Alone in the woods with my MBTI

MBTI score: photograph of colorful Vermont fall foliage. Photo attribution: Flickr user paulmoodyMy MBTI score doesn’t tell the whole story.

I’ve spent the last 10 days living alone in the woods. (No, not what you might be thinking: my home is surrounded by fall foliage, and my marriage is fine.) Quite a contrast from the previous week, which featured two cities, two events, and two meetups.

If you’ve met me, you’ll know that I love to schmooze in company. So you may wonder if it’s hard to be suddenly on my own. Not at all. Although I love bringing people together, I also am comfortable living by myself for a spell, talking to no one except for an occasional phone call.

This makes sense in terms of my testing on the popular Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®.) As I’ve shared before, I score pretty neutral on the extravert <–> introvert axis of the test. Someone testing highly extravert prefers to draw energy “from the outside world of people, activities, and things”, while an introvert prefers to draw energy “from one’s internal world of ideas, emotions, and impressions” [all quotes taken from”Introduction to Type in Organizations“, Krebs Hirsh et al.]

What a neutral axis MBTI score doesn’t tell you

What the MBTI doesn’t provide is any indication of the intensity of anyone’s aspects. Because MBTI is about personality preference it’s perfectly possible for someone who tests neutral on a specific axis to have strong desires or abilities around the poles of each test dichotomy. As it turns out, I am comfortable not only when I’m socializing with others, but also for extended periods alone in creative, thinking, and feeling modes—I enjoy and need both states.

Consequently, a neutral “weak” score on an MBTI axis may indicate greater flexibility and comfort with the range of preferences associated with that axis. And those of us with a strong preference on axes (in my case, Intuition and Feeling) may have a harder time communicating and working with people whose preference lies at the other ends of the scale—for me, these are folks who prefer Sensing (“taking in information through the five senses and noticing what is actual”) and Thinking (“a preference for organizing and structuring information to decide in a logical, objective way”).

While my clear preference for MBTI’s Intuition and Feeling axes feeds my energy to pursue the congruence, facilitation, and consensus that inform my mission to improve what happens when people meet, its shadow side can be increased difficulty in relating to people who prefer sensing and thinking modes. One’s strengths invariably point to one’s weaknesses. In general, there seems to be a tradeoff between well-roundedness and drive.

Meanwhile, I’ll continue to be alone in the woods. Well, until Celia returns later today…

Photo attribution: Flickr user paulmoody

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