The Daily Parker

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EEEEIE (London residency day 3)

The results are in, and for the fifth or sixth time in 15 years I've gotten the same result on a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. As expected, this result had some movement at the edges—I'm closer to the center on both Introversion-Extraversion and Thinking-Feeling than on my last test—but my overall type hasn't changed.

Notice, however, that I'm in business school. Business schools in general are overwhelmingly Extraverted. I am not. This, believe it or not, is one of the reasons I'm here. The title of this post refers to the composition of my team: 5 Extraverts and me. (Be careful what you wish for...) Fortunately I'm not so far on the Introverted scale that my head will actually explode, but I am acutely aware of working against my preference, especially in group meetings. My best guess at my team's types: ESTJ, ESTJ, ESTP, ENTJ, ESTP, INTP.[1]

I'm the INTP.

After using it for 15 years, I've found Myers-Briggs helps predict and resolve differences in temperament. For example: knowing that we're all Thinkers means we have to pay close attention not only to the human dimension in our group projects, but also it means we need to think through our group process. And: in an ideal world the rest of the group would understand what I need as an Introvert, but the 5-1 ratio combined with the absence of any Feelers means, really, I'm on my own. The most worrying potential clash comes from convincing the Extraverted Sensors that my iNtuition (I showed up more iNtuitive this time around than ever before) can actually help the group. We've already had two group meetings in which I perceived a conflict on the S-N fault line. Note, though, that being iNtuitive, I have a bias towards finding structural answers when more prosaic ones may be correct. The Sensors, I'm willing to bet, no such general issue, if they saw any issue at all, and they've already forgotten about it while I'm up here writing a blog entry analyzing it.

I would like to have had more opportunity to talk with my team about how we can use the MBTI to make a smoother go at things, but the residency is just too compressed. Perhaps we will, though. Like a good Perceiver I'll wait for the right opportunity.

[1] I might be wrong on one of the Ss and one of the Ps; also, two of the Es seem more to the center. We haven't all shared our results yet.

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