Tips on working with a bunch of personalities

As you can probably tell, I’m interested in working with people. I attended the Greater Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce Main Street Institute class How Understanding Personality Type Can Propel Business. JR Keller from the IU Kelley School of Business taught us about the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. The MBTI measures a persons preferences, tendencies, and characteristics. It does not measure aptitude, emotions, stress, “normalcy,” maturity, skill, intelligence, or learning. You can use the MBTI to help with relationships, careers, education, spirituality, counseling, problem-solving, and work/organizations. It should not be used for hiring or applicant selection (this isn’t illegal, but highly unethical, especially when not administered by a person qualified to interpret the MBTI results).

The few big points that I found interesting are the situational examples of how different personalities perceive and react to situations. I have extroversion tendencies. I can react quickly to someone requesting my feedback. Someone with introversion tendencies needs to work out their solution in their head before responding. While I may expect others to give me answers when I ask, I should respect that others need more time to think through it first. Conversely, my first response may not be my final decision. When working with someone with introversion tendencies, I need to be thoughtful of my response, they will take it as my final decision (I had already learned this lesson the hard way, I just didn’t know why it was this way).

To make meetings more effective, the introversion crowd is more effective when they can get the agenda several days in advance. This allows their mind time to draw conclusions prior to the meeting. In the meeting, the extroversion crowd may want to get off topic (as they are thinking out loud), but keeping to the pre-published agenda will allow the introversion crowd to contribute more feedback.

You can’t really step into the other person’s shoes. This is something I’ve been trying to do for a few years. The reality is, my tendencies that are strong one way (intuitive, thinking, and judging) make it more difficult for me to understand the other side. This doesn’t mean I can’t relate, just that I will have to work harder to understand things from their perspective. I’m not as strong in my extroversion preference, which explains why I can more easily relate to those with the introversion tendency.

Finally, what we appreciate most in ourselves is also what we appreciate in others. It’s similar to the Golden Rule of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” I’m an ENTJ and I often have wondered why others don’t think like me. In the United States, only 3-5% of people are ENTJs; I would agree that 95-97% of people don’t see things from my point of view at times. I’ve really enjoyed getting to know myself better and learning how to work better with others, I hope to bring this new found insight to my office and those around me (a logical conclusion for an ENTJ to make). You can find a link to a free MBTI analysis in my earlier blog post discussing this topic here.