At work recently, we were asked to take the Myers Briggs Personality Type Indicator in order to explore how our leadership team interacts.  It had been a LONG time since I had taken the Myers Briggs, and I was surprised to learn that my profile had changed with time (I am now a “Defender”, an ISFJ).  It was fun to compare our profiles and make sense of how our areas of strength and vulnerabilities intersected. I was so taken by the process that I encouraged my family members to also take it.  We had some good laughs in reading our profile descriptions (a bit like horoscopes), but in fact, it helped to illuminate some of our areas of misunderstanding in a way that was non-judgmental and clarifying.  So in this weeks post, I thought I would share the link for you to take the Myers Briggs (MBTI) for free and print out your own profile, along with some background about it. I hope it will give you some self knowledge and a way to communicate more compassionately with people close to you.

The link for the test and your profile is:

16Personalities: Free personality test, type descriptions, relationship …

16personalities.com

The MBTI was constructed by Katherine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers.  It is based on ideas of personality developed by Carl Jung. It was first published in 1962, but has been updated and used in much research since that time.  It is often used in business as a way to analyze and enhance team development. It is a simple self report measure that does not measure aptitude or ability, but instead captures our preferences in how we perceive and make judgments about our world.  In scoring the MBTI, it gives you a profile based on four pairs of preferences, or dichotomies.

The four dichotomies are:

Preferred World:  Do you prefer to focus on the outer world (Extroversion) or on your own inner world (introversion)?

Information:  Do you prefer to focus on basic information you take in (Sensing) or do you prefer to interpret and add meaning (Intuition)?

Decisions:  When making decisions, do you prefer to first look at logic and consistency (Thinking) or first look at the people and special circumstances (Feeling).

Structure:  In dealing with the outside world, do you prefer to get things decided (Judging) or do you prefer to stay open to new information and options (Perceiving)?

Based on the four preferences for each  category, you have your own personality type which is expressed as a code with four letters.  The creators explain that each of the 16 personality types is more than the sum of the parts and represents a unique way of being in the world.  Based on your preferences, you can see how certain relationships may run into misunderstandings.  For example, a person with a Commander personality profile, ENTJ, tends to focus on getting things done and naturally tends to lead.  They also tend to be a little insensitive to others along the way to their goal.  This may clash with an Advocate type, INFJ, who is extremely valuable to the team in facilitating team work, but tends to take things a little personally.  By understanding these as personality tendencies rather than taking things personally with one another,  these two co-workers can be mindful of how they interact and work more comfortably together.

So, go ahead, take the Inventory, it’s worth the 20 minutes.  Then, see how you compare to your loved ones!