Myers Briggs, personality type, and navigation
September 4, 2006 – 9:40 amFor the Sagas Production Masterclass at the Munich Film School this week, I’ve been doing some research for a presentation on ‘personality type’ in a work context: Myers Briggs, Belbin, Galen and so on. I think you have to treat the results of any one of these analyses with a degree of scepticism but they do provide a useful framework and vocabulary for thinking and talking about how teams work together and understanding individual preferences, strengths and weaknesses.
One of the distinctions in the Myers Briggs analysis of type is between people who to prefer to use a ‘thinking’ or ‘feeling’ function in making decisions. The walk into the Film School this morning provided a practical demonstration of how this works.
Frank Alsema, who is running the Master Class with me, navigated us through the city entirely by instinct: “I feel that it’s this way” and then, a little later, “I feel this is wrong”. He did occasionally refer to a map but it didn’t appear to have any influence on the directions we chose.
We may not have taken the shortest route but we did get there. And we met some quite helpful local people en route.
As a thinking type, I’d just have used the map.
3 Responses to “Myers Briggs, personality type, and navigation”
I was very sceptical of personality tests until about 10 years ago. We’d previously covered personality tests in my psychology degree in two hours and that was to dismiss them.
Since then, I met someone who worked for BA and a senior social worker, both of whom used Myers Briggs tests during training (pilots tend to score high as Introvert, cabin crew as Extrovert, which is why they don’t tend to get on).
I am INTJ and later read that other programmers tend to be in the NT (Rationals) group (my husband, who is also a programmer, is ENTP). It’s an INTJ trait to be overly organised and systematic.
I found and joined an INTJ mailing list. A flame-war was in progress because a non-INTJ had joined who was trolling (baiting) the group. One of the regular members posted an analysis of the trouble-maker’s messages. She’d broken his messages down into percentages by type (argumentative, information, etc). For a fraction of a second, I could see myself doing the same thing. And then I thought “what a waste of time!” and made a hasty exit.
I wonder what the punchline would be to “how many INTJs does it take to change a lightbulb?” It would start with “first make a list to…”
Paola
By Paola Kathuria on Oct 25, 2006
From the fairly crude web-based test that I’ve done, I appear to be an INTP (or an INTJ if I’d answered a couple of questions differently).
A lot of the characteristics attributed to the type do fit but one thing that I’m not is overly organised.
By Frank on Oct 27, 2006
Although your job seems to me to involve organising events and organising people. And you’re pretty good at both!
In truth, I can’t help liking a personality test (Myers Briggs) in which my personality type is called Mastermind
but I am still bemused how the quiz questions marry up with the analysis. I bought the book - perhaps I should read it…
By Paola Kathuria on Nov 11, 2006