Selmer Hanson: Ways the Myers Briggs Type Indicator Can Help in the Workplace

In the 1940’s Katherine Briggs and her daughter Isabel Myers developed a personality preference tool to help individuals understand themselves better. For the last 50-years, this tool has been used by countless companies, leaders, teams, and individuals around the world and is a tool that Selmer Hanson uses as a leadership coach. The Myers Briggs Type Indicator, or MBTI, tool consists of a series of multiple choice questions, that are meant to reveal the essence of who you are by assigning you a series of four letters based on 16 different personality types.

The different types of personality come from four different scales:

Energy – here you either fall on the side of extroversion or introversion.

Information Gathering – here you either like to gather facts and data, or what the test labels as sensing, or you use your intuition to see the big picture.

Decision Making – here you either think through your decisions by using logic, analysis, and rationale, or you base your decisions on feeling, looking at the impact the decision will have on other people.

How we like to live our lives – if you fall on the side of judging, you are an organized, systematic individual who makes decisions quickly. If you enjoy going with the flow, you fall on the perceiving side of this scale.

Based on your answers to the questions, you will end up on one side or the other of the scales. While you need aspects from both sides of the scales, this tool helps you see what your preferences are and what the more dominant traits are in your life.

So how can the MBTI tool help you in the workplace? When you’ve completed the questions you end up with a better appreciation of the differences between you and your coworkers. Understanding how others work and what drives them can help you to see the world through someone else’s eyes. Knowing what makes each member of your team tick can also improve how well your team works together and how to solve differences based on each team members MBTI type. Knowing your boss’s personality type can also be a huge benefit to you. You can gain insight into how the make decisions and how they approach problems.

Selmer Hanson uses the MBTI tool in his work as a leadership coach. The results of his clients can help him devise a plan and help them determine if they are in the right line of work and help them to become better leaders.

The Author writes articles for stress management, helping people in need and business field. He has also contributed to Wikipedia, Squidoo and Hubpages. His articles have been published in print as well as online magazines.