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TYPE
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1987-06-15
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JUST THE TYPE
How Personality Types Can Make
-- or Break -- Your Business
by Michael Finley
# # #
Ask anyone: Fred Flagg was a living,
breathing, business visionary. Fred saw
the advantages of technological advances
in his company ten steps ahead of the
competition. An inspiring presence in
the hallways and boardroom. A mind like
a steel trap, and a magician with a
presentation.
Characteristically, Fred surrounded
himself with underlings with the same cut
to their jib. Hired the best design,
production and marketing teams in the
industry -- visionaries all of them, just
like himself. It was an all-visionary
leadership. And Flagg's business filed
for Chapter 11 in six months.
What happened? Fred Flagg (not his real
name) learned the hard way that you
can too have too much of a good thing.
In his case, it was too many top managers
of the same psychological type as
himself. Everyone at Flagg Corp. was a
visionary, all right. Problem was,
nobody remembered to turn the lights on
when it got dark. The little things, the
things "detail people" would have
noticed, killed the company in no time.
Psycholopgical type is more thgan a
casual phrase. To psychologists it is
practically a formal science, and to
experts on Jungian typology
it borders on an obsession. These
practitioners have known for years about
something managers need to know much,
much more -- that there are many "types" of
people, that those types can be tested
and defined, and that knowing what type
we are relates directly to such down-to-
earth business problems as leadershop
development, team building, career
decisions, and just
plain getting along with others.
A very few of us are born visionaries,
like Fred Flagg, possessed of the
intuition to size up situations at a
glance and exploit them to our own ends.
Far more of us are ordinary, run-of-the-
mill plodders, or plotters -- we need to
study a situation and move with care.
In addition, we are introverts or
extroverts, feelers or thinkers, and
perceivers or judgers. The thing is, it
takes all kinds to make a world, or a
business, go around. That
fact is the bedrock of psychological typology, or
the study of personality types.
Typology, founded on the insights of
pioneer psychoanalyst C.G. Jung, holds that
people can be divided into two
"perceiving" groups and two "judging"
groups. Knowing what groups you were
born into in can help you in making
career moves, in delegating tasks which
are beyond you, in putting together a
balanced management team, and in working
to strengthen your lesser talents.
Bruce McBeath is a St. Paul psychologist
specializing in bridging the gap between
what is known about the way individuals
work and the way groups work. In his
writing and in his work, McBeath stresses
that type determination,
as performed by the Myers-Briggs Type
Indicator (MBTI), DISC, and other
psychological instruments, is not viewed
by everyone as the most reliable or
reproducible science in the course
catalog.
Even so, he says, the insights of
Jung have a powerful bearing on the way
businesses fail and succeed. It is critical for
people with weaknesses in one area --
visionaries tend to go limp in the nuts-and-
bolts department -- to either delegate
authority or to redouble their efforts to
think practically. It is equally
critical, in ordinary communication, for
one type to know what another type is
listening for.
A crash course in Jung's philosophy of
types:
People are different, Jung says, in the
different ways they encounter the world.
In finding things out about the world, or
perceiving it, we are either intuitional
or sensational. Intuitive types grasp
the truth of a situation in a flash.
They are the mysterious beings who never
took notes in class, who guess for
success. Sensation types, conversely,
grope toward understanding step-by-step.
About 80% of us are sensing types,
compared to 20% intuitives.
In addition to these two perception
categories, we are also either one of two
deciding categories. Quick judges of a
situation are called feelers -- emotion
is their strong suit. Slow judgers are
called thinkers -- their strong suits are
logic and method.
The kind of perception you naturally
prefer, either sensing or intuition,
tends to team up with the kind of
judgment you naturally prefer, whether
thinking or feeling. The result,
according to David Keirsey, author of
Please Understand Me (with Marilyn Bates,
Prometheus Nemesis Books) is a
set of over sixteen separate personality
types combining the strengths of the
eight possible Myers-Briggs categories.
Keirsey's set of types is an alphabet soup of diversity,
ranging from INTP (Introvert/Intui-
tive/Thinking/Perceiving) to ESFJ (Extro-
vert/Sensing/Feeling/Judging). One
of the sixteen combinations is you.
In terms of management and what sorts do
best in business, Keirsey describes four
subtypes -- those with an SP, SJ, NT or NF among
their four letters.
Sensing/Perceiving (SP) -- This is the
sort of person you think of when you think
"business." He (or she) has the
best grasp of reality of all types. A
master negotiator, but with a touch also
of the troubleshooter, and of the
diplomat. If your company is in trouble,
advertise for an SP to rush in, get rid
of the deadwood, and get you back into the
black. With the SP everything is
negotiable. SPs may may be nice persons,
but they are nice in a methodical,
no-holds-barred way. They are
practicality personified, and can adapt
swiftly to change. No waste, no muss, no
fuss. On the other hand, theory be
damned with SPs. And whatever is not
here and now -- like tradition, or long-
range goals, or corporate philosophy, is
not their bag of tea.
Sensing/Judging (SJ) -- Your SJ managers
could be thought of as stabilizers.
Their concern is for a steady
orderliness in the body corporate. If
you feel your employees are genuinely
happy to work for you, chances are you
are an SJ. On the other hand, SJs seldom fit in
during the passionate early days of
growth or the grim later stages of cutbacks
and adaptation. SJs are loyal,
hardworking, and superdependable. But
change, particularly rapid change, is not
their strong suit. You know your company
has arrived when its CEO is an SJ.
Intuitive/Thinking (NT) -- The attitude of
business as a whole is probably, if you
must be Intuitive, be Intuitive/Thinking,
for gosh sakes. The NT manager is not
happy unless he is designing. He (or
she) is the visionary type this story
began with. Up-to-date, intellectual,
a lover of complexity -- this is the
person to have on hand when you need to
know what lies ten, twenty years down the
road. But be warned -- NTs will die for
a principle, and they do not suffer
boredom or redundancy with a smile. They
question everything, but they will also
consider anything. Give them a menu with
lots of change on it -- and get out of
their way.
Intuitive/Feeling (NF) -- When these
people rise to the top of business it is
as catalytic entities, mysterious forces
within a hierarchy who forge consensus
even where consensus was thought impossible.
These are the "people people" --
charismatic when they are bold, and
empathic to the point of tears when they
are passive. A thousand years ago, before
the advent of the MBA, NFs ran
the world. NFs have problems with
efficiency, because their
time belongs to whoever is talking to
them. And since they follow their
intuitions, they are vulnerable to
charges of favoritism and carrying grudges.
Now, all of us, according to the theory,
have two strong sides and two recessive
sides. In fact, type psychology breaks
us down into dozens of additional
characteristics, with lots of hyphens and
brackets, superior characteristics and
phantom or inferior ones -- striving
desperately to make us stereotypes even
in our complexity.
The four Jungian personality poles
aren't the end of typology, of course.
McBeath cautions that there's lots more
going on between our ears than raw
perception and judgment. There are also
areas like Dominance, Influence,
Steadiness, and Compliance -- together
they spell DISC, another typing
instrument -- that have tremendous
bearing on how we function inside
ourselves and in groups.
In addition, psychologists are looking at
such personality puzzles as brain
hemispherics, sex differences,
learning styles, and countless other
aspects of why we are all so different.
And while the type tests like MBTI and
DISC may get us off the hook for being
extroverts or emotional, we still bear
the brunt of being obnoxious show-offs or
unbearable whiners. Typology explains
neutral predispositions we have -- not
bad attitudes. You can be "OK" by
type and still be an unmitigated jerk.
Or neurotic. Or incompetent.
Psychologists, says Shirley Dahlen,
herself a Minneapolis-based Jungian
typologist, tend to wince
at the corporate mentality.
Particularly Jungians, who see themselves
as the poets of the profession.
To balance matters, she says, business
people feel much the same way about
Jungian psychologists.
But this isn't necessarily because one
group is wrong and the other is right.
Type psychologists are overwhelmingly
INFP types (introvert/intui-
tive/feeling/perceptives), Dahlen said, whereas the
business world is peopled with a super-
fluity of ESTJs (extrovert/sensing/thin-
king/judgers) -- "walking computers,"
according to Dahlen.
Which puts one to thinking about all the
conflicts that arise in the workplace.
Personnel files often show the cause of
dismissal or failure to win promotion as
"poor chemistry" or "personality
conflicts." What may be happening is
that people with opposite type axes may
be bopping away at one another's "hot
buttons" and just not communicating.
This is not to say that some folks are
not deadweight or that they should not,
as the opportunity arises, be flung from
the first open hatch. But sometimes one
valuable person is jettisoned because he or
she doesn't get along with another
valuable person.
And that conflict may have nothing to do
with company policies or procedures --
it's because Applebee wants straight answers
to his questions but Farqhuar would
rather tell long circuitous (but
curiously relevant) stories. Or Johnson
wants a bright-eyed aggressive sales
director while McGillicuddy prefers an
understated (but strangely effective)
approach.
In badly managed marriages, Dahlen said,
divorce is often the answer. In badly
managed companies, termination is -- or
reassignment to sales territory along
Hudson's Bay. But, says Dahlen, the good
marriages and good
companies manage to focus on what's good
while getting rid, when possible, of the
bad.
With marriages, it helps to be amused by
one another's differences. But when a
vice president blows an important
presentation by failing to
follow up, and his company watches
open-mouthed as a $23 million contract
slips away to a firm presented by a more
forthright personality type, amusement is
harder to summon.
Fermin Aragon, president of Twin Cities
based IMPACT, a business consulting/data
processing service company, had McBeath
administer type tests to his managers
just to give them time to reflect on the
importance of communication.
"Nearly all of our people came up through
the ranks, so none had the opportunity
for organizational or developmental
training. It turned out to be fun, and
stimulating, and in the end quite helpful."
Aragon had reason to like his own DISC
profile, which McBeath described as "the
compleat entrepreneur," aggressive, task-
oriented, extremely demanding -- and
occasionally very good with people.
"I had no problem with that," Aragon said.
Jean Kummerow, consulting psychologist
with Martin & McAllister, a Minneapolis
firm, believes that the applications for
MBTI and others tests are more down-to-
earth than detractors let on.
"And I'm a reality-based type, so I
should know," she said.
"The applications for team building, for
honing one's leadership abilities, for
helping with career decisions are very
obvious.
"Just the area of communicating involves
so much of what type we are. If I'm a
logical person I will try to get the
sense of what you're telling me. But if
my main need is to establish an emotional
footing, I'll be conscious of a
completely different level with you.
"Some people don't know how to make small
talk, which lots of people really need to
get the ball rolling. It sounds funny,"
Kummerow said, "but we have had to teach
some people how to chit-chat."
One of Kummerow's clients, Thermo Serv,
Inc., of Anoka, has been using the MBTI
on its staff in small groups for almost
five years. To hear executive vice
president Bob Bella tell it, the program
has been well worth the investment.
"In manufacturing, communication seems to
break down more easily than in other
environments," Bella said. "And when
you're not getting the kind of responses
you need from fellow workers in an on-
line production situation, something's
got to give. Either there's a direct
confrontation, a war of the memos, or
else the grievance just festers -- and
that's the worst of the three, because
eventually it explodes."
Bella gave the example of two employees
who were not seeing eye to eye. One
would send a carefully worded three-page
memo to the other, who would read a third
through the fine print and give up.
Thermo Serv wound up telling the one guy to
shorten his memos, and the other to
lengthen his concentration span. But not
before testing and talking revealed that
what was at stake was a type difference,
not a personality clash.
"Our people like it," Bella said. "And
the enhanced feeling of teamwork has
direct benefits in increased efficiency
and profits."
Sandra Hirsh, who owns her own
psychological consulting firm, worked the
MBTI circuit for many years for
Honeywell, Inc. Honeywell was
especially keen on using personality type
testing to help its tech personnel decide
if they'd made the right career choices.
"Many large companies have embraced the
MBTI because of its usefulness in team-
building," Hirsh said, citing Honeywell
and 3M locally. "But smaller companies
are moving in that direction as well.
About a third of my business these days
is small to medium-sized firms."
Hirsh mentioned one client, an
architectural/engineering firm with
seventy on-staff professionals, who used
type testing to help executives from the
directors on down "to take a look at
themselves, and to bolster their
communications skills."
A typical consult, according to Hirsh,
was a small financial planning service,
whose principals and support staff were
on the brink of trench warfare with one
another. Support felt that the
principals and account execs were
diddling needlessly with plan changes
requiring extensive revision and client-
chasing by the secretaries. And the
principles couldn't understand why the
little people were mutinying. A few
hours of MBTI testing later, everyone
concerned realized that the conflict was
the result of the high-intuitive
principals being unaware of the confusion
they were causing the high-reality
support staff.
One important thing to remember, Jean
Kummerow said, is that the Myers-Briggs
test, like other personality instruments, isn't
trying to "box in" an individual's
personality. To the contrary, many
people claim to feel a tremendous relief
when they learn that the reason they
don't "think as well" or "aren't as
imaginative" as others in their
departments is a matter of psychological
type.
Shirley Dahlen, who gets positively misty-
eyed when discussing the prospects for
typology, believes it gets all of
us "off the hook" of feeling incompetent
or possessed of "the wrong gifts."
"Of course, we at the conventions are
nearly always INFPs [introvert/intui-
tive/feeling/perceivers], and we get very
excited about typology
providing a kind of blanket amnesty for
all the out-of-joint types in the world.
Once we know we don't get along with
someone because we're an INFP and they're
an ESTJ, well, we can shrug it off and
have a laugh. Because we know that no
amount of head-banging is going to make
us see eye to eye. Jung himself believed
type theory would hasten world under-
standing and eventually peace."
Less hyperbolically, how does a business
implement an understanding of types in
its daily affairs? Anyone can dial a
local industrial psychologist and
contract for testing, workshops,
individual counseling, and the like. All
it takes is money and an appetite for
multiple choice questions. More to the
point, what pushes a company to the point
where they consider Jungian typology
along with more down-to-earth management
issues?
In a way, only certain "types" of
companies ever do. Nonprofit groups,
schools in particular, comprise a large
part of type psychologists' clientele.
Very large corporations seem to
arrive at a self-absorbtion
stage where team-building becomes a
paramount preoccupation.
Smaller businesses? Shirley Dahlen is
convinced that this last reservoir of
commonsense thinking will be the final
domino to fall to Jungian typology.
"After all," she says, "Myers-Briggs
didn't even exist fifteen years ago.
When the everyday business person comes
to appreciate and use these ideas -- and
I think that is just around the corner --
we'll know we have arrived."
# # #
_________________________________________
???
Overheard at corporate HQ:
Jack, you're hopeless. No matter what I
say, you disagree with me.
Helen, that's not true.
__________________________________________
__________________________________________
!!!
You know the type.
You could probably jot down your
employees' names and designate each
according to his or her type.
Sensing/thinking types are fact people,
logical, and a bit impersonal. That's
Herb, over in the business office. Not
much at office Christmas parties, but
he's the fellow who keeps the ship
afloat.
Sensing/feeling people also like facts,
but their decisions come more from the
heart. Like Marty, in sales -- he's not
out just for his commission, but to make
sure you buy what you need.
Intuition/feeling people have warmth of
sensing/feelers, but they follow their
antennae instead of their textbooks.
Phyllis, the plant psychologist, wears
"NF" on her ID badge.
Intuition/thinking types also follow
their antennae, but their interests are
likely to be technical or theoretical.
Who but Elwood, over in market
forecasting, who can never get anyone to
look at his homemade software?
__________________________________________
Where to Turn
Resources for learning more about
personality type and its applications in
the workplace include consulting
psychologists and psychotherapists in the
region. A good place to get referrals
for such consultants is the Twin
Cities Association for Psychological
Type, Jeane Kummerow, coordinator; 338-
8461.
There are several good texts for those
seeking a better understanding of the
principles and applications of
psychological type. A selection:
Please Understand Me, Character &
Temperament Types, by David Keirsey and
Marilyn Bates; Prometheus Nemesis Press,
Del Car, CA; $8.95 paper
People Types and Tiger Stripes, A
Practical Guide to Learning Styles, by
Gordon Lawrence; Center for Applications
of Psychological Type (CAPT),
Gainesville, FL; $6.95 paper
Using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator in
Organizations, A Resource Book, by Sandra
Krebs Hirsh, Consulting Psychologists
Press, Palo Alto, CA; may be ordered
directly from Sandra Hirsh Consulting
Services, 1200 54th Avenue N., Plymouth,
MN 55442; $55
# # #
What Type of Manager Are You?
This BUSINESS MINNESTOA-cloned mini-version of the
Myers-Briggs Type Invetory will give you an inkling
what type of person (and manager) you are, and what
the full 166-question MBTI is like. Answer all
questions by circling A or B. use the key below to
learn what your answers mean -- combine your four
superior characteristics (ENFJ, ISTP, etc.) and that,
dear reader, is you. More or less.
1) Do you generally prefer to
A. Take charge in a conversation
B. Sit back, listen, and observe
2) Are you more likely to
A. Throw all your energy into active involvement
in a project
B. Bide your time and look for "the big picture"
3) Are you known for
A. Wearing your emotions on your sleeve
B. Being a "poker-face"
4) Do you think of yourself as
A. Pessimistic
B. Optimistic
5) Which word is more appealing to you:
A. Vivacious
B. Sedate
6) Do you make up your mind
A. On impulse
B. Methodically
7) Which do you consider yourself:
A. many-leveled and moody
B. predictable and cut-and-dried
8) Would you rather be called:
A. A poet
B. A team player
9) Which mistake would you more likely make:
A. Compile the world's lengthiest, most
fascinating, and most aimless resume
B. Stay in one job-track all your life, and be
satisfied with your consistency
10) Which concept appeals to you more:
A. Philosophical
B. Practical
11) Which is worse:
A. Being unemotional
B. Being illogical
12) When arguing, are you the type who
A. seeks to comprehend your opponent's point of
view
B. seeks to prevail despite your opponent's
objections
13) Which is worse:
A. Not to be emotional enough
B. To be too emotional
14) Which would you rather have people see you as:
A. Empathic
B. Lucid
15) In dealing with others, are you more likely to
A. Talk about families and pasttimes
B. talk about business
16) Do you think of yourself as inherently
A. Prompt
B. Casual
17) Is your sense of orderliness
A. Something you were born with
B. Something you have to work at every day
18) When you are going on a trip, do you usually get ready
A. As time permits
B. Just before you have to leave
19) Which better describes you:
A. Purposeful
B. Mellow
20) If you lived alone, would you be more likely to
A. Keep things neat as a pin
B. Let things slide a bit
KEY: Circle whether you chose A or B for each question.
Count how many E, I, S. N, T, F, P and J answers you made.
If your Es outnumber your Is, you're an E. Same goes for
S versus N, T versus F, and P versus J.
A B A B
1. E I 11. F T
2. E I 12. F T
3. E I 13. F T
4. E I 14. F T
5. E I 15. F T
Total ___ ___ Total ___ ___
6. N S 16. J P
7. N S 17. J P
8. N S 18. J P
9. N S 19. J P
10. N S 20. J P
Total ___ ___ Total ___ ___
