Ah yes…the famous Myers Briggs test. Sitting here at 6am filling out this form.
Last time I did a questionaire like this was with the StrengthsFinder from Gallup. The book was definitely good – Now Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham – highly recommend reading that and the earlier book for managers, First Break All the Rules by the same author.
It’s interesting to see this technique of surveying whereby they use two choice polarized questions and you need to figure out how to answer when you flirt in the worlds of either answer.
For example, one question was “Are you inclined to A) value sentiment mor than logic, or B) value logic more than sentiment?” In my work, I’ve have jumped between both logic and sentiment so many times and do it so fluidly because it was necessary that it’s hard to choose! But being the creative guy, I chose A)….
As I go through the questions, I find there are areas in the questions in which I am trying to change about myself. For instance, there was a question about “Would most people say you are A) a private person, or B) a very open person.” This brings up the age-old question of whether people can change, and especially after 30+ years of reinforcement of behaviors and attitudes. I certainly am a believer that if you put your mind to it, you can change anything about yourself, but I also find that one has to have an adaptability trait of some sort in order to enable this further.
I wonder what Myers-Briggs letters I’ll be when it’s finished. Also, this particular test creates results which have more depth than just generating the high level categories. I am interested to see what the depth reveals versus just getting the letters.
My coach also had an interesting suggestion and that was to take the Myers-Briggs test and use it as a tool for understanding your spouse or partner. This may be something I will try in the future.