Posted on November 18th, 2013 by Tim

Myers Briggs

ISTJ Head (Copyright CPP)

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)

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.
Posted on March 5th, 2012 by Tim

Moving Staircases?

‘Keep an eye on the staircases – they like to change!’

Recent years have seen much change in the world of missions, and for nearly all of us it feels like the change is relentless.  Factors affecting this include the current financial situation, the changing relationship between agencies and churches, new paradigms of mission, technological innovation, the rise of Generation X and now Y, the decline of the West and the change of the centre of the global church’s gravity towards the south/east, and indeed many more.  It feels stressful just to list these things!

Many of us don’t feel at home in this fast-paced and rapidly developing world.  It shakes our security in the way we’ve got used to doing things, and it can be disturbing when the mission field becomes flooded with people who do things very differently.  Some of the changes afoot at the moment threaten our own long-term futures in mission unless we are able to adapt, and even the survival of some well-established mission agencies may be in doubt if they cannot embrace the necessary change.  This is, quite frankly, alarming.

It reminds me of the scene in the first Harry Potter movie (is it ok to reference Harry Potter in a Christian blog?) where the children discover the staircases can move by themselves.  All of a sudden, they can’t get back to their rooms, and have to find a different way.  They have to duck quickly as several tons of hardwood comes flying over their heads to a new destination.  They have the challenge of working out how to get to their lessons by a new route.

For some of them it is a, well, magical experience, full of awe and wonder at this marvellous spectacle, but for others  it must be bewildering and frightening, as they find their security challenged and their assumptions about life questioned.  I wonder if you can sympathise with them as you see the change going on around you in the mission field.

Yet, when the staircases have settled down, it’s still possible to find your way to your destination.  It may take a bit of time to explore, experiment, and come back from dead ends, but in fact many of us will already be experienced at doing that.  For most of us, that’s part of life, and part of our calling.

The church, despite often being conservative, and preserving many practices and traditions handed down from its earliest days and even before the time of Christ, is no stranger to change, and the first generation of believers must have had the hardest time of all, adapting their worldview to believe first that Jesus was the Messiah they were waiting for even though he wasn’t what they were expecting, then having to cope with his suffering and death, followed by his resurrection and ascension.  Then they had to face ejection from the synagogues and hostility from Rome.  Just when they thought they had it figured out, and that he’d return within their lifetimes, he didn’t come to rescue them when the Temple was destroyed by the Romans.

So what might they have to say to us about change?  Peter tells us that we are aliens and sojourners (1 Peter 2:11), not citizens or residents, but migrants who won’t be staying around.  John warns us not to get attached to anything in this world (1 John 2:15) because it’s only temporary – and so are we.  They were very much aware of the transient nature of our existence, and chose to focus instead on our eternal heritage.  Peter reminds us that we are looking for a new heaven and a new earth (2 Peter 3:13).  Paul tells us that our citizenship is in heaven (Philippians 3:20) and the Hebrew writer challenges us to emulate the saints of old who lived by faith, and walked away from all this world has, seeking a better country (Hebrews 11:16).

In the midst of their changeable, temporary, transient world, they looked to the One who is the sole source of stability, Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8), who will one day take us to a home of unchangeable glory.  We cannot do better than to follow their example.