Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

This weekend I re-looked at my Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.

 The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a tool to help you understand your personality type.  At a Juniper manager training we went through a MBTI type identification exercise and I found it pretty useful. 

  Very crudely MBTI consists of 4 types of 'being'

1.)   Where people prefer to focus their attention and get energy:

   Extroversion (symbol E, from external objects and people) Introversion (symbol I, from their own mental space)

2.)   The way they prefer to take in information

   Sensing (symbol S) , Intuition (symbol N)  

 

3.)  The way they prefer to make decisions

   Thinking (T)  or Feeling (F)

4.)   How they prefer to orient themselves to the external world 

   Judging (J) or Perceiving (P) 

There are more detailed descriptions of what each of the above mean.

There are a series of questions you answer and they help to identify your type on each of the indicators and then arrive at a composite type (for eg Intuition - Sensing - Thinking - Perceiving, ISTP) of which they are 16. The model has an extensive description of the broad traits of each type. At the training there was also a discussion on how these type behaviours and how they manifest in the workplace and how people of different types work together well (or not). I think this exercise is of particular value to people to remind them that their worldview is not universal, and particularly that there is an entire personality model built around various ways of being and that ones own way of being is just one type, and is no more valid or correct than others. 

The value of this personality typing exercise I personally found included:

 -- to revisit the fact that I feel inadequate about several things ; this exercise suggests that you feel comfortable in your natural strengths and build on them.

 -- placing your own abilities and weaknesses in a broader framework like this means that you can then see the really irritating things that others do within the same framework and see that  the other person is not objectively wrong in behaving a certain way. 

  There's probably lots of material on the web about MBTI, and I would encourage you to find out more. But the real value would come from doing it with an expert who would put you through the questions to find out your type and the discussion that follows. 

   Personally I had a fair bit of trouble in fully identifying my type. I identified it as INFP (Introversion, Intuition, Feeling, Perceiving). I had a lot of ambiguity between Feeling and Thinking. I think it comes out of preparing intensively for the IIT entrance and then doing engineering, where the whole atmosphere is logical and fact-based and feeling plays no role. Also the model points out that there are different degrees to which people are able to clearly identify their type and less-clarified type may be due to lack of freedom to explore or suppression in childhood etc. I think a lot of Indians would exhibit this kind of thing, since  a lot of Indians (especially poorer people) would grow up in a situation that precludes freedom and exploration and development.

Some links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator - MBTI on Wikipedia

http://www.myersbriggs.org/ Myers-Briggs Foundation

http://www.personalitypathways.com/type_inventory.html Some more introductory material