Don't know anything about it, not my field of interest.
Don't know anything about it, not my field of interest.
I didn’t either until just recently and it’s become interesting to me just because it seems to explain a lot about my life.
I think that you would find yourself as one of the rare personality types if tested.
I think we all know my personality type.
It helps consulting firms make a lot of money while hampering management-types as they (and often you) pigeon hole you based on the results (which can change from test to test).
Should You Trust the Myers-Briggs Personality Test.
It's the business world's equivalent of a horoscope. Read them as you wish and get what you want, but don't let it steer your life.
I’ve seen the trend with the consulting firms. My boss asked me if I’d like to take an MBTI test. My first thought was “fuck you” but then I came to the conclusion that this might be amusing.
He actually manages people based on their MBTI type. My type likes to be left the fuck alone, which has worked in my favor so far.
As a manager, I find it useful to know where my employees are on the scope. Also, it is pretty good to get a perspective on how others COULD perceive your more pronounced traits. We don't use Myers Briggs... some other vendor. They're all about the same I think.
That has always been my preference, too. That didn't work so well with one of my bosses who also managed (not lead) his people based on their test results. We would say that he couldn't lead his way out of a wet paper sack. But he thought he had it all figured out. He made my job much, much harder, as I was always running interference between him and those that actually did the work that he'd take credit for.
It is amusing. I took it several times over the years and would answer honestly, yet still get different results. That's when I started digging into it and came to the conclusion that it's like a horoscope.
The trend is not a new one. I saw it commonly used in high tech companies in the early 80s. My take is that it's interesting to see the differences in peoples preferred modalities. Introversion vs extraversions, if you've ever worked with an extrovert you will know. You also should know that not everything they say is what the think or believe, you are hearing their stream of conscious thought. Important to know, so you don't head off in a direction they articulated only to find out that's not the direct they want.
To my understanding we are all of the types at some time in our day to day life. I'm fairly introverted but I worked as a technical trainer and presenter for may years. So an introvert can be extroverted if they choose. If you are strongly one of a pair you can always chose to act the other way. Someone motioned on this tread the fact that your score changes every time you take the test, likely so because you are feeling different each time.
From a work stand point I only use it to notice the people who have an extreme preference for one of the bipolar scales. Anyone that scores in the middle will likely behave average, it's the ones with an extreme choose that need to be noticed in a team. The feelings vs thinking differences matter greatly in group technical discussions. If you contradict my thought with a better though, I really don't care and will likely tell you "good job." But if you contradict my feeling then the conversation will determinate very quickly. This explains quickly when in terse meetings discussion an important problem, so people withdraw from the conversation. If you want their opinion, you are going to have to make it safe for them to venture it without getting their feeling hurt. BTW this forum is a Thinking forum not a feeling forum. So you can easily guess one of the four modalities for the forum management.
Is it going to change your life, likely not. Could it give you an advantage is working with someone in a tough situation, definitely yes. Soule you give an excellent example of how to use this, leave the introverted thinkers alone unless it's important. Go make small talk with extroverted feelers, they will enjoy it.
NASA did a lot of work with this in the early days of picking shuttle crews. It was the first time that the crew were not all military and could be counted on to stand in line because they were told to. They needed to be able to tolerate each other in a very small space.
So pay attention to is or not, believe in it or not, think it's horst shit or not, it is what it is and had a percentage probability of being correct.