MBTI and Team Building - Essay Example

?MBTI and Team Building Each individual has a psychology different from the other that shapes the personality. The psychology can be employed in various fields of life to make living better. One such psychological technique employed in organizations to help understand the personality of the people in a specific group or team is MBTI assessment. MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator), consists of 16 different types of personality, each type having a four letter code, which describes and helps utilize the differences in the personality (McCaulley, 1998). MBTI instrument estimates the preferences and judgments of an individual developed from the self-analysis of the reactions, preferences and judgments. It focuses on the traits like self-control, social interaction, decision making and information collection (Nicholson, 2008). It is different from other personality and psychological tests because, it is based on self analysis (John, 2010). The 16 possible four letter codes is a combination of four pair of preferences known as extraverted (E) or introverted (I), sensing (S) or intuitive (N), thinking (T) or feeling (F), and judging (J) or perceiving (P),for example ESFJ, ENFP (Boyle, 2006). My name is Andrew Pechy and currently working as a Plant manager in an organization as a part of a business team of four. Each of my team members, including myself, were asked to take MBTI assessment test in the hope of bringing a positive change in the overall working conditions of the organization. Unfortunately, one team member could not attend the test. This obviously has a negative influence on the bonding and shared knowledge of the team members. The fundamental reason of establishing teams, within the organization, is to create the sense of synergies, within the team members, which means they will compensate for each others’ weaknesses, while supporting each other’s strength to attain the goals. The purpose of MBTI is to identify, the personality type of an employee, so that he could be assigned, the task, which matches his psychological profile, for example an introvert is ideal for research work, while an extrovert is suitable for a marketing assignment. This exercise is called job personality fit in HR literature. Tamara Gosnell handles the pressure well. This individual’s results are ENFP that indicates the higher level of intuition, with the urge to express the feelings. Trevor Denny Emergency Manager Specialist, a highly experienced individual, with the ability to adapt to the changing working conditions, along with the capability to make swift decisions... On the other hand, I am emotionally intelligent and often practice empathy, to understand others’ feelings, but at the same time, my impatience is high. Teams are built for specific purpose. The process of building a team is not an easy one, it may take several years. In team every member has a defined role, which is assigned to him in accordance to his personality, qualification and experience. The team is based on the concept of synergies, which means team members support each other to accomplish the team goals. However, after the achievement these aims, the team are often dispersed. In management sciences, it is believed that, a small but well coordinated team is much better than vice versa. However, the term team could be referred as an entity containing individuals, these individuals compensate for the weaknesses of each other and support each others’ strengths to achieve a common goal, often these formal groups are lead by an inidividual entitle as team leader (Sasou & Reason, 1998). Forming a team could take several years. During teamwork every individual has a distinctive task to perform, therefore when one or more teammembers are absent, they will be missed by other in the team, usually members of these teams are crossfunctionally trained to take up the role of others when needed common instances are football, basketball and baseball teams. When making a team, the first step is to define the roles of each member on the team. Tamara Gosnell is assigned as the communication officer, because of the advanced linguistics and Trevor will handle the areas of transportation and emergency and I will supervise and coordinate the overall team effort, because of my ability to understand complex situations, along with the capability of inspiring others. The MBTI results reveal that: Tumara Gosnell, gets along with everyone at workplace and is known to be the most comfortable person to be around with the tense environment of work. Tumara results were ENFP that is a combination of Extrovert, Intuitive, Feeling and Perceiving. This reflects the energetic and the easy going nature of Tumara who is always supportive of others and feels free to appreciate us all the time. In my opinion, the result is a true reflection of the personality we all have observed. Always having Innovative ideas, socializing and making connections, informative and efficient, seeking advice and helpful nature is best described the ENFP. Trevor Denny, Emergency Manager Specialist, working with in this field for the past 20 years have proved himself to highly efficient and reliable member of the organization. Trevor’s expertise has proved to be highly useful from time to time whenever and wherever needed. Not only this , he adapted to the changing working conditions of the emergency management procedures in the public sphere and dealt with working with new people every now and then. Trevor scored ENFP on his MBTI assessment test and concluding from his satisfaction with his results; I could not have agreed more that he is undoubtedly an efficient and posses interpersonal skill that he has employed in better decision making. If I analyze my results for MBTI, this shows ENTJ which is a combination of Extroverts, Intuitive, Thinking and Judging. What could have described my personality better than these four traits? My lack of patience for anything lower than perfect performance as a result of which I am considered to be authoritative and enthusiastic on high work efficiency and improvement. My abrupt decision making skill is best described by Judging and Thinking. A best decision maker and planner is the one who is focused and goal oriented. I possess both of these qualities in the form of thinking and judging abilities. My job history reveals the success stories of bringing the drowning businesses to floating position. I have proved myself useful to organizations I have worked for when they needed drastic changes and urgent decisions for pushing up their profits. I consider myself as a person who can best perform when needed to save a company. MBTI assessment test is an effective tool to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the individual under study. In this way, this test assists the team leader in assigning, the work to his force according to their strengths. A person cannot do everything, due to this reason; we build teams to compensate for the weaknesses of each others. Human alone is imperfect, but when many of them combine, they can do miracles. Consider an example of NASA, which conducted a mission of landing two men on the moon, when it had, the computer power equivalent to that of today’s one microchip. It was made possible due to the team effort. Human history is full with the examples of teams who made the impossible achievable. In our case, the absence of one of the team members, indeed, was burdensome as it brought us more tasks to be performed than were actually planned. Another consequence of this increased workload was the distraction from one’s own tasks. Moreover, the task assigned to the 4th member may or may not be a specialty of any other team member. Usually members having distinct qualities and strengths are gathered in a team to match up the weakness of one member by inclusion of another well versed member in that area. Conclusion This paper concludes that MBTI is a very helpful instrument in defining the personality of people. This information helps managers to assign the person to a job, which matches with his personality. Selecting a person for a job is a critical decision, because the organization invests in its employees, so if the worker cannot perform the job properly then organization will suffer. Same goes with the team management. In teams, all members of same personality types cause chaos, for example in the team of three, two with strong personalities, will keep on struggling to seize the authority, which will by all means cause a drop in their performance. Due to this reason the members for teams are selected, through detailed analysis of their personalities with respect to their expected role on the team, to ensure the excellent level of performance. Works Cited Boyle, G. J. (2006). Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI):Some Psychometric Limitations. John. (2010). Assessment Test Descriptions. McCaulley, M. (1998). Jung's Theory of Psychological Types and the MBTI® Instrument. Nicholson, N. S. (2008). Personality Characteristics of Interpreter Trainees. Sasou, K., & Reason, J. (1998). Team errors: definition and taxonomy. Reliability Engineering and System Safety , 1-8. Read More