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A New Year and a New Way of Thinking

by Linda Berens

| Berens CORE, Cognitive Dynamics, Ego Development, Essential Motivators, Human Agility, Interaction Styles, Personality Type, Perspective Taking, Temperament, Type Dynamics, Uncategorized
2018-01-04

Wishing you all the best for the new year… As 2018 starts I want to share with you a little history and afew thoughts that inform how we are transitioning into this new year. A Little History… In the 1990’s I presented type information at an ASTD (now ATD) meeting and became known as the ‘type lady.’ At that time, I bristled at the label because this work wasn’t just about type, but it has taken me a while to name what it is about. In the meantime, new trends have emerged using terms like vertical development (transformative with new capacities), horizontal development (refining what already is there), wholeness, self-organization, mindfulness, Holacracy, and more. Now I’m deep into those other trends and am ready to share some thoughts about type and how the ‘type-movement’ can shift in order to achieve its purpose of honoring individual differences. My life work has been around a purpose of enabling contexts where people thrive and are free to be all of who they are. It is one of honoring diversity, which, if not honored, triggers feelings of being ‘less than’ others. From a personal perspective, learning about my type released bound up energy...
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I fell and hit my head….

by Linda Berens

| Uncategorized
2016-04-23

On returning from a working trip to Europe, I reached for my luggage piled up on the luggage carousel, pulled on it, and landed you know where and then hit my head on the floor! Ouch! I had been traveling for 20 hours and was a bit foggy to start with, and the decision to quickly grab my luggage was not a good one. I had 3 hours before I had to catch the domestic flight. What was my rush? Well, it was habit and old messages to ‘get my luggage before someone else did.’ Apparently the wheels got stuck and it pulled me forward. Never happened to me before, but it sure has been a pain in the butt, neck, and back. The good news is that it was just a slight concussion and not any brain damage…at least from the CT scan. Now the reason I’m writing you about this is not to tell you about my woes. The reason is to share the lessons I learned afterwards about my own energy. Lessons Learned For a few days, I was tired and disoriented and even a little dizzy, yet, a mere 5 days after the accident I had one...
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Happiness and The Communication Zone®

by Linda Berens

| Uncategorized
2015-08-02

This was the title of my 2-hour general session at the Association for Psychological Type International Conference, July 22, 2015. I was honored to be able to engage the attendees in this topic and I want to share some of the basic ideas with you here along with some additional thoughts I didn’t cover in the session. “Don’t worry, be happy!” Easier said than done! Happiness is not just an upbeat mood. True happiness comes from a sense of well-being. Well-being is influenced by many factors including unconscious drivers of our behavior and of how we make meaning of the world. When these drivers are not satisfied, our capacity for effective communication suffers and we pop out of the Communication Zone and don’t communicate as effectively as we intend. Because we are social beings who need to have at least some sense of relatedness, good communication contributes to that sense of well-being. The basic problem is one identified years ago by my colleague and friend, Dr. Sue Cooper. We all suffer from BLM Syndrome (Be Like Me). We expect others to be like us and when they aren’t we are sometimes pleased, but more often surprised, or angry, and worse—blaming and judgmental...
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Exploring Human Agility—Part 1

by Linda Berens

| Berens CORE, Human Agility, Interpersonal Agility, Perspective Taking, Uncategorized
2015-03-28

Last year, we began to focus on one of the outcomes of our work—human agility. Since that time we made this visible in our certification program description. We have received some questions about human agility so we decided I would do a series of videos explaining more. This blog links to two of them. In this first video, I identify some key aspects of human agility and suggest a little about how type awareness contributes. In this second video, I share with you the importance of self-management and its relationship to perspective taking. I also talk about how type knowledge can help you with self-leadership and self-management. Actually I believe it opens the door to human agility in ways that a direct focus on ‘developing’ human agility doesn’t. You can read more about Human Agility on this website and I will be adding more to that. Also I suggest you read the following blogs: Leadership Starts with Self-Leadership Perspective Taking—Opening the Doors And an article I wrote a long time ago (and needs updated graphics, but the content is still solid). Stay tuned for more in this series. I hope you enjoy them.
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3 Domains of Self-Leadership

by Linda Berens

| Berens CORE, Cognitive Dynamics, Cognitive Styles, Ego Development, Essential Motivators, Interaction Styles, Leadership Development, Organizational Health Programs, Personality Type, Temperament, Type Dynamics, Uncategorized
2015-03-21

Notice that I didn’t say, “The 3 Domains…,” there are many domains of self-leadership, but in this blog, I want to share with you information about three domains of self-leadership that seem to have been forgotten in the current literature. Self-Leadership There are many articles, blogs, books, and websites devoted to discussing self-leadership. Their definitions and guidance range from checklists with ‘rules’ to follow that focus on setting goals to a focus on self-awareness and self-management. All of these have some value. Of course I favor the ones that focus on self-awareness and self-management. I also like the ones that cite the evidence that leadership development and organizational change programs need to start with self-leadership of not just the leaders, but also the individuals at all levels. And they also cite evidence that organizations are more successful by traditional measures when they do provide coaching and training that develops self-leadership. So how do we develop this self-leadership across an organization? How do we approach development of self-awareness when the focus is on actions to take rather than self-reflection? We can develop a great deal of the self-awareness needed for self-leadership through the Berens CORE™ Approach to introducing the multiple lenses...
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What Your MBTI® Results Probably Didn’t Tell You

by Linda Berens

| Berens CORE, Cognitive Dynamics, Cognitive Styles, Facilitation, Instruments, Interaction Styles, Personality instruments, Personality Type, Temperament, Type Dynamics, Uncategorized
2015-03-17

By that I mean, what the results alone didn’t tell you and what you may not have experienced in your interpretive session. For more information than what is in the video read the following updated blog post from 2010: Getting the Most Out of the Type Code The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® self-report instrument was developed by Isabel Myers to help individuals find their best-fit type. In order to develop the instrument, 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 iNtuiting, Thinking vs Feeling, and Judging vs Perceiving. By exploring preferences for one or the other pole of the dichotomies most clients get some very valuable information that they can use in their personal and professional lives. A growing number of type practitioners have found it useful and powerful to understand the type code in terms of other, related models that provide different information about important aspects of the 16 personality types. They use the four temperaments or Interaction Styles or...
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Whole Type and Beyond

by Linda Berens

| Berens CORE, Cognitive Dynamics, Cognitive Styles, Facilitation, Instruments, Interaction Styles, Personality instruments, Personality Type, Temperament, Type Dynamics, Uncategorized
2015-03-07

Among type practitioners, we often speak of ‘whole type.’ For many this means something about treating the 16 personality types derived from the theory of Carl Jung as ‘wholes’ rather than as adding up the parts. For example, INTP represents a holistic pattern with a theme that is more than the sum of the parts I + N + T + P. Often people give lip service to the statement that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, but don’t really have much available to use to describe the whole type patterns. Then they are likely to revert to describing the ‘parts’ of the type code such as Sensing versus iNtuiting. And they may even use language such as, “She is a Thinker.” The incongruity between the language and the statement about the whole being greater than the sum of the parts doesn’t occur to them. The view I find that honors how we are naturally as human beings is one that says there is a whole pattern and that pattern has a theme that we can describe holistically. For example, Dario Nardi and I developed some short themes that are not composed of the traits from the...
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Gift of Insight—the Power Is in the Approach, not Just the Models.

by Linda Berens

| Uncategorized
2015-01-12

Today I’m wearing a muted, dark blue sweater and a blue scarf with silver in it. My good friend and colleague, Linda Ernst, gave me the scarf for Christmas and several Christmases ago she gave me something else blue. We had drawn names among our small staff because most of them were on tight budgets and we set a $20 limit. Well, Linda drew my name and she stretched the limit a little. She found a muted, medium dark blue suede jacket at Chicos and it was on sale, plus she used a discount she had as well. We had a laugh about that and no one felt bad because I got such a valuable gift. I was so pleased and surprised. It became my favorite jacket and I wore it until it became too big for me and this year I finally gave it away since I don’t intend to be that size again. The real gift was the insight I gained. Linda’s comment was that she thought it would look great on me because of the blue in my eyes! Yowsa! I never saw my eyes as blue, but as green that could look olive green or dark green. Actually, they are...
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Stress Triggers, Mindfulness, and the Shadow

by Linda Berens

| Cognitive Dynamics, Communication, Integral, Interpersonal Agility, Mindfulness, Personality Type, Temperament, Uncategorized, Wisdom
2014-10-18

When we are stressed we are not as agile as we need to be. And stress takes a toll on our health and quality of life. Personality related stress is often unconscious. Here is a story about an experience of mine where I unpack the relevance of all the models to one stressful situation. Each lens—Essential Motivators, Interaction Styles, and Cognitive Dynamics—helps me understand myself better and grow into having more positive interactions. I hope my story helps you see how you can use type lenses to increase your level of mindfulness and interpersonal agility. So here goes… I recently found myself in a situation where I didn’t show up in a way that I wanted. It was a somewhat difficult conversation and I made it more difficult by expressing my anger inappropriately. On reflection, I realized that I was more stressed in general than I had realized and that level of stress tipped me into a shadowy place, where something ‘had’ me rather than me being my authentic, best self. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t express anger. The issue was that in this instance expressing that anger was counterproductive. I lost some credibility when I did so and it...
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Cognitive Style, Respect, and Forgiveness

by Linda Berens

| Cognitive Dynamics, Cognitive Styles, Personality Type, Perspective Taking, Uncategorized
2014-09-13

I recently conducted a workshop with a type knowledgeable group and they explored their Cognitive Styles related to a burning issue inside their organization. The insights that emerged were amazing and they were able to apply them immediately. What I noticed was that by looking at their Shadow Cognitive Styles, they were able to realize how they had discounted input from other styles and were extremely irritated by interactions with people who were habitually engaging in those styles. And this led them to disrespect the person even though they had tried not to. This new lens on type provided a leverage point for understanding and potentially resolving some very profound interpersonal tensions. It provided a language for the individuals to be more mindful as they could then control for their internal judgments. These individuals use Essential Motivators, Interaction Styles, and Cognitive Dynamics rather fluently to help them with clear communication, developing good relationships, and recognizing their own core needs, drives, and talents. The Cognitive Styles lens was helpful in ways that the other lenses had not been, so it confirmed to me that it adds information that the other models do not. What is Cognitive Style? Cognitive Style is a...
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