commentary

Social Styles vs MBTI: A Type Epiphany

Many years ago, at least 5 years before I discovered the MBTI, I took a one-day workshop called "Managing Interpersonal Relationships", offered through my day job.

The workshop used one of the "4-Quadrant Personality Models" as a way to explain and improve team communications (aka "interpersonal relationships") in the workplace. In particular, it focused on the Social Styles model developed by David Merrill & Roger Reid. The Social Styles model theorizes that people operate with four distinct ways of interaction, or social styles: Analytical, Amiable, Driving and Expressive.

Emotional Intelligence and Type

(Note: This article was originally posted in my "personal" weblog. I decided to copy it here so that all of my Type-related posts can be found in commentary.)

Yesterday, I attended a workshop entitled "Linking Type and Emotional Intelligence for Effectiveness". The workshop was presented by Roger Pearman for BAAPT (the Bay Area Association for Psychological Type). (Flyer)

In the morning, we learned the basics of Emotional Intelligence (EQ).

"The role of emotions in cognition is pervasive and ubiquitous. Perception and judgement in all its forms are affected by emotional tonalities and reactions.

Psychological type plays an essential role in understanding the emotional triggers for each individual as well as the strategies for self-management."

The MBTI is Nothing Like Astrology

I've been meaning to write this post for a while, but I haven't had the right nudge until now. But today, someone gave me that nudge.

Every now and then, someone blathers about the MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) being no better or worse than Astrology. The articles make for amusing punditry, but they miss an important point.

While Astrology claims to guess your personality and behaviors based on external forces (the position of the stars at the time and location of your birth), the MBTI is based on your actual stated preferences and personality traits. When you take the MBTI "inventory" (it's usually not referred to as a "test", because there are no "right or wrong" answers and no "scoring"), you are self-defining your type.

It's true that, when you finish, you're given a label. And many people balk at the idea of labels. But keep in mind that this is a label that you choose for yourself. It's not a label assigned to you by someone else. If you don't agree with the type the MBTI suggests, you are encouraged to read the other profiles and find the type that matches you best.

Think about that. It's as if Astrology said "Given your birthdate we guess you to be a Pisces, but feel free to look over the descriptions and decide that you're really a Leo."

Here are the comments I posted today to a recent MBTI-bashing essay, entitled Astrology For Businesses. You should probably read it (or at least read the first few paragraphs) before continuing here. Then come back...

Team Introvert

I recently shared this image with friends on Facebook. The image comes via Beth Beulow's Team Introvert Pinterest board.

One friend commented, "Wouldn't 'Team Introvert' be an oxymoron?"

Is Customer Satisfaction Worth $9.95?

Back in early June, I noticed that the front grill emblem on our Scion xB was missing. I decided I wanted to replace it and our local dealership's price seemed high so I checked online. I found a decent price but their web ordering system was out of whack and proposed $35 for shipping (um, no). There was, however, a box I could check to "get a quote" for shipping.

So, I placed the order (using PayPal) and checked the box. The next day, they sent me a quote for shipping.

What Advice Would You Give

Tim Walker (Hoover's Business Insight Zone) asks What "Real Advice" Would You Give Your Company?

Quick fix = easy.

Tips-’n'-tricks = easy.

Actually doing things better = hard.
...
Even the best of us can fall for this illusion some of the time. In the business world, managers of high quality don’t believe in money for nothing. But even they can fall into the chasm between knowing that a problem exists and acting on that problem.
...
It’s going to take more than tips-’n'-tricks to get them where they need to be. It requires real advice, which is hard to give and hard to hear.

YOUR Advice

So, that brings us to you.

• If you could offer it without fear of recriminations . . .
• If you knew that it would be heeded and acted upon at the highest levels . . .
• If you knew that your organization was willing to go through the hard slog of making itself better . . .

. . . what REAL advice would you give?

Feedback

Recently, Tim Walker posted a weblog essay on how to give unsolicited feedback.

It’s easier when you’re the boss, because you have a presumptive right to give feedback at any time to those below you. You should be home free if you show a little savvy by (a) pairing the criticism with a dose of praise, (b) offering it in private, and (c) making the criticism about a task or a skill instead of about the person. (E.g. “I really like what you’re doing with this project . . . but I think this presentation might have been clearer if . . .”)

-- How do you give unsolicited feedback?, August 22nd, 2008, www.hooversbiz.com

As he often does, Tim asked for comments (feedback) on the essay:

But what about other situations? What about all the other people you interact with in the course of your work? How can you use your insights, skills, base of knowledge, and so on to offer honest help to someone you know could use it?

I don’t have the answers to this one, despite having faced this situation any number of times in my career. So please share your own wisdom — I’m all ears.

Who Owns the Data?

There's been a lot of discussion in the Cyberverse recently regarding Robert Scoble and Facebook. Robert lost his Facebook account (he got it back after appealing) when he violated Facebook's Terms of Use by using a program to "scrape" (download) Facebook data -- specifically, his "friends" list. Facebook’s Terms of Use "broadly prohibits the running of automated scripts on the site."

Here's what Robert was trying to do:

I was alpha testing an upcoming feature of Plaxo Pulse .... It is a Facebook importer that works just like any other address book importer.

What does it collect?
Names and email address and birthday.

It did NOT look at anything else. Just this stuff, no social graph data. No personal information.

I wanted to get all my contacts into my Microsoft Outlook address book and hook them up with the Plaxo system, which 1,800 of my friends are already on.

It’s ironic that you can import your Gmail address book into Facebook but you can’t export back out.

I sympathize with Robert's plight; I recently triggered a "bot sensor" myself on a site. (I wasn't even using a program, just looking at a lot of pages in sequence!.)

But what's interesting to me is that most of the discussion doesn't surround Facebook's policy or whether they were within their rights to turn off Robert's account, even temporarily. Much of the discussion concerns whether Robert Scoble had any right to the data he was "collecting".

Tact Filters

In 1996, Jeff Bigler was trying to help a friend at MIT better understand her co-workers and why she and they weren't communicating well. The analogy he presented worked for her and Jeff posted it to the Web.

All people have a "tact filter", which applies tact in one direction to everything that passes through it. Most "normal people" have the tact filter positioned to apply tact in the outgoing direction. Thus whatever normal people say gets the appropriate amount of tact applied to it before they say it. ...

"Nerds," on the other hand, have their tact filter positioned to apply tact in the incoming direction. Thus, whatever anyone says to them gets the appropriate amount of tact added when they hear it. ...

(from Tact Filters, Copyright © 1996, 2006 by Jeff Bigler.)

Ten years later, the "Tact Filter" theory has stood the test of time. Jeff still gets "quite a bit of fan mail" about it and the Tact Filter has been mentioned in many other sites, most recently on 43Folders where I first heard about it.

I think the theory works well to explain a lot of personal interactions. Discovering it gave me one of those AhHa! moments. (I'm one of Jeff Bigler's "nerds" by the way. :-)

However, there's one part of Jeff's theory that I don't agree with.

Re-orgs Hazardous to Teams

On Monday, my manager said "We're having a re-org. But don't worry. it doesn't affect anyone in my group."

She was partially correct. There is no immediate, direct, acute effect. However, the longterm indirect effects are demoralizing. We're losing three people from the Team.