Issue 20– Fall 2008

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Practice Perspectives

Using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator to Understand Your Team Members’ Personalities

Have you ever wondered why you act (or react) the way you do or why others act (or react) differently than you do? Many contributing factors affect our unique approach to life, work, and relationships, but one of the most powerful factors is our inherent personality. Understanding your personality and how it relates to others will enable you to build empathy in your teams and develop communications and processes that best fit the unique differences that exist. In this article, we will explore the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) tool as a means for you to gain insight about the information you can expect from conducting a personality assessment and some ideas about how to use it to enhance team communications and effectiveness.
 
Using MBTI to Understand the Personality Types of Your Team

The MBTI describes 16 personality types that categorize information about an individual’s personality preferences in four different areas, each of which represents a dichotomy of extremes. Each person on your team will have a “preference” within each of the four areas that best describes how they interact with and react to the world. 

The four MBTI areas assessed include:

(1) How are you energized?  This dichotomy identifies your preferences between Extroversion and Introversion. The Extrovert gains energy by interacting with other people and the outer world. The Introvert goes within and is energized through ideas, quiet time, and solitude, thinking through old patterns and symbols that fit the present situation.

(2) How do you take in information? This dichotomy identifies the extremes of Sensing and Intuition. The person who is Sensing pays attention to information gained from sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell. The person who is using Intuition plays on hunches, guesses, relies on an inner knowing or sixth sense, and makes decisions based on associations, possibilities, and patterns.

(3) How do you make decisions?  Here, we have the opposites of Thinking and Feeling. The Thinker uses available data that can be verified and makes decisions based on logic.The Feeler relies more on present emotions and seeks harmony between their internal feelings and external realities.

(4) How do you approach life? The dichotomies here are Judging and Perceiving. The individual who approaches life from a Judging perspective seeks a life with goals, structure, and predictability. The individual who is Perceiving is more spontaneous and seeks flexibility. 

This graphic illustrates the four dichotomies that the MBTI defines and, when you take the assessment, will show where you fall in the spectrum between each:

The MBTI personality assessment tool asks a series of questions that determines your preferences in these four areas that are then used to identify your personality type.  There are sixteen potential personality types made up of the possible combinations of these four dichotomies as demonstrated in the exhibit below: 

Once you and your team members understand your own personality type, and the personality types of each other, you can then identify ways to work effectively together and embrace these differences.    

For example, consider two members of your team, Joy who is an ISTJ (Introversion-Sensing-Thinking-Judging) and Mark who is an ENFP (Extraversion-iNtuition-Feeling-Perceiving). Mark and Joy are developing and teaching a presentation on the upcoming tax updates for clients. Joy’s preference is to study alone in isolation to prepare her materials, process her thoughts, and practice her speech. Because of her personality type, she is energized from introversion. Mark, on the other hand, is energized by extraversion and prefers active conversation and discussion of the material to develop it and prepare for the speech. Mark thrives on active engagement with other people, and, while Joy will collaborate with Mark, she needs time by herself to process her thoughts and reenergize. If Mark and Joy understand these innate personality differences, then they can develop a collaborative approach to their presentation that allows Joy to take a few hours alone and then they can meet and talk through the plans together.  If either had tried doing it the other person's way first, they might end up feeling frustrated and stopped in their communication with each other. Understanding and allowing for the differences minimizes this frustration and conflict while utilizing the strong points of each person's style.

In another example, Bill, an ESTP (Extraversion-Sensing-Thinking-Perceiving), and Sarah, an ESFJ (Extraversion-Sensing-Feeling-Judging), have interviewed George for an opening in their firm's audit department. Bill takes a very logical approach to making decisions and feels that George has too little prior experience in actually doing audits to be a fit. Sarah uses her feeling preference in her evaluation of the employee candidate and considers how George would fit with the rest of the team. She is interested in his ability to share, teach, and willingness to learn. She convinces Bill to agree to hire him.  Bill agrees with the caveat that a clear time line regarding George's performance and measures of success for his audit work are defined up front during the orientation period.  Understanding that Bill makes decisions based on his thinking preference and Sarah makes decisions based on her feeling preference allows them to leverage these strengths in the decision-making process to hire George and ensure that both ends of the spectrum between thinking and feeling are considered and honored.

Benefits of Conducting Personality Assessments

When you conduct a personality assessment, you gain a deeper understanding of yourself and are more self-aware, and you also enhance your understanding and empathy for others. The MBTI is one tool that can help you accomplish this. Learning the underlying makeup, thoughts, and preferences of your own and others’ behaviors is critical to enhancing the interpersonal relationships of your team. Choosing new ways to interact and being open to others’ approaches becomes a very powerful option.  Knowledge creates tolerance, acceptance, and can even give rise to genuine appreciation. 

Understanding and appreciating differences also encourages team members to reach out to each other to utilize different talents that they don’t possess. Team members may choose to improve on areas where they have untapped strengths, such as volunteering for tasks that they have avoided in the past. With shared team knowledge, they can also ask for and get support for developing neglected or underdeveloped areas of their personalities. As individuals value their own gifts more, they have a greater sense of personal commitment to their work, which can enhance job satisfaction, retention, and productivity. 

For additional information about the Myers-Briggs assessment tool or the benefits of conducting personality assessments in your organization, e-mail Sylvia Lane at Sylvia@convergencecoaching.com or call her at (949) 443-3915.