MBTI
MBTI sorts a person's preferences on four dichotomies, energy, information, decisions, and structure, into one of sixteen types, giving a team a shared, neutral language for how people differ.
Reach for this when…
- Two people keep clashing and neither can name why.
- A team wants a shared vocabulary for working styles without pathologising anyone.
- Someone new to leadership needs to see their default style is a preference, not the only right way.
How to run it
- Administer the MBTI instrument, Step I or Step II.
- Score the four dichotomies: Extraversion/Introversion, Sensing/Intuition, Thinking/Feeling, Judging/Perceiving.
- Have participants verify their type through reflection, not by accepting the printout unchecked.
- Explore the sixteen types and where the room's types cluster.
- Use the type pairs to explain specific friction, then agree how to work with it.
A worked example
Situation. Aya Kouassi managed production planning at Tissu Eclat, a garment manufacturer in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire, and her head of design treated every planning meeting as an ambush.
Applied. MBTI showed Aya as clear ISTJ, sequential and detail-first, against her designer's ENFP preference for keeping options open until the last minute; verifying the types in the room reframed the clash as preference, not sabotage.
Result. They agreed a two-stage meeting: options first, sequencing second. The ambush feeling stopped inside a month.
The catch
Type describes a preference, not a ceiling on capability, and it is easy to slide into using it as a fixed label or an excuse. Self-report instruments drift with mood and context, and a badly debriefed result becomes office astrology rather than insight. It says nothing about skill or performance.
If someone says 'I can't do that, I'm an ISTJ', the tool has become a cage rather than a mirror.
Origin: Isabel Briggs Myers & Katharine Cook Briggs (based on Carl Jung)