ENTP

1 comments | Aug 25, 09:03 AM | best-of-earl | by Earl Creps

On Monday I took the Myers-Briggs personality inventory for the first time. I was assured by our trainer that it is not a test, that there are no right or wrong answers, and that all the preferences it measures merely reflect how we tend to orient ourselves to the world, both internal and external. Nonetheless, we all use all the preferences in certain situations.

The training seminar of which the M-B was a part reminded me of an article I read back in the 90’s about how hotly contested the validity of some of these instruments is among professional researchers. For reasons I don’t recall, a great deal of controversy sometimes surrounds the predictive value, or at least the on-the-job utility, of these tests, er, inventories.

But today I’m willing to overlook the reservations of professionals for one simple reason: I enjoyed the whole thing. (Note: I’ve virtually given up on using similar questionnaires in leadership training because I virtually never meet anyone who discovers anything they didn’t already know before.)

[You can take your own version of a M-Bish test at sites like: http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes1.htm

So let’s get down to the fun part, which is the results.

I am officially an ENTP

What this means is that my preferences lean toward:

* Extroversion over Introversion (there’s a shock) * Intuition over Sensing (facts are fine, but I use “The Force”) * Thinking over Feeling (thanks goodness, left on its own my Intuitions would run wild) * Perceiving over Judging (when it comes to choices, I prefer spontaneity over detailed planning and bulleted lists like this one)

Taken collectively, my score means that I process ideas out loud, interact with people easily, enjoy abstract conceptual thought, and love situations with an open architecture. My “default position,” is to love creativity and teamwork and to wither and die in administrative work. I thrive at a coffee house, writing most of Off-Road Disciplines in places like that, and die in offices, never having written a creative word in a place like that.)

The potential for this kind of assessment is unlimited.

For example, just think about Jack Bauer taking M-B…