Although not scientific gospel, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) can be a useful tool to develop the strength of your team. The MBTI is a popular personality theory that categorises people into 16 different personality types based on a questionnaire that focuses on an individual’s traits.
- Introversion vs Extroversion
- Sense vs Intuition
- Thinking vs Feeling
- Judging vs Perceiving
The questionnaire is tailored to work out where your personality lies between the 16 potential outcomes, creating a level of understanding as to how you best undertake tasks, and the environment which is most suited to you.
Not only will this help broaden your understanding of your own working style, but provide insight into the vast differences of working styles that members of your team may have. This can also be particularly handy when looking for new team members in the recruitment process – different personality types often work well together, for example introverts and extroverts have a tendency to balance each other out when working cooperatively.
Here are Cygnul’s top five reasons why you should use the MBTI to understand more about your team’s personality:
Productivity
Understanding the differences between personality types helps individuals to better tailor their work approach to their own preferences. Individuals with a “judging” preference usually approach their tasks in a more structured manner, taking on one task at a time, whereas those with a preference to “perceiving” tend to have a more flexible approach.
Team Building
Getting your team to take the 16 personalities test as part of a team building activity or workshop exercise is a great way to learn more about your colleagues. Sharing personality types offers insight to individuals particular working styles and creates opportunity to broaden their understanding of how everybody works best. Taking the test as a team will help members appreciate the different types of learning styles and indicate how best to collaborate on future tasks.
Decision Making
Within a team, a combination of “thinkers” and “feelers” working together can lead to better informed decisions. A collaborative approach between those who think logically and others who tend to be more empathetic, allows for different potential outcomes to be explored when faced with challenges.
Personal Growth
Exploring the nature of your own personality type creates personal growth not only in the workplace, but throughout your day-to-day life. Diving into the particulars of your personality enables you to explore which areas you should grow and develop, while helping you to understand where you already excel.
Communication
Identifying the personality type of each of your team members can help to understand how to best communicate with each of them. Some may prefer to receive information in a step-by-step manner, while others prefer a more conceptual approach. Identifying these preferences can help individuals communicate in a way is the most efficient and effective for everybody involved.
Let us know in the comments which personality type you are!