1. Exploring Human Agility—Part 1

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    | 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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  2. Whole Type and Beyond

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    | 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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  3. Stress Triggers, Mindfulness, and the Shadow

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    | 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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  4. Why Personality Type Instruments Don’t Work…

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    | Berens CORE, Consulting, Facilitation, Integral, Personality Type, Uncategorized
    2013-10-06
    The MBTI® instrument has come under lots of criticism recently in the popular press. For those of us who have trained people to use this instrument and have found it useful, this can be painful. We realize that the criticism often comes from wanting the instrument to do things it isn’t designed to do. And usually it is a result of not following best practices such as the ones Jane Kise has described very thoroughly in a recent blog. I’ve been teaching people to use Psychological Type, Temperament and other models of individual differences since 1976 and conducted MBTI® Certification Programs for 17 years. At first we just took the instrument results as the indication of one’s type pattern. Then we learned that this often wasn’t as accurate as we thought it was. This inaccuracy is in part the basis for many of the critiques. The critics say they take the ‘test’ one time and it comes out different another time. The MBTI® Manual contains data that indicates that the agreement with instrument results ranges from about 60% -80% of the people agreeing with all four preferences ‘measured’ by the instrument. This really isn’t bad since as the Manual points...
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  5. Best of Two Worlds—Just the Beginning

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    | Berens CORE, Integral, Personality Type, Perspective Taking, Uncategorized
    2013-08-11
    July was a busy month and one in which I immersed myself in two of my favorite worlds—The Association for Psychological Type International biennial conference and the Integral Theory Conference, also a biennial event. These two worlds have some things in common. Both address the concepts of types and valuing individual differences and in both the participants are passionate and dedicated to making the world a better place. Yet, no one from one context showed up at the others’ conferences. In a series of blog posts I will share some of my experiences and insights from both of these worlds, hoping to bring the benefits of both worlds to you all. In September, I will be presenting at the Integral Leadership in Action conference so will share insights from that experience as well. For now, here are my perspectives on the theories and the organizations that are at the leading edge of these worlds. I hope you are moved to get involved in both of them. Psychological Type Psychological type had it origins in the 1920s with great thinkers like Carl Jung, Ernst Kretschmer, Eduard Spränger, William Marston and more. Most people will reference Carl Jung, but it was a...
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