“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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Trees, Type and Me
I love the header photo of this blog. For some reason, I have a thing about trees. If you've seen the Understanding Yourself and Others books you'll notice that all the cover images are of leaves and trees. I love looking at trees, especially in a natural setting. I love the textures, the different colors and the sounds when the wind blows through them. One of my workshop participants gave me a book on the healing power of trees. There does seem to be something healing about trees. When flying over Portland, Oregon and looking out the plane window, I... -
Getting the Most Out of the Type Code
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® self-report assessment was developed by Isabel Myers to help individuals find their best-fit type. In order to develop the assessment, the J-P dichotomy was added. Now the four-letter type code that results from her work has become a standard for referring to the 16 types no matter how you arrive at determining the best-fit. Traditionally, type has been approached by explanation of the four dichotomies of Extraversion vs Introversion, Sensing vs iNtuing, Thinking vs Feeling, and Judging vs Perceiving. By exploring preferences for one or the other pole of the dichotomies most clients get some very... -
Adult Development and Typological Look-Alikes
For many years, I scoffed at the idea of stages of adult development as being artificial and somewhat arrogant, as if one who is more developed is better than others at earlier stages. I observed development in the physical realm and these did not bother me in the same way as in the psychological/personality realm. In the Jungian typology model, there are several views of type development and I had found one of these to be very useful. The Jungian model says that we have four mental processes—Sensing, intuiting, Thinking, Feeling—and each of these processes can be used in either... -
Best-Fit Type Self Discovery With or Without Using An Assessment such as the MBTI® instrument
by Susan Nash In my eighteen years of introducing individuals, teams, leaders and organizations to the rich theory of personality type, I have explored using the Interstrength Self-Discovery process both with the MBTI® assessment tool and without. Overall I have found that using the Self-Discovery process without an assessment works better for me for the following reasons: It can be too easy to use the “test and tell” approach, relying extensively on the instrument rather than linking this knowledge to Jung’s underlying principles. When time is limited, or you are working with a large group it is easy to neglect... -
Social Styles and Interaction Styles
Most of my research on Social Styles is from the books by Bolton and Bolton. The Tracom website has a nice animated explanation so I see that it is very similar to the general sense of Social Styles that I know about. In my early research on Social Styles, I noticed that some of the style descriptions were similar to aspects of temperament, but the four temperaments were not fully represented. It seemed to me that the styles were ‘fused’ with temperament. For example, The Amiable style seemed quite ISFJ like and the Analytic style seemed to have a mix...
