The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

About a month ago, I applied and was accepted into a program at work called the Career Enhancement Program (CEP). Included in the program are various excersizes and group meetings meant to teach you not just about the company, but also about yourself. In the end, you should be armed to take your career to the next step.

One of the requirements is to take the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Commonly known as a "personality test", the MBTI surveys how you would react to and feel about various situations.

Based on the work of Carl Jung and created by mother-daughter team Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers during WWII, the team first published the full MBTI in 1962.

The Types

Isabel Myers developed four pairs of  "preferences". Everyone has all eight prefrences within them that they use according to the situation, but within each pair, you will skew towards one or the other.

The pairs are:

Where you focus attention:
Extraversion (easily relate to the outer world of people and things)
Introversion  (easily relate to the inner world of ideas and impressions)

The way you take in information:
Sensing (interested in what the five senses show, what exists in the present)
Intuition (use imagination to see new possibliities and insights, focus on the future)

The way you make decisions:
Thinking (base decisions on objective analysis and logic)
Feeling   (base decisions on values and people-centered concerns)

How you deal with the outer world:
Judging  (like to have things decided, life is planned and orderly)
Perciving  (don't want to miss anything, life is spontanious and flexable)

Once your questionaire is analized, to find your type, just take the first letter of your preference from each pair. There are 16 different types.


My results

How did I come out? My type is ISTJ--Introversion, Sensing, Thinking, Judging. Remember--these are prefrences--we all have all eight within us, and we switch depending on the situation.


What this means

Like all things, all 16 types have benefits and negatives.

A few of the  benefits for my type:

• Strong sense of responsability and great loyalty to family, organizations, relationships
• Work with steady energy to fulfill commitments
• Go to any trouble to complete something seen as neccessary, but balk at doing anything that doesn't make sense
• Perfer to work alone and have accountablility but will work in teams when needed and when roles are clearly defined
• Have a profound recpect for facts
• Practical, sensible, realistic, sysematic
• Clear and steadfast in opinions
• Believe standard procedures exist because they work. Support change only when facts demonstrate it will bring better results. 

And a few negatives:

• If not developed in Thinking--may not have reliable ways of dealing with the world and instead may be preoccupied with thier internal memories
• If not developed in Sensing--may rush into premature judgements and actions without considering new information
• Generally don't share their wealth of Sensing observations and memories except with close friends
• Others see ISTJ's standards and judgements, but may not see the individual, sometimes humorous, private reactions

I think this is generally pretty accurate. It certainly sounds familiar.