This is a third post in 3 post series on how to discover personal talents through self-assessments.
First post covered Kolbe assessment. Second post is about Strength Finder 2.0
Today we will cover Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI)
First who invented the theory of personality types was Carl Gustav Jung. He is the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung emphasized the importance of balance and harmony. He cautioned that modern people rely too heavily on science and logic and would benefit from integrating spirituality and appreciation of unconscious realms.
He considered the process of individuation necessary for a person to become whole. This is a psychological process of integrating the conscious with the unconscious while still maintaining conscious autonomy. Individuation was the central concept of Analytical Psychology.
Jung collaborated with Sigmund Freud and they supported each others theories. In Jung’s famous book “The Psychology of Unconscious” he introduced different from Freud’s views on unconscious and their professional relationship ended.
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator assessment designed to measure psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions. These preferences were extrapolated from the typological theories originated by Carl Gustav Jung, as published in his 1921 book “Psychological Types“.
From Wikipedia:
Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers were original developers of the personality inventory. They began creating the indicator during World War II, believing that a knowledge of personality preferences would help women who were entering the industrial workforce for the first time identify the sort of war-time jobs where they would be “most comfortable and effective The initial questionnaire grew into the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which was first published in 1962. The MBTI focuses on normal populations and emphasizes the value of naturally occurring differences.
The primary theory behind the MBTI is that each person’s personality fits into only one of 16 types. These categories are based on four features of personality, each consisting of two opposite preferences. According to the theory, all people have an innate preference that determines how they will behave in all situations.
The four dimensions are:
Favorite world: Do you prefer to focus on the outer world or on your own inner world? This is called Extroversion (E) or Introversion (I).
Information: Do you prefer to focus on the basic information you take in or do you prefer to interpret and add meaning? This is called Sensing (S) or Intuition (N).
Decisions: When making decisions, do you prefer to first look at logic and consistency or first look at the people and special circumstances? This is called Thinking (T) or Feeling (F).
Structure: In dealing with the outside world, do you prefer to get things decided or do you prefer to stay open to new information and options? This is called Judging (J) or Perceiving (P).
From Myers-Briggs foundation website:
This is the second post in 3 post series on how to discover and become aware of personal talents through self-assessments.
In my first First post I covered Kolbe Assessment. Please read my last post to find out more about Kolbe.
Today I will cover Strength Finder 2.0 assessment.
Let’s get right into it and find out what is about and is it worth to bother to take the test.
Test is provided by Gallup Research Organization. Gallup has studied human nature and behavior for more than 70 years.
Gallup’s reputation for delivering relevant, timely, and visionary research on what people around the world think and feel is the cornerstone of the organization.
How did I find out about them?
I did some research on Amazon some time ago and discovered a book by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton “Now, Discover Your Strengths“.
Marcus Buckingham worked for Gallup organization as a Sr. Researcher. He is not longer with them. He opens his own company The Marcus Buckingham Company. You can get more information about him here.
Marcus Buckingham spent years interviewing thousands of employees at every career stage. He is widely considered one of the world’s leading authorities on employee productivity and the practices of leading and managing.
According to Marcus:
Companies that focus on cultivating employees’ strengths rather than simply improving their weaknesses stand to dramatically increase efficiency while allowing for maximum personal growth and success.
Marcus Buckingham has been the subject of in-depth profiles in The New York Times, Fortune, Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal.
Donald O. Clifton, Ph.D., was cited by the American Psychological Association as the Father of Strengths Psychology and the Grandfather of Positive Psychology. He was a chairman of Gallup, Inc., and he invented the Clifton Strengths Finder assessment.
It is not a big secret that most people are not aware of their personal talents and therefore do not live to their full potential. I was totally miserable trying to figure out why I didn’t like my job or why can’t I follow through on certain subjects. I wanted to figure out why I do things the way I do it. I wanted to find out about my talents, then refine them and turn them into strengths. It is an ongoing process of refining personal talents and it should never end.
Although there are multiple ways to uncover personal talents, taking perosnal tests is the easiest way to do that. It takes most guesses out to the picture. People spent decades figuring out the question of talent. Now we can take advantage of all of their research. It is incredible.
If you into self-development and personal growth field, you most likely already tried to identify ways to discover what you most good at. I am the same. I tried to figure stuff out about myself for years. I discovered a lot of things about me and my personality. Taking various assessments helped me to become much clearer on what my talents are which brought me to totally new level of understanding myself.
Here are the 3 assessments I found most effective that work great to uncover your personal talents:
1. Kolbe Index A Assessment
2. Strength Finder 2.0
3. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
Today I want to talk about one of the assessments I took and you can take too to get clear on your innate talents. It is Kolbe Assessment. Lets take a look on what is about and is it worth it or not to take the test.
Talent is defined as any recurring pattern of thought, feeling or behavior that can be productively applied
Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton. Now, Discover Your Strengths.
What most successful people have in common? I mean really successful people who the best in what they do, people like: Michael Jordan, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet. What make them so special? Maybe Michael Jordan was born with basketball player written all over his face? Was he gifted player from birth or he acquired all of his skills through practice? Do inborn talents have anything to do with that?
The real question we want to answer here is: Do each of us born with special natural talents or we acquire everything through practice and repetition?
Recently I came across a blog post “How to be great: rising above the talent myth”. In this post writer argues with the fact that we born with special talents and insists that everything we acquire is through practice and repetition. Also he point out to article written by Geoffrey Colvin, senior editor in Fortune Magazine. He wrote a book “Talent is overrated.”
Geoffrey wrote:
Scientific experts are producing remarkably consistent findings across a wide array of fields. Understand that talent doesn’t mean intelligence, motivation or personality traits. It’s an innate ability to do some specific activity especially well.
Definition described by Geoffrey assumes that talent something external. Activity to do well is an external factor, not internal.
Welcome, if you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!I came across Scott Young’s post “Should You Work on Your Strengths or Weaknesses?” It is good post and it makes point that we need to focus on passion and not on strength.
First it didn’t make sense to me, [...]
In my last post I cover several most important Leverage Points and how to take advantage of them. If you don’t read my previous article, please click on Information Age or How To Avoid The Biggest Mistake Most People Make and read it.
One of the leverage points is importance to know your strengths, or to me more precise, your talents so you can gain advantage of them.
What the key to have fulfilled, happy and worry free living? It is knowing what your are good at (your natural talents) and being able to take advantage of this by matching those knowledge with choosing your business, life partner, friends, team members…. Choices are limitless.
But the first step is to know what you really good at.
Do you know your talents?
You would be surprised on how many people wouldn’t be able to answer this question.
According to Gallup study, after surveying 10 millions of people they find out that 7 million oft them don’t have an opportunity to focus on what they do best. They stating that people who are not playing to their strengths 6 times less likely to be engaged on their job. Those people are completely different people when they not playing to their strength.
This is pretty scary. You are probably heard that in US more people dying on Monday mornings around 8- 9 Am then in any other time. Job unsatisfaction is really a big issue. Why do you thinks this happening? It is simply because most people are in the wrong place and doing things they shouldn’t be doing in a first place.
photo credit: FredArmitage
As you may be aware we are living in time of crisis right now. At least we been told we are. Almost Everyone talk about it. Even if you like me and don’t watch a TV, you probably hear word crisis everywhere you go. People complaining about loosing their jobs, lack of security, job cuts, low income potential, economy suck and on and on and on…
Does everything that bad for real or there is someone who thriving in those times and shoveling even more money, having even more opportunities available then ever before?
If you look in world of Internet, it seems like there are so much different opportunities available, it is ridiculous. You do not even have to have your own business, product or service. You can promote others people products, do various projects for others.
Multiple opportunities become available all the time and number is growing each day. More and more people start to realize that job security is simply a joke. It is just do not exist anymore. More and more people thinking about going in business for themselves so they don’t have to depend on someone for their income.
If there are so many opportunities available then why so many of us struggling to meet the end needs and a lot of us afraid to even start a business in one form or another?
According to Michael E. Gerber in his famous book “E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It” he stated that 40% of business failed in a first year, and from those that remained 80% failed in the next 5 years. He discusses the several key reasons why it is happening and what you can do to avoid it.
The basic ideas of this brilliant book is that you should spend more time working on your business instead of working in your business.
In other words
