MTBI Consulting

What is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®?

The MBTI® is a personality assessment that was designed to assist both individuals and organizations. It assists individuals by helping them to better understand their own personalities and how their personalities affect both their personal and professional life. It can assist companies as they attempt to create a corporate culture that is productive and emphasizes quality communication. It can also be used to by both employers and employees to ensure that every employee reaches their full potential within their job and part of their team.

How MBTI Works?

The MBTI® has its foundational roots connected with the work of Swiss Psychoanalyst Dr. Carl Jung. Jung believed that all humans are born with innate preferences of how they process and experience the world around them. These innate preferences are influenced by one’s environment, and are fluidly shaped over the lifespan of the individual. His theory is detailed in his belief that there are two opposite ways that we prefer to take in information and make decisions. The MBTI® was developed during the years after World War I by Katherine Cook-Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs-Myers. These two women took the unfinished work of Dr. Jung and formulated into a useable format to represent his theory that, although we all have the ability to use all of the preferences, we each tend to have our favorite way to take in information and make decisions.

The MBTI® ask a series of forced-answer questions that narrow the two choices in each of the four preference pairs into one that appears to be your preference for the pair. The results of the inventory are summarized into a combination of four letters, such as ESTJ or INFP, (commonly referred to as Type), that will give you and others a clearer picture of your personality type and how you interact with the other people in the world. Each Type shares patterns of behavior that may be personified in a snapshot or a profile of the represented combination. There is a total of sixteen personality Types represented in the MBTI® Model.

There are four preference pairs representing a total of eight preferences.
Extraversion (E) or Introversion (I): Opposite ways to direct and receive energy
Sensing (S) or Intuition (N): Opposite ways to take in information
Thinking (T) or Feeling (F): Opposite ways to decide and come to conclusions
Judging (J) or Perceiving (P): Opposite ways to approach the outside world

Why Use MBTI?

The MBTI® has proven its worth in the world of psychology and business, and it meets the standards of reliability and validity for a psychological assessment. Millions of people have taken the assessment, and it is widely used not only in the U.S, but in the United Kingdom and other countries. In fact, the MBTI® has been translated into almost 30 different languages. After 60 years of empirical research and use, the tool continues to withstand the tests of reliability and validity.
One of the main reasons why the assessment is widely used for both personal and professional growth is because of the neutrality in which the MBTI® reports the individual’s preferences and corresponding behaviors and motivators. The assessment doesn’t measure competency or skill. It doesn’t determine if there are abnormalities in a person’s personality. It doesn’t normalize certain individuals based on their results. Its basic core use is to help an individual determine their preferred way of processing the world around them and making decisions and coming to conclusions. No matter what the results say, all sixteen types have their own uniqueness and contribution to the world. All preferences are good, and all individuals have access to all the preferences. It is important to note that, just as in the case of any valid personality assessment, the MBTI® helps an individual learn more about themselves, but it only serves as one of many self-awareness tools. Humans are complex, and there isn’t an assessment available that would 100% fit any one individual.