We understand that you’ve got a new psychometric tool landing on your desk every month, we really do! Generally, it comes with an enthusiastic employee or consultant persisting that this one, and only this one, will take your staff from ‘zero to hero’ in a matter of weeks.

In reality, these tools are only a mechanism to heighten self-awareness, team development or provide a stepping stone to high performance.  It’s important that they are leveraged in a way that is matched to your specific needs rather than through a ‘square peg, round hole’ type approach. They should be linked to clear outcomes and objectives that is aligned to your individual and team goals.   So, how do you know which one is suitable, why should you invest and when?

One of our favourite and most diverse tools; the Myer Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), provides a framework for an increased understanding of personality traits, preferences and differences between people that can often be the source of misunderstandings.

Why invest in the MBTI tool for individual coaching?

Supported through decades of research, the MBTI tool provides an evidence based framework to compliment coaching with individuals and teams. After a debrief and action planning session, it becomes a reference for people to understand how their natural preferences play out across daily interactions. Coaching conversations are supported by facts to help an individual:

• Understand and leverage their natural strengths in certain environments and interactions with a team;
• Identify the potential blind spots of their preferences, the potential impact on their team members, other teams and strategies to flex (manage) them.

“An investment in the Myer Briggs Type Indicator tool accelerates the coaching progress through increased self-awareness and individual receptiveness to feedback based on facts.”

When should you be looking to invest?

Development of your team members at any time for professional or personal interest is a good investment. Notwithstanding this, there are certain situations that the tool can be leveraged to support individuals when they:

• Have personality differences that are impacting on the team’s culture or performance;
• Need to increase self-awareness and understand the impact their preferences can have on others;
• Tend to overpower team members and prevent others from contributing and implementing ideas;
• Find themselves ‘talked over’ and taking a longer amount of time to take in information than others which needs to be communicated and understood;
• Are prone to making decisions without examining the detail or data and thinking through possible consequences (or vice versa);
• Are consistently getting caught up on small detail and struggle to see the ‘bigger picture’;
• Deliver exceptional work though struggle to build strong, trusting relationships (or vice versa);
• Find it challenging to manage time effectively and consistently over commits or delivers last minute; and
• Spend most of their time planning and scheduling that it becomes counterproductive.

To reiterate, the investment in the Myer Briggs Type Indicator brings facts to coaching conversations that increases an individual’s self-awareness and their receptiveness to coaching feedback. It provides a common language around different working preferences within a team and can be further leveraged to develop how a team works together, with other teams and the impact their preferences can have on the wider organisation.