At last, Charley welcomed the interns to his retreat center. After getting them settled in and showing them around the center. Charley met with them. “I want to get to know you better and to begin to explore how I can help you discover your abilities and challenges as a difference maker. While I believe everyone can be a difference maker, it’s helpful to know your personality type as you begin to explore the change you want to make. I’m going to ask you to take the Myers Briggs Personality Indicator (MBTI). While not perfect, the MBTI will be useful as we develop your ability as a difference maker. I’m going to give you a brief pamphlet that describes the MBTI.”
The MBTI identifies your personality type along four sets of dimensions:
- Extraversion (E)/Introversion (I) – how you manage your relationships with others
- Sensing (S)/Intuition (N) – how you think- realistically or conceptually
- Thinking (T)/ Feeling (F) – how you make decisions
- Judging (J)/Perceiving (P) – how you live your life (rule based vs spontaneous)
When you take the MBTI evaluation you will be given a four letter description of your personality type. This description will also contain a one-word label for your personality type as shown below.
Analysts Diplomats Sentinels Explorers
Architect (INTJ) Advocate (INFJ) Logistician (ISTJ) Virtuoso (ISTP)
Logician (INTP) Mediator (INFP) Defender (ISFJ) Adventurer (ISFP)
Commander (ENTJ) Protagonist (ENFJ) Executive (ESTJ) Entrepreneur (ESTP)
Debater (ENTP) Campaigner (ENFP) Consul (ESFJ) Entertainer (ESFP)
Charley asked the interns to take the MBTI to get a sense of their personalities. The results are shown below:
Joyce (ESFJ) Consul – people focused, social, observant of the needs of others
Audra (INFJ) Advocate – thoughtful, imaginative, principled, humanist
Josh (ESTP) Entrepreneur – energetic, action oriented, adventurous
Connor (ENFP) Campaigner – energetic, full of big ideas
Kaylin (ISFJ) Defender – warm, shy, attentive to details, efficient, responsible
Beaux (INTJ) Architect – thoughtful, perfectionist, creative, rational
Peyton (ENTP) Debater – bold, creative, and goal oriented
Alan (ESTJ) Executive – calm, influencer and guide to others facing adversity
Lynn (ENTJ) Commander – developers of creative visions, but quick to act
Austin (INFP) Mediator – quiet, open-minded, caring and creative
What intrigued Charley with the results was the diversity of personality types. This was going to be a great opportunity to see how different personalities functioned as difference makers. He did a summary of the mix of personalities along the four dimensions.
Extraverts (6)/Introverts (4)
Sensing (4)/Intuition (6)
Thinking (5)/Feeling (5)
Judging (6)/Perceiving (4)
Charley took the test as well and his type turned out to be:
Charley (ISFP) Adventurer – open minded, approach life with warmth, delights in uncovering potential possibilities.
Charley wanted to use these personality types to help the interns find the difference making approach that works best for them. Again he planned to use a discovery learning approach in doing this because this had to be something that each intern had to personalize. Every person who makes a difference must ultimately decide what works best for them, and there is no script for making a difference.
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“Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.” – Bruce Lee (Actor)