Highlights of Episode 48
- What MBTI is and what it’s not
- What natural preference means
- Why it’s not bad to act out of our natural preferences
- How understanding the team’s MBTI type can help improve team dynamics
- Why we may test differently at different times of our lives
Self-awareness is an important factor in understanding our Unique Edge—that special combination of strengths, skills, experiences, and point of view that makes us most marketable in today’s economy.
But it’s not always easy for us to pinpoint exactly what makes us ‘us’. We’re too close to it. That’s why it’s often easier for others to point those things out to us.
One way for increasing our self-awareness is by taking self-assessments that help us discover and understand the different parts of ourselves, so we can figure out how to use those parts of ourselves to our advantage.
Today, we’re digging into one of the more popular assessments out there—the Myers Briggs Type Indicator or MBTI for short.
There’s a good chance that you’ve already taken this assessment before and know your 4-letter indicator by heart. For example, I’m an I-N-T-J. Or you may have taken it once, maybe for fun, and had forgotten all about it. But today’s episode may just push you to dig up that old assessment or maybe even take a fresh one.
This week, I am joined by Certified MBTI Practitioner and women’s leadership coach, Alethea Fitzpatrick. She talks about what our MBTI assessment or type really mean, how to use it to better understand ourselves and the people around us, and how the different types show up at work situations.
[Side note: This is Alethea’s second time on the podcast. We’ve met her in a previous episode of the podcast where she talked about her own career pivot story which started when she became a new mom. It’s a definitely worth a listen.]
Myers Briggs is a tool initially developed to help people better understand themselves so that they could find a good career fit. And that’s helpful, no matter the stage of your career. But it’s not just about deciding what career to pursue at the beginning. It’s really a helpful tool for understanding not just what you’re good at but what naturally energizes you.
So this is an important thing to understand about Myers Briggs. It’s not about behavior or skill or talent or ability. It’s really about what your innate preferences are.
What I see in the workforce, in general, is that people often are guided or pushed into roles or areas of responsibility that they may be very good at but are not necessarily aligned with their natural preferences. So it is in fact very draining. It’s where we see a lot of career burnout. That’s often when people find themselves hitting a wall without necessarily understanding why.
—Alethea Fitzpatrick
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