ISTJ Head (Copyright CPP)

I have mentioned previously the benefit of the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) as a tool for managing stress through self-understanding and this seems a good time to revisit it.  Understanding what makes us tick can be critical for our relationships, both personal and professional, and finding the best way for us to live and work from a position of rest instead of stress.

MBTI is a simple and effective way of working out how you fit into the world, and it has four separate scales according to how you would answer these four questions:

• Do you prefer engaging with the world outside you or the world inside?
• Are you a details person or an ideas person?
• Do you prioritise principles or people?
• Do you like to be planned or spontaneous?

The real MBTI analysis is much more complex than that, and is scarily accurate.  It takes your measurements on each of these four scales and distils them into one of sixteen personality types.  Frequently people read the synopsis for their personality type and comment that they could have written it themselves! It’s important to stress that there are no wrong or right answer to these, just preferences, and while some people might clearly be right at one end of one of the spectrums, others may be somewhere near the middle.  It doesn’t matter because we’re all different, but knowing your own response to these questions may help you understand why you like to do things in a certain way, and why other people may misunderstand you.

For example, I like to be planned, which means I value order and structure.  I like everything in its place and an agreed process for doing things.  When I’m stressed, I can become insistent on putting rules in place because it helps me establish some order and create an environment I can feel comfortable with.  But someone who isn’t like me could see my attempt to create order as needless bureaucracy, and I have been accused (unjustly in my opinion!) of being controlling, because I don’t value the flexibility that is important to them.

ISTJ stress head (Copyright CPP)

Recently there have been several different ways of expressing MBTI types in a commonly accessible way.  These have included characters from Star Wars or Harry Potter, which are creative and amusing, but one of the most effective ones is a simple icon developed by CPP.  This consists of a head for each personality type, together with key words associated with it.  There is also a corresponding ‘stress’ head which has the key words which are associated with stress for that personality type.  If you know your MBTI, you’ll find them interesting, and if you don’t, you may be able to work it out from these, though it needs to be said that these are no substitute for doing a proper analysis with a professional trainer.  You can find the complete set at the CPP website.

In my opinion, doing an MBTI test should be an essential part of preparing for cross-cultural mission, as it helps equip us to be more self-aware and to get along better with our fellow team members.  That in turn reduces stress and helps us to minimise attrition.

You can find out more about MBTI from the Myers & Briggs Foundation.  If you would like to do an MBTI, contact info@syzygy.org.uk and we can facilitate one for you.

Other personality analysis tools are available.