begränsa sig. Och det kan vara nödvändigt att av- eller begränsa sig, för att få fotfäste och kunna komma framåt – men ibland är det faktiskt just… begränsande.

(Nota bene: Nu pratar jag på arketyp-nivå igen.)

Samtidigt är väl risken överhängande att en värld enbart befolkad av P-personer skulle bli hoplöst olidlig, med gränslösa visionärer överallt, utan tydlig riktning och mål.

Som sagt – världen behöver både yin och yang. Både eld och vatten – i balans. Många gånger tenderar vi undvika “konflikten”, genom att förespråka antingen eller – men antingen är lika fel oavsett vilken extrem man väljer. Det är i dynamiken motsatserna emellan magin uppstår – och bara där.

Do you know if you’re an introvert? Would you be proud to know you were? As I say in my book, “The Happy Introvert; A Wild and Crazy Guide to Your True Self,” when I proudly announced to my mother that I was an introvert, she shot back angrily, “You are not! You are a nice girl!” Now that many decades have gone by, I can say with certainty that being an introvert has brought me many pleasures. I’ve never been bored except when other people don’t know when to stop talking and I try not to let that happen. I generally love people and I spend much of my time studying them. I also like my own company and can find many ways to amuse myself. This is a big subject that I filled a whole book with, so there’s not room to cover it here, but here are some questions you can ask yourself if you think you might be an introvert:

1. Do you usually prefer limiting your time with people to an hour or two?

2. Do people usually realize you’re interesting only after they get to know you fairly well?

3. Are you critical of superficiality?

4. Do you tend to concentrate in depth when doing a project?

5. Is your style of speech relatively calm and quiet?

6. Are you more likely to engage in learning or improving your skills than looking for outside stimulation?

7. Is your ability to remember people’s names average to low?

8. In social situations, do you sometimes or often stand back and observe?

If you answered “yes” to most of these questions, it’s likely you are an introvert. We all use both introversion and extraversion every single day, but one of these feels more easy and natural more of the time. I kept hearing people talk about introverts in a negative way and I wanted to help clear up some of the misconceptions about this subject. I’m glad I did. “The Happy Introvert” helps those introverts who might think something is wrong with themselves, when really introversion is perfectly natural and necessary. It also tezches people how to relate better to the introverts in their lives.

See the cover and order the book at wagele.com and/or read my articles on “Parenting Introverts,” “A 5 on Music, The Enneagram, and Infinity,” “How to Get Along with Introverts,” and “Introverted Feeling Types;” and see some reviews and an interview here.

I remember taking the MBTI for the very first time. As a second year student who partied a little too hard during her freshman year, I decided to avail of the services offered by the university counseling centre. My main reason? I wanted to ensure that I was on the right path. I typically do not make any rushed decisions; however, I am merely human and succumb to certain doubts every now and again. The code I received at that time was INTJ.

A few years later, I had to take it again for my career counseling class. At first, I forgot that I had already taken the assessment before and it was not until I began writing my paper that I remembered. I admit that my interest was beyond piqued in learning that I went from INTJ to INTP. The consistency of the first three codes showed me its reliability in action yet I was more interested on how I have changed from a moderate score in the judging scale to a slight score in the perceiving end. It seems that my temperament shifted from being organized, with a focus on planning to having a slightly flexible and spontaneous approach to life. Of course, having a slight perceiving score really means that I sway between both sides, but I can’t help and wonder what possible events in my life led to the shift. Maybe my perceiving side was suppressed all these years that it took a few years of independently living by myself before it surfaced. Could it be a specific event that was under the radar yet significant enough to swing the pendulum? The thinker in me can’t help but dwell a little bit on this anomaly. It’s so fascinating to me. In the end, the question becomes which temperament do I associate more now. I would have to say…the perceiving. I still like to ponder my future and make plans, but, at the same time, I have more than 1 plan every time in case life happens. I guess the flexibility that accompanied my maturity allowed me to become less rigid and be more prepared for life and whatever it throws at me.

ikka foorumist:
I have a feeling that one thing that might repel people about NTPs in general is that they’ve likely had so many relationship failures that it’s made them paranoid and cynical enough that no one wants to deal with someone who has all their past issues and hangups. So in other words, they get off to a bad start due to their unconventionality, and by the time they find people who can understand them, they’re too messed up from trying to read subtle signs and compensate for their failures that they start seeing things that aren’t even there, and can’t genuinely trust or relate to anyone.

The meeting with the career counsellor was great.  Has made me think about what I do value in a job and how much my past jobs have not satisfied what I value.  I have always thought that I was better doing analysis etc. But after reflecting on what has made me happy in the past (cause lets be honest, not everything about my previous jobs has been awful), what MBTI has to say about my type and what I said I valued after doing on the online stuff, I really enjoy working with others (not supervising, hate supervising) but in a mentoring role.  I have done some mentoring in the past – helping people understand financial information and have gotten a real buzz when they say they now have the confidence to look at financial information on their own, questions what they are seeing and discuss it with finance people.

We also had a great talk about whether I go with gut feelings or not.  I do get great gut feelings, they are nearly always right.  But I come from a family where you are supposed to analyse and consider everything very carefully, which normally means I ignore those gut feelings which generally prove to be right!  So I think I have to learn how to have the courage of my convictions.

And the big thing my gut is telling me is to quit my current job.  I had been toying with the idea but had thought it was just a fantasy and not the responsible thing to do.  I am lucky that at the moment I don’t have any financial commitments (though I do live with my parents…)  Then the career counsellor said to just do it.  I thought about it and decided I would quit and had such a feeling of relief.  But then decided to wait until my uni semester is over so that it does muck around with exams etc.  So of course have now had time to overanalyse resigning and now wavering about my decision.  Am not very good at this being brave thing.  That feeling of relief was so strong and know I should pay attention to it!  Any advice on how to take such a big step?

Hey friends! Has been quite a while since I updated my blog. Off late I am studying in deep about MBTI based personality type analysis. I took it thrice during different circumstances and it showed me as an INTJ. I browsed other sites and blogs about being an INTJ, its pros and cons and thought would give a shot.

Some Feedback I have got so far:

Insensitive, emotionless, detached, aloof, living inside, ahead of conversation, biting sarcasm, a person with incessant rain of thoughts inside, unable to express emotions and feelings, too much rational outlook , “does it work” approach , visible psychological distance, open to criticism, new ideas etc etc

I N T J : Introverted Intuitive Thinking and Judging

Basic Information can be obtained @ :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INTJ

http://www.typelogic.com/intj.html

http://www.personalitypage.com/INTJ_per.html

http://www.personalitypage.com/INTJ.html

The test can be taken, hardly it takes 15 minutes : http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp

One need not go literally word by word to understand what ones personality type means; there is a definite variation from one person to another even though they may be the same personality type. Nature and Nurture both play an important role in bringing out the dominant and the auxiliary types.

Going Deeper :

We are Information Hounds
We must know. We must always be learning and researching something new.

We Are Not Cold and Distant
We do not see ourselves as being cruel, cold, distant, unbending, unforgiving, mean, icy or impossible but sometimes people use those words to describe us. We are factual… some might say “lawyerly.” We like references that back up ideas. When you accuse us of inappropriate past behavior and we ask when it happened, and where we were and what the weather was like and who was with us, please don’t take those questions as being argumentative or difficult. We are just trying to place ourselves back into that space and time to re-examine what you did not appreciate so we can fix it later.

Disconnected
We are sometimes accused of being disconnected from the rest of society. We aren’t disconnected to the present. We place the present past behind us because we are already in the future.

“Moving forward…”
As future thinkers, we have, at times, the uncanny ability to know what will happen in the future before most of the people around us. That ability is sometimes interpreted by others as being “arrogant” and we work on trying to keep our mouths from always saying “I told you so” because that doesn’t go over well even though we are right to say it. In meetings I am fond of saying “Moving forward…” and “What’s next?” because getting stuck repeating the details of what has already been discussed is historic and problem-solving is anticipatory. INTJs are prescient.

We have the gift of, not predicting the future, but of knowing what will happen before it happens based on cultivating, chalking out and extending the current situation. Sometimes that can be scary for us because we can see something bad happening before our eyes before it actually happens

Sometimes We Disappear
Disappearing is, perhaps, one of the most annoying things some INTJs do that people dislike.

Some other INTJ thoughts pulled up from social networking sites

I have experienced people saying something rude to me and then just walking away without apologizing only because I didn’t burst out crying”. Apart from the side of hurting you, it points to another side of human nature – we dont always apologise because we feel we are wrong – how our apologising would affect the other people can dicatate whether we acknowledge our wrong doing (and apologise) or not

The harsh part of it is hearing you heart someone’s feelings when you had not at all that intention. So I just gave up. Shame on me? I don’t know…

I don’t mind if they don’t agree with me if they are willing to argue the issue on a rational basis, but the conservative closed mind is a brick wall I’d rather not bang my head against. No, I’m not considered to be a sociable person, I’ve been told (rather bluntly) that I have no interpersonal skills, that I’m arrogant, insensitive, and heartless

The fairer sex have called me hard and harsh more often than I would care to admit. However, I’ve found that when people are insecure/unsure of themselves, the calm and quiet reassurance of the INTJ can help them get through whatever crisis they’re facing, that is where our nature works in our favour, we are ideally suited to being the rock that someone leans against, as long as we are willing to put up with someone leaning against us.

We(INTJs) are cursed as we prefer to live within ourselves as humans are preordained to..:(….We think with a logical, independant and a rational mind and hence we are crap

i’m very much like this.. enjoy taking the initiative on things and if something seems right to me, will go ahead.. although happy to change my approach if someone presents a valid reason.

Feelers just need someone to appreciate their feelings and reciprocate them. If you have understanding psychology theories or have observed people enough and have an idea of the feeler’s environment and needs, you can understand their feelings, though they sometimes appear useless and irrational. Feelers expect you to atleast display the same emotions. So now try to justify their feelings with the understanding you have about them and their surroundings be careful while talking about emotions and delicately hint them that though expressing feelings brings calmness to mind it doesn’t solve the problem and suggest them something in direction of finding a solution.

Having spend lot of man hours on this thing, certain things are in sync.  Most of the stuff in the blog are generic information and not specifically applied to me . This is a good way to reflect upon oneself and find out the dynamically the strengths and weakness and act upon those.

So we’ve recently been taken through personality profiling at work, to get us working better in our respective teams.

I should say at the outset that if you’re unfamiliar with Myers Briggs Type Indicators (it is not the same as psychometrics), you may look at the stuff I post below and think “it’s a mumbo jumbo horoscope” type thing. It’s actually nothing like a horoscope. It’s based on detailed self-assessment and questionnaire-based profiling, undertaken over a 2.5 hour session. It first came about in WWII and is based on the work of psychologist Carl Jung.

It is the most widely used personality profiling test system in current usage and about 2 million people, mostly in business, go through it every year. Why? Because by knowing your type and by knowing your colleagues’ type – you’ll better understand their needs, values, motivations, work styles, etc. This, unsurprisingly, is likely to get you working better and more effectively as a team.

You end up in one of 16 personality types and I have to say – it’s basically spot on for me. Both my self-assessment and questionnaire both tallied that I am an ENFP.

Myers-Briggs description: ENFP

ENFPs are initiators of change, keenly perceptive of possibilities. They energize and stimulate others through their contagious enthusiasm. They prefer the start-up phase of a project or relationship, and are tireless in the pursuit of new-found interests. ENFPs are able to anticipate the needs of others and to offer them needed help and appreciation. They bring zest, joy, liveliness, and fun to all aspects of their lives. They are at their best in situations that are fluid and changing, and that allow them to express their creativity and use their charisma. They tend to idealize people, and can be disappointed when reality fails to fulfill their expectations. They are easily frustrated if a project requires a great deal of follow-up or attention to detail.

Keirsey descriptions (ENFP equivalent – ‘Champion’)

Champions delight in novelty. They are optimistic, enthusiastic, and vivacious, craving expressions of strong emotion. With a dramatic flair, they share their experiences with others, hoping to reveal some universal truth or win others over in support of a cause. Attuned to possibilities, Champions scan their environment, probing the emotions, needs, and motivations of others. This sensitivity sometimes conflicts with their intense drive for personal authenticity. Spontaneous and personable, they attract others to their company.

Looking at the above – you may recognise my endless search for ‘conviviality’ and of my always burning desire for change.

It is very accurate. If you want to read a more detailed profile of ENFPs, look here.

PS Sheridan underwent it last year with work and he is an ISTJ which absolutely 100% matches his personality.

Myers-Briggs description: ISTJ

ISTJs thrive on organization. They keep their lives and environments well-regulated. They bring painstaking attention to detail in their work and will not rest until a job is well completed. They are often dissatisfied with unresolved issues, whether in life or in fiction.

ISTJs are faithful, logical, organized, sensible, and earnest traditionalists. They earn success by thoroughness and dependability. Shutting out distractions, they take a practical, logical approach to their endeavors. Realistic and responsible, they work steadily toward their goals. They enjoy creating order in both their professional and personal lives.

Despite their focus on their internal world, ISTJs prefer dealing with the present and the factual. Keen observers of life, they weigh various options when making decisions. ISTJs are well-prepared for most eventualities and have a good understanding of most situations. They believe in practical objectives, and they value traditions and loyalty.