“I started this blog to give voice to what is in my head and share important issues in the fields of personality type, organizational change, coaching, and development.” – Linda Berens
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Digital Nation Thoughts
Recently I watched Digital Nation on the PBS show Frontline. The show apparently first aired last year, but it and more are on line. This morning at 5 am I found myself thinking about the research and the questions that were raised so I went on line. There I explored even more than was in the program! An hour later…I was writing this blog and still going back to the website. If you are interested, I recommend you start with this page, then explore. I am not a digital native—one who has been using digital media since very early childhood.... -
What’s Wrong with the World? BLM
As I read the newspaper and hear about the inflammatory rhetoric, I am reminded of why I find personality type models so valuable. Back in the late 1980’s Sue Cooper, a close friend and colleagues, created a catchword for why our work is important. She said that we all suffer from BLM Syndrome—Be Like Me. Since that time I mention this in every workshop I do and it was incorporated it into The Guide for Facilitating the Self-Discovery Process. I’ve shared it with many other professionals as well as the graduates of the Interstrength® workshops. I say something like the... -
Out of a Box and Into Interpersonal Agility™
This post is not about out-of-the-box thinking, but about how to keep clients and workshop participants from feeling like they’re being put in a box when introducing them to type models and using type instruments like the MBTI® instrument. Clients often resist type information because of the fear of being put in a box or ‘typecast’ by others. And perhaps the greater danger is limiting themselves by the box they create from the information. We have a natural tendency to categorize and label. Like the young child with a dog who calls a cat ‘doggie’, we first learn the... -
Temperament and ‘temperament’
People often ask me about various other ‘temperament’ models and how they relate. Years ago (in the pre-internet mid 1980’s) when I was going to the post office frequently to mail my dissertation drafts back and forth to David Keirsey for review, the postal clerk asked me what I was mailing so often. Then he asked me what it was about. When I told him temperament, he said his wife had one of those! Over the years as I’ve researched more and more about temperament I discovered that in general the term means something different in the mainstream psychology literature... -
Transformative and Transactional Leadership
Today’s Los Angeles Times had an op-ed piece entitled “How Obama Lost His Voice and How Can He Get It Back?” I don’t usually read this section of the paper, but a sentence caught my attention. “Abandoning the "transformational" model of his presidential campaign, Obama has tried to govern as a "transactional" leader.” This blog is not about Obama, but about some thoughts on Leadership. I hadn’t thought about James MacGregor Burns’ concepts since my doctoral program. After all, Burns coined these terms over 30 years ago. They could be briefly summarized as transformational leadership is about changing the...
