Myers-Briggs Type Indicator has been developed by Isabel Briggs Myers and her mother Katharine Briggs, building from Carl Jung’s work on Psychological Types (1923).
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator helps you understand your personality preferences in four key areas:
- How you get your energy (Extraversion vs. Introversion)
- How you take in information and learn (Sensing vs. Intuition)
- How you make decisions (Thinking vs. Feeling)
- How you like to organize your time and environment (Judging vs. Perceiving)
MBTI shows us our preferences in those four areas, and it is important to understand that if we fall under one category (i.e. making decisions rationally – T) that does not mean we do not have the ability to use the other (making decisions based on our emotions – F). MBTI teaches us a natural preference, rather than being prescriptive and it develops our self-awareness around how we operate through our personality type.
By being aware of our similarities and differences coming from our own individual preferences, and by understanding the other dimensions, we can understand others better, why they make decisions in the way they do, their approach to interpreting information, how they organise themselves and how they get their energy. By understanding these differences, we can enhance the quality of our relationships by giving us a common language to discuss these differences.
This Unit will provide you with an understanding of MBTI and it will allow you to undertake your own self-assessment and reflect on your type, and how you relate to others.