MBTI

[lederhosen]

Two things that irritate me about MBTI (which I've just had to do as preliminary for upcoming training):

- False-dichotomy questions like "Do you prefer theories or facts?" NO. They are complementary: theories require facts, theories allow us to discover more facts.
- Being asked the same questions (with very slight variation) over and over again. My inner cynic wonders whether the point here is to make sure the responses are well towards one end or other of the four scales, with very little in between, in order to make it easier to believe that people can be neatly divided up into sixteen basic archetypes.

FWIW, I believe archetypes can be useful tools for thinking - even 'earth, air, fire, water' can help people realise what their options are - but IMHO, classifying people into archetypes often turns into a substitute for actually thinking about issues. "You're a Pisces, so we're made for each other!" and so on. Don't even get me started on 'Mars and Venus'.

Exercise: 20km (? - lost track somewhat over Easter), total 190km/114mi: night 8 from Rivendell.

Comments

[quatranoctal.livejournal.com]

Hmmm ... are you signed up for the Personal Management Program?

Incidentally, if they're doing their job right, anyone who talks about MBTI should use the phrase "explanation, not excuse" - i.e. it helps you identify how you tend to act, and how you can act towards other people to get the best results, not let you say "oh, well, I'm a GXQZ, I can't help being scatterbrained". Funnily enough, this is one of the aspects of self-help that I actually found less annoying (my favourite bugbear is the combination of a geometric figure, a vague concept, and a trademark symbol).

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

are you signed up for the Personal Management Program?

Indeed :-)

[quatranoctal.livejournal.com]

It's a surprisingly enjoyable course, once you get past the Self-Help/Management-speak. The people that run it - "People With PEP" (PEP = Passion, Energy, Performance, I think) - are well trained and enthusiastic, and there are plenty of activities and stuff to keep it from being boring.

I look forward to seeing how you go in the Bridge-Building exercise, too. Our group apparently got close to the record time.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

Well, I'll give it a try and see how it goes :-)

[nefaria.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of the DISC (directing, influencing, stable, correct) classification test we had to go through over here. I don't like being pigeonholed by the beancounters in management, their job is to tell me what to do and provide me with the minimum resources necessary to do it, not play psychological games with me.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of the DISC (directing, influencing, stable, correct) classification test we had to go through over here.

Oh boy, they're using Marston? I have a soft spot for him for several reasons, but his psychological theories were a little... peculiar.

[nefaria.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's the one. And here's the scary part: DISC appears to be the most rational management program they've implemented in the past seven years, since we got our new CEO. We've been through horrors like "The Fish Philosophy", "The Question Behind the Question", "Good to Great", and several others that I've mercifully forgotten. I'm frightened that managers copy policies from books instead of thinking them up on their own.

[quatranoctal.livejournal.com]

What you need to do is push your Circle of Concern(TM) to your Circle of Influence(TM). Then, you can invest in my new scheme, which replaces a pyramid with a Trapezium(TM), allowing a fair distribution of wealth.

*hears sirens and jumps out nearest window*

[shadow-5tails.livejournal.com]

I'm still amused by the history of the MBTI; I think I only learned last year where it had come fromand what it was supposed to be used for.

It's a tool - you can do useful things with it, you can drop it on your foot and jump around cursing it. It has a certain utility in and of itself, but like any labelling system for humans, things start getting completely ballsed-up if it's used prescriptively.

And you know what all the repetition is for, surely? It's a combination of attention-to-detail safeguard, and lie filter. Given that I'm still kicking myself for missing a "not" in a research questionnaire in about 1999*, I can see the value of the safeguard. Of course, those repetition questions allow you to deal with the false dichotomy, in many cases. *grin*

Speaking of which, the last few times I did the MBTI, I came outwith four archetypes - ES**, if I recall rightly. And I was one point of it being eight, since the introvert/extravert category had a 9/11 spread. Presumably this means I'm so well-balanced that I don't have much personality at all! *snerk*

* - If you're interested, I was participating in a study of a group traditionally seen as social outliers, and would have stood in opposition to the stereotype if I'd got the damn thing right. However, after the "how many "good friends" do you have?" (about 40), I misread the "And how many of them are not online?" and thus inadverdently reinforced the perception that it was only the Internet that gave this demographic a social network. Sigh.

MBTI-- false dichotomies

[bookwoman72.livejournal.com]

I don't like how MBTI separates "thinker" from "feeler." The "logical" answers are the ones that choose money and the "emotional" answers are the ones that choose people. BOTH choices reflect a person's values.