I am qualified to work with and administer two personality type tools which serve to raise a client’s awareness of themselves and how they are perceived by others, thereby developing their emotional intelligence.
Working with this increased awareness allows an individual to understand their own preferred style of working, leading and communicating, and how this style impacts on others – in particular on those with a different style, or personality ‘type’.
There are no right or wrong answers when working with these tools, as all outcomes are equally valid and simply provide us with a theoretical framework and language for helping us understand ourselves and others better. Both tools focus on the behavioural strengths and positive qualities of different personality types. As such, insights provided by both tools and the feedback an individual receives is always provided constructively.
- Both tools support the development of emotional intelligence, a core component not only for effective leaders, but for everyone who has to deal with relationships inside their organisation – for example with colleagues, team members and supervisors – and outside their organisation – with, for example, potential and existing customers.
- Both tools are written in the English language and typically take about 30 minutes to complete for someone with a good level of English. They can be used to support team as well individual development.
Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
The Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is the most widely used personality assessment tool and, as such, is the most well known. MBTI looks at how an individual perceives the world around them, and how they prefer to interact with others by helping them identify their psychological type.
The MBTI questionnaire is based on a personality framework that helps an individual explore their preferences for taking in information and making decisions, where they prefer to focus their attention and how they prefer to live. It therefore provides a useful basis for an individual to explore not only the quality of their relationships with other people, but also in how they manage themselves with relation to problem-solving, decision-making and planning.
The Strength Deployment Inventory (SDI)
Working with the Strength Deployment Inventory (SDI) allows an individual to consider how they need to behave in order to improve or develop relationships, and how to manage conflict situations.
In summary, working with SDI helps an individual identify their preferred relating style which is defined by their underlying personality. This relating style drives how a person prefers to communicate with others – as a leader, manager, salesman, coach, friend or parent. The tool focuses on ‘strengths’, so it helps us understand the underlying strengths of our relating style, and encourages us to consider how we need to flex our behaviour when working or communicating with other ‘types’ of style. For example, with certain personality types I may need to behave more assertively, or to listen more.
SDI also looks at interpersonal conflict and provides an insight on how our behaviour changes when we and/or others are in a conflict situation. This awareness helps us to better understand and manage both ourselves and others so that we can more skilfully find a resolution.
SDI is a particularly effective tool for working with real teams as it quickly provides a common language for people to understand and appreciate the similarites and, more importantly, the differences that exist within a group of people. This understanding provides the team with the opportunity to find more effective ways of communicating and working together.