Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
A successful organisation is made up of people with different working styles that complement each other.
Understanding how your people work, and helping them understand how their personal style interacts with that of their colleagues, is an essential building block of creating a dynamic team.
With more than 3.5 million questionnaires completed worldwide every year, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) questionnaire is the most widely used personality questionnaire in the world. It is based on over 50 years of research and development, and is available in 19 languages.
The MBTI questionnaire describes an individual's personality preferences. It represents these in four dimensions:
Extraversion - Prefers to draw energy from the outer world of activity, people and things.
or
Introversion - Prefers to draw energy from the inner world of reflections, feelings and ideas.
Sensing - Prefers to focus on information gained from the five senses and on practical applications.
or
Intuition - Prefers to focus on patterns, connections and possible meanings.
Thinking - Prefers to base decisions on logic and objective analysis of cause and effect.
or
Feeling - Prefers to base decisions on a valuing process, considering what is important to people.
Judging - Likes a planned, organised approach to life, and prefers to have things decided.
or
Perceiving - Likes a flexible, spontaneous approach and prefers to keep options open.
Advantages
The MBTI can be used for:
Individual development - understand your preferred working style and how to develop this to be more effective in a range of situations.
Management and leadership development - help managers and leaders to appreciate the impact of their personal style on others, and identify their strengths and any areas that they may need to develop to become more effective. (Works extremely well as part of an executive coaching programme).
Teambuilding and Development - increase awareness of the team's working style and, as a result, improve team communication, enhance problem-solving, encourage appreciation of diversity and resolve conflict.
Organisational Change - understand why people react differently to change and how to support them through the process.
Improving Communication - help people to understand how to communicate effectively with different people and develop influencing and persuading skills.
Education and Career Counselling - identify learning styles and motivations, improve teaching and training methods and provide career guidance.
Relationship Counselling - improve the quality of relationships and interactions by understanding and valuing differences.
Benefits
Revised and updated in 1998, the MBTI Step I is more accurate and relevant than ever. Backed up by an exhaustive body of resource material, this tool combines ease of use with compelling results. There is extensive evidence of it acting as a powerful catalyst for both individual development and empowerment and, as a result, bringing about increased productivity, a more effective approach to problem-solving and improved managerial and team-working skills.
Applications
- In one to one coaching sessions as part of personal, management and leadership development.
- In a team workshop setting and possibly alongside experiential and team development activities.
- In a training context for leaders and managers of organisations.
Costs
These need to be quoted individually as the process relies on licensed materials supplied by Oxford Psychologist Press (OPP
®) and these vary depending on which option is best suited to your need. Your MBTI practitioner will be able to explain the options.
