The real me?

I recently took part in a survey to assess my personality type to help inform what may/may not work best within the team I work for (BCE Advisory Services Team).  It’s not that there’s anything wrong with our team but the process helps to identify strengths/weaknesses which help to inform how we may work even better together.

Mel Nixon (awesome guy) took the session and began by giving some of the theory behind the whole process – Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).  The process analyses your personality preferences.  Mel explained it as being able to write with both hands however most of us have a preference i.e. I’m right-handed.  The same is true of our personality which lies on a scale between four dichotomies which are:

• Extroversion (E) – Introversion (I)
  
• Sensing (S) – iNtuition (N)
  
• Thinking (T) – Feeling (F)
• Judging (J) – Perceiving (P)

New to the process (colleagues were analysed within another team), I was first up and the results were scarily accurate.  My scores from the survey indicated that my personality preferences are Introversion (I), iNtuition (N), Thinking (T), Judging (J) – INTJ.

Beforehand Mel had asked me directly which areas I thought my personality would favour with the only difference being I thought my personality type would favour Feeling rather than Thinking which was indicated within my scores.  Each dichotomy includes a number of facets with opposing poles.  Within Thinking (T) – Feeling (F) all of my scores lay within a midzone apart from that of critical and accepting.

• Logical (T1) – Empathetic (F)
• Reasonable (T) – Compassionate (F)
• Questioning (T1) – Accommodating (F)
• Critical (T) – Accepting (F5)
• Tough (T) – Tender (F)

The numbers next to the letters in bold indicate where I lie on the scale which goes from (T) 5-4-3-2-1-0-1-2-3-4-5 (F) either side.  A score of 0 or 1 indicate the midzone so from my scores I’d have thought I would actually prefer Feeling but the scores match better with the averages of INTJ’s.  The meaning of these scores however relate strongly to my experiences.  My whopping 5 score for Accepting indicates that I’m tolerant, trusting and give praise.  Mel mentioned that this can be a good thing but that I need to watch out for people taking advantage of me.  In the past I know that I’ve taken on things which aren’t necessarily my responsibility but got on with it anyway, something both my colleagues agreed with.

Other interesting things included the fact that although I favour introversion I have a tendency towards extraversion.  Some examples we spoke around included my passion to give presentations but the fact it scares the hell out of me (possibly from an experience at Nissan).  We spoke about my love for football which I’m relatively skillful at but I’d never put my self forward to take a penalty at the risk of letting my team down.  Mel actually hinted towards these tendencies before I’d mentioned anything and it was extremely interesting airing them.

The next step is to identify where our team can move forward together however a few areas I’d like to improve upon include:

• Learn to deal with the preparation and delivery of presentations.
• Put myself/ideas/thoughts out there more (Networking).
• Take a risk every now and again, what’s the worst that could happen?
• Try not to let people impose themselves and their ideas upon me as much.
• Be a bit more spontaneous

Even this post is quite interesting in the fact that Judging (J) indicates my preference towards a systematic, planful and methodical approach to things.  I’m already planning how to cope with my personality preferences looking for closure in the form of this post