How the Myers-Briggs Brings Value to Your Company
By Nicole Nadeau, President & Director HR Ignite LLC
Regardless of the size or sector of your organization, the modern-day workplace places an extremely high priority on teamwork. For as much as our colleagues may get on our nerves, we need them to accomplish our business goals.
Because of this, our organizations need to find ways to promote cohesiveness and collaboration. Failing to do so can corrode your workplace culture and lead to things like resentment, animosity, and fear. But by being proactive and focusing on ways that you can promote team building and collaboration, you will achieve the twin benefits of higher profits and happier colleagues.
Ultimately, one great way to promote employee cohesion within your organization is to leverage the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (“MBTI”). MBTI isn’t exactly a new concept, yet its power remains. It can be an essential part of team building trainings, helping manages resolve conflict among their colleagues, and better understand their own needs and reactions in the workplace.
Whether you are trying to address conflict among your team or simply want to make your workplace culture stronger, you may want to take a close look at MBTI. It may be just the thing you and your colleagues need to overcome collaborative obstacles in your office.
MBTI: Some Foundations
To understand what MBTI is, we need to go back to renowned psychologist Carl Jung. Jung is one of the most celebrated psychologists for several reasons, but one of the most prominent has to do with his theory of psychological types. Essentially, Jung argued that what appears to be random behavior among us “is actually the result of differences in the way people prefer to use their mental capacities.” His seminal book titled Psychological Types was used as the foundation for MBTI.
At its core, MBTI is trying to take Jung’s psychological types and make them more valuable for us at work and home. Ultimately, the interactions among our preferences create 16 distinct personality types. Those preferences relate to your favorite world (introversion vs. extroversion), information (sensing vs. intuition), decisions (thinking vs. feeling), and structure (judging vs. perceiving). Making your choice among these four preferences, you receive a four-letter personality type. All types are considered equal and you can view a “type table” of these personality types by clicking here.
How MBTI Can Create Value in Your Business
With this background in mind, it becomes clearer why MBTI can be so valuable for your business or organization.
For one thing, MBTI can help you better form teams within your organization. Clearly, you want to create teams that are engaged and able to effectively collaborate to achieve your business goals. According to one survey by Gallup, employee engagement often leads to increased growth and profits — even in difficult economic times. This intuitively makes sense. If your colleagues can get along with and motivate each other, even in the most stressful moments, they will create value for your business.
With MBTI, you can get a granular look at your employees’ work preferences. With that data in mind, you can also match up your colleagues based on their strengths and weaknesses. Yes, team formation and collaboration is more art than science, but MBTI can go a long way in increasing the chances that your new team will gel and be more productive.
An example is illustrative here. Let’s say that you’re forming a team to market a new product that your business is releasing. You have members of your marketing team obtain their MBTI. With the results in hand, you can pair your colleagues so that they are working with their most compatible personality types. For instance, if one of your marketing directors is an ENTJ (extrovert, intuition, thinking, and judging), you may want to pair her up with an INTP (introvert, intuition, thinking, and perceiving). The ENTJ has an authoritative, assertive personality that can be held in check by the pensive introvert. They get along and can more closely collaborate on the task at hand. This is just one example, but the fact remains that pairing up compatible MBTI types can pay off in spades.
From matching up your colleagues, MBTI can also improve communication among your team. No matter the size or composition of your team, communication should be at the top of the mind. One report from PRovoke, for instance, stated that the total cost of poor communication is approximately $37 billion. Another study of 400 surveyed corporations found that poor communication costs these corporations around $62 million per year in lost productivity.
While you may quibble with the numbers, the fact remains that effective (or not-so-effective) communication can impact your bottom line. One of the best things about MBTI is that it can clarify the communication preferences within your team. With these preferences in mind, you and your colleagues can communicate in the most effective and efficient way possible. For example, if your colleague relies on sensing (“S”) and thinking (“T”), be specific and confident when addressing them. Don’t hesitate to use visual aids and show how your proposal or pitch is going to offer immediate benefits. On the other hand, if you are communicating with someone that relies on intuition (“N”) and thinking (“T”), feel free to rely on concepts and theories. Pitch your argument in a way that appeals to their intellectual mind. Challenge them and explain how your pitch or ask fits into the overall picture.
MBTI lets you leverage these natural qualities when communicating with your team. Your message will resonate and there will be a lowered chance of your message or argument getting lost in translation.
Finally, MBTI can help you find your company’s next leaders. While you can certainly go into the marketplace and bring in a leader from the outside, the data shows that promoting from within offers a wealth of benefits. Not only is it easier to get them up to speed on their new role, but they already have built-in relationships and organizational credibility that they can rely on as a new leader.
When looking to promote one of your colleagues, MBTI can be a big help. You can better understand how that candidate handles stress, expresses herself, and how she makes decisions. For instance, if you are looking to promote a candidate for a role that involves constant ambiguity or uncertainty, you may prefer a candidate that is perceiving (“P”) rather than judging (“J”). The beauty of MBTI is that it is useful for virtually any leadership role. Whether you are looking to fill an opening for a middle management role or even a role in the C-Suite, MBTI can give you an inside look into how a candidate will think and feel.
An Essential Tool in the Modern-Day Workplace
It is a given that boardrooms across the country are thinking hard about ways to create more business value. We all want our businesses to grow and become more profitable. However, instead of spending money on a sleek marketing campaign or cutting some operating costs, I encourage you to consider implementing MBTI. It can be a cheap, yet extremely effective tool that leads to increased business value. Not only that, but it will make your working life much more pleasant.
HR Ignite’s workshop The Human Balance: Employing Carl Jung’s MBTI Personality Types, teaches how to utilize knowledge of the 16 personality types to make people more effective. When you understand your type preferences or those of your colleagues, you can approach your work in a manner that best suits your own or your colleagues’ style, including: time management, problem solving, best approaches for decision making, and dealing with stress. Knowledge of type can help you better understand the culture of the place you work, develop new skills, understand team participation and cope with change in the workplace. To learn more about how MBTI can help you and your business, visit www.HRIgnitellc.com
