MBTI Personality Test
written 3 Feb 2005 over dinner
We had a seminar today on the Myers Briggs Personality Type test. I’m not here to comment on the validity of that process, merely to laugh my ass off at the way it was presented to me. Some of the comments (paraphrased, of course):
“The process is not meant to label anyone. If you want to think of it as labels, that’s your problem. I like to think of it as codewords.”
“We’re trying to figure out if it’s task or people, i.e. task vs. people.” I remember a Mr. David Brent saying something very similar.
One of the ways the MBTI defines you is whether or not you are a thinker or a feeler – now I’m quite certain that neither is supposed to be better, just different ways of approaching the situation, but it was explained to us that some people feel and then go straight after their goals, but what we need to do is first think and then proceed, which is a fine way of putting it (though it sort of negates the whole feeling & thinking being equal), except that it was explained with this chart.
Please. people, tell me you see the problem with that chart.
The point of us all doing this is so that we can learn eachother’s personality traits and then manipulate our behaviors accordingly, so that we can get the most efficient work done. Honestly, that’s the point. We should all be assigned 4 letter descriptions, each of us are expected to learn everyone else’s description, and then use those descriptions to get what we want from the other person. Holy fudgemaking sum of a quotient! That’s hilarious.
Of course, directly after that we were told that the letters meant nothing, and that no one was to be classified. We’ll be spending 1 hour a month on this for the rest of the organizations lifespan.
MBTI Personality Test: Understanding Your MBTI or Myers Briggs Personality Type
3 people chatting it up...