Leadership Building Blocks > Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
Humans are complex creatures. Yet we often think others ought to be more like us. They’re not. That can cause a lot of misunderstanding and diminished respect…which results in diminished productivity at both the individual and group levels. Perhaps you have wondered, “If only there was a means of respectfully identifying what makes others tick so that their way of approaching life wouldn’t tick me off.” There is.
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a powerful and versatile assessment that can guide our understanding of how individuals interact with the world, internally and outwardly. Based on Carl Jung’s theory of psychological types, it indicates differing psychological preferences in a person’s interactions with the world around them. It does this through assessing clarity along four continua:
- Extraversion vs. Introversion (how energy is increased and expressed)
- Sensing vs. Intuition (how information is received and processed)
- Thinking vs. Feeling (how decisions are most often influenced)
- Judgment vs. Perception (related to preferred pace and the relationship of execution to processing, respectively)
The MBTI is a robust, multi-faceted, self-administered personality assessment. It enhances one’s understanding of how they and others interact with the world around them and the world inside them. Within the set of assessments available through TurningWest, the MBTI is ideal for reflecting more on one’s internal workings, while the Everything DiSC Workplace is largely helpful for reflecting on how one interacts with his or her colleagues at work along with the work itself. The MBTI is also well-suited for enhancing a manager’s ability to personalize their approach to a direct report who has provided their type information.