Myers-Briggs Pattern Indicator: Character Patterns

Some people are famous only when they die, others are unheard of, and their work is lost over time. For Isabel Briggs Myers- the American author and co-creator of the personality study list known as The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) - both cases were correct posthumously.

The MBTI became one of the most popular character lists in the world, as the name "Isabel" remained an acronym for the strange specialty related to the personality test. Still, only a little percentage of those who take the test know anything about Isabel Myers, her mother Katherine Briggs, or the origin of this type.

If we asked people about that indicator, most of them would assume that Myers and Briggs are the last names of two collaborating psychology “men” who built their long and prosperous careers within the same institutions that supported psychologists, philosophers, and entrepreneurs. It was as if Isabel herself with her various roles - daughter, homemaker, mother, writer, creator, and entrepreneur - had to die for her creativity to survive.

Imagine a million people who learned their personality style by 1980. Although they were a large number, it is just an abstract idea that does not seek to achieve a result, so where have they heard of the indicator? And what did these million people gain from knowing their personality patterns? No doubt, everyone has benefited from it in a different and immeasurable way.

“You're not one in ten; you're one in a million,” the Center for Psych type Applications (Capt) declared in a 1990 marketing campaign. However, when one analyzes the moment when ten, twenty, or a hundred different people know their personality type, specific undeniable patterns emerge, which is the first impulse to self-discovery, the joyful stillness of self-acceptance, and the comfort of being together. Part of the reason people take this personality test is to imagine that there are others like them in the world.

Imagine an intelligent, sensitive little girl studying at a prestigious school in one of the thriving cities, receiving an education at her school similar to the pattern her parents learned from self-improvement seminars or health resorts, aspiring for their daughter to learn the same.

At Greentree Elementary School amphitheater in Irvine, California 1982, the youngest participant in the Social Thinking and Logic (star) program, whose initials combined the following words in English, caught the attention of the Los Angeles Times:

• Social.
• Thinking.
• And.
• Reasoning.

It is an educational experiment based on the Myers-Briggs Pattern Index (MBTI) funded by a grant of $800,000 from the Ministry of Education. Children aged nine and ten put cloth dolls in one hand and held hint cards in the other, and they were talking from their stomachs saying:

• “I'm an introvert. I need to be alone to recharge, and people need to realize that we are not different.”
• "I am neurotic. People like me have a great desire for knowledge and wisdom, and sometimes I can seem cold because I don't like to show it. It makes me feel out of control.”
• “I have neurofibromatosis. We are ideal thinkers, and we like to get meaningful relationships.”

Now imagine that child three or four years later, having forgotten those conversations where her teacher distributes sheets of the MBTI to her students, telling them that knowing their personality style will help them have discussions about sensitive topics, such as marriage, work, relationships, and parenting.

A middle school teacher explains to a Washington Post reporter: “The test is designed to meet the needs of children today and prepare them for strong families in the future.” Knowing the positive and negative features of each style helps to take a comprehensive “modern view” of the family as a complex economic behavioral unit in which both parents work, and try to find a balance between professional and personal life in a variety of different ways.

Some students rely on adolescent presentations and magazines to hone their prime life skills. These children rely on their personality patterns to learn how to be healthy.

We followed up with the child, who became a teenager after five years, and taught her to know her personality style and how she can avoid deviant behaviors and work to build a promising future and pursue her studies at university. When she attends university, she will discover that the deans of colleges and advisors in many universities use the MBTI to suit incoming students with their roommates in the first year, hoping to "reduce the proportion of incompatible colleagues" on campus.

“Self-discovery is an important part of the educational process, so be aware of the extreme difficulty of the process,” said Cindy Crowe, a consultant at the University of South Carolina's Counseling Services Center. The MBTI, which Cindy is grateful to have discovered in the late 1980s, offers a simple, easy, and psychological tool for measuring one's personality.

A student can articulate her sense of self, which is active in choosing a major, and ultimately her job, and resolve disagreements with colleagues by answering simple questions such as: “Would you prefer: (a) small parties or (b) large gatherings?” Or, “When the truth is hurtful, is it more likely to say: (a) a white lie, or (b) the hurtful truth?”

Susan Randolph, director of housing at Saint Benedict University for Girls, claims that the MBTI helped her bring together 60 percent of students with suitable roommates who fit in three of the four dimensions of the index: “With the pressure a college student faces, dealing with an intolerable colleague can be devastating.” The University of Wisconsin counseling team relies more on the index than Susan does, offering a month-long summer course for roommates based on the MBTI entitled “The Meeting Point Between My Path and Your path.”

Four years later, the girl who became a college student embarked on her pain-free journey of self-discovery through her personality style and then entered the job market to work in a high-profile job.

A personal consultant told the Wall Street Journal that people in America no longer make products. However, they themselves become products and should be marketed just like soaps, luxury cars, and fax machines. Also, he recommends that Gen X job applicants in job interviews dress neatly, and prepare for the Myers-Briggs test that identifies your strengths, interests, style, and how you react in situations.

Your personality style is one of the best techniques for promoting yourself. It gives you what is like a brand. There are many work styles, and you have to understand your own. Back to our example, that woman now expects some people will not want to hire her because of her personality style.

A Wall Street Journal columnist asks a tech entrepreneur: “Have you ever been so frustrated by the inability of some employees to make quick decisions on issues so simple that you put these confused-minded people on the list of powerless patterns?” In his view, the Myers-Briggs Pattern Index (MBTI) is the best way to avoid annoying hiring mistakes. “The ideas from the MBTI are so useful that they have to be part of the test for adults to enter the job market,” he says.

His views have been echoed by the human relations teams of nearly every Fortune 100 company, as well as the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board, which operates under the name CPP Investments and which recently came under some harsh criticism after studies by psychologists showed that people who take the test more than once - even after a few weeks - are classified as a different type more than 50% of the time.

MBTI test eligibility is well below the level required to be statistically significant. On the other hand, Lorin Letendre says, CEO at CPP, citing extensive studies conducted by his company: “4 out of 16 Myers-Briggs patterns represent 80% of managers, and this is very important as statistical significance.”

However, in our example, disputes over statistical significance don't matter much to a woman when she enters her office on her first day of work. She doesn't know that her office was designed by the world's leading office furniture design firm, Herman Miller, using computer software that uses a modified version of the MBTI to analyze the personality patterns of workers in high-profile occupations to help engineers, designers, and architects design comfortable offices and furniture.

“We found that only 8% of workstations fit the personalities of the workers who use them,” said John Berry, communications director at Herman Miller. However, he does not particularly describe how the company reached this exact figure.

The company's computer program manages a questionnaire consisting of a hundred questions. It identifies for each individual a personality style out of four patterns: the insightful person who looks at the overall picture, the motivator who is the popular leader, the stabilizer who is effective, and the collaborator who is a friendly person. After that, he assigns interchangeable pieces of furniture to the employee's office based on his preferences and can focus away from distractions. The ideal office for the insightful is an office with many books and a window with a beautiful view, and it has bookshelves in a dark and elegant color, a large exhibition area, and a small table to work in the corner. On the other hand, the ideal office for the stabilizer is elegant, spacious and quiet.

This woman, in our example, is not disturbed by the failures of the MBTI. After many years of experience in the field, she decided to go to law school and become a corporate lawyer or barrister. In 1993, the American Bar Association gave the management of the MBTI to more than three thousand lawyers to find out how people of different personal styles dealt with co-workers and clients.

According to Larry Richards, a former lawyer who switched to a management consultant to run the study, one in two lawyers is thoughtful and judgmental and someone who likes to get to the bottom of it.

Richards resigned from the profession a few years ago when he underwent the Myers-Briggs Pattern Index (MBTI) and discovered that he was of a sensitive and affected style. He was eager to venture and act spontaneously, not spend long nights at work trying to meet deadlines, and was forced to be organized. He pointed out that he saw sensitive people like him get into trouble in major law firms, where 77% of lawyers are thinkers.

In his sample, military justice attorneys received the highest scores on the scale of thinking, followed by specialists in labor law, patents, taxes, real estate, and divorce. Sensitive attorneys specialize in legal aid and public interest law, as Richards brilliantly describes as “less traditional areas of practice.”

A lawyer defending the CEOs of financial institutions was relieved to learn that she had a good deal of empathy but not enough to prevent the harsh behavior you show when dealing with the government.

Another woman going through a minor mid-life crisis is eager for the test to assure her that the legal profession is not for her, and thus, a convincing argument for her to resign from her job, but her style makes her a skilled lawyer, which is why she will continue her work.

Let's go back to the child in our example, who has now spent the last decade of her life as a lawyer in a small office and wants to try something new. What are the things that are right for her? How would she know that? Maybe she lives in New York City and can enroll in what's called “Using Your Personality Style to Find the Right Job,” a three-hour, $65 course where attendees test the Myers-Briggs Pattern Index (MBTI) and get a private counseling session, where she may discover that she's open-minded, observant, and judgmental. The course leader tells her that the world of economics and finance isn't suitable for her personality style.

Gary, an aspiring novelist who discovered that he was “very rational” and “had an entrepreneurial mindset,” decided to return to his job as a management consultant, and this radical change he wanted in his life had to wait.

If she wants a deeper and more detailed analysis of her personality and prospects individually than Susan and Gary did, she will have to pay more. Course costs are very low in MBTI advisory services, and many personal consultations now charge more than $5,000 per session to administer the test and help the client strategize on how best to promote themselves to a new employer based on their style.

Our protagonist is self-promoting and changing careers, working hard for the next 20 years or more, and rarely looking back. When she retired, she decided it was time to take care of herself, get back in touch with her identity, and figure out what she wanted in the remaining years.