Myers Briggs and Me

What?
Home is where the heart is, but it can also be a place of sporadic conflict and misunderstandings.  I'm always seeking to make life at home more harmonious for everyone in my family.  Much of the time, though, I feel like I don't know how to affect the complex interactions between our family members.   How can we all learn about each other so that our interactions make more sense?

So What?

The psychodynamic approach to leadership may provide insights for the interactions between my family members.  According to Carl Jung's approach to the psychodynamic theory of leadership, people have behavioral preferences that "become the basis for how people work, relate, and play" (Jung, 1923, 1993, as referenced in Northouse, 2010).  Accordign to Northouse (2010), Jung identified four personality dimensions that he believes characterize these preferences:

1.  Energy derivation (extraverts derive energy externally, introverts derive energy internally)
2. Information gathering (sensors gather information through practical means such as the five senses, intuiting people gather information through conceptual theoretical frameworks)
3. Decision making (thinkers make decisions based on objective logical analysis, feelers make decisions based on subjective factors such as feelings and empathic responses)
4. Mode of operation (judgers prefer structured methodologies for doing things, perceivers are more willing to go with the flow)

As luck would have it, both my wife and I have taken the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).  I'm an ENTJ (extravert, intuiting, thinking, judging) and she's a ENFP (extravert, intuiting, feeling, perceiver).  

Now What?
Comparing our MBTI results, I can see that both she and I have similar characteristics such as being extraverted and intuiting.  These traits indicate that we both prefer to "obtain information, inspiration, and energy from outside the self"(Northouse, 2010) and we are conceptual thinkers that prefer to think of what could be.  Both of these qualities describe us well.

What's more interesting is exploring where we differ.  I'm a thinker, whereas my wife is a feeler.  This means that I often come across as cold and calculating when discussing a topic, and I don't often consider the feelings of others in my decision making.  I'm also a judger while my wife is a perceiver.  As a result, I often feel frustrated that she doesn't have a plan for taking care of tasks, isn't organized, and wants to change plans on the spur of the moment.  Writing about them now, I can see these differences play out in our interactions.

I plan to discuss these results with my wife.  I'm curious to know if she sees the same interactions too.  In the short term, I plan to work on taking into account the FP side of her nature.  To do this, I'll try to consider the feelings of others and subjective information in decision making, and I'll attempt to loosen up a little and try to "go with the flow".  Hopefully these efforts will help me to meet her halfway, making our home a more harmonious place.


Image courtesy of donzeladef