Typing from Afar
Name a movie or TV show and somewhere on the internet you can find someone’s blog, “The MBTI Types of the Characters of...” Name a well-known personality and chances are, you can find opinions on his or her type as…
Type Angels and Saboteur Demons
Personality type is a wonderful tool for personal development, but it doesn’t explain everything about people, powerful as it is. As type expert Sandra Hirsh told me early on in our writing partnership, “If the only tool you have is…
Workshop Facilitation: From Good to Great
If I’ve learned one thing in 25 years of workshop facilitation, it’s the importance of experiential exercises. You almost have to wonder whether John Dewey, an American philosopher whose ideas still shape education, had been to a boring, lecture-only type…
The RIGHT Extravert-Introvert Conversation!
It happens all the time. People learn a little about something new, think they understand, and make changes based on half-truths. That's how you get problems such as those reported in the Atlantic article, Why Introverted Teachers are Burning Out. Those with…
Are You Really A Type Expert?
I used to facilitate the MBTI ® Certification Program, and over the years started hundreds of consultants and counselors and OD specialists and educators—and more—on the path to effective use of psychological type theory. Note that I said started them on the…
Answering Those Inevitable Personality Type Questions
In just about every psychological type workshop I teach, most if not all of the following questions are posed. Feel free to use my answers--my goal is to promote practices in using this great tool! Frequently Asked Questions Am I born…
Emotional Intelligence and Your Profession
Recently, I’ve been working with auditors–my former life as a financial analyst provides insights into work style patterns in their profession and how they compare to many other professions. Below, I’ll be highlighting emotional intelligence sub scales, as described by Multi Health System’s EQi 2.0© instrument, one tool for thinking about these kinds of patterns, so that you can think about how these ideas might apply to the strengths and struggles of your own profession.
Research exists on some of the biggest problems facing the audit profession. The Dallas chapter of the Institute for Internal Audit found that
- The audit function is often undervalued by other corporate leaders
- Audit teams often struggle to recruit, develop and retain employees
- The overall image of the profession needs strengthening; it is seen as less than public accounting and other financial professions.
It doesn’t take much thinking to see how the audit profession’s core strengths, especially independence and assertiveness, might create these issues. Every strength has corresponding blind spots. If you need to be objective and independent, buildinginterpersonal relationships, emotional expression and empathy can seem not only counterproductive but outright dangerous. Think how this might contribute to the first two problems the industry cites.
6 Steps that Lead to Changes that Last
Cognitive blind spots present a significant roadblock to the full realization of individual human potential. There are many kinds of blind spots, including those that are common to all humans such as the Bandwagon Effect, where individuals become attracted to popular trends,…
The Power of Three
All of us find ignoring feedback quite easy—all too often the source doesn’t really understand the situation, or your intentions, or how different your needs are from others, right? Ignoring results on many psychological assessments or instruments can be easy,…
What’s ADHD? What’s Personality?
Adult ADHD finally made it into the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-5, their manual on disorders. It’s estimated it affects 4% of American adults, and that perhaps only 1 in 10 of those affected are properly diagnosed. Untreated, it can harm…