MBTI Conference Day 1

Today was an exciting, exhausting, and inspiring day at the MBTI Conference sponsored by CPP, the MBTI Club, and The Delta Associates.

The day began with an engaging and lively discussion by Dr. Richard (Nick) Grant. He is a big fan of temperament theory in conjunction with the MBTI, and even mapped the temperaments onto things like the 12 step programs, grief process, addiction recovery and addiction types. Few people can successfully transition from mapping temperament onto human sexual response straight into temperament in the Lord’s Prayer and books of the bible- but he did! He absolutely brought a new view to Jungian psychology and set the tone for the day. Including an interesting approach to using the MBTI to guide performance review questions. This topic deserves a separate future post.

Here are a few tid-bits I took from the presentation:

• Personality type is like a computer’s Operating System. There are 16 “human operating systems” and much like computers, when you connect two different operating systems, there is difficulty in communication.
• J’s create stress in life.
• Put a J kid in a P class and he’ll ask “Is this on the test?”
• Put a P kid in a J class and he’s labeled ADD.
• It is a misconception that only J’s make lists to plan their day. P’s do it too, they just lose the list.

Nest, Dr. Carol Kallendorf of The Delta Associates covered how to use the MBTI Step II. I video-taped this fantastic presentation and will post the video with additional slides created by the Delta Associates in the coming weeks as well.

Both Southwest Airlines and H-E-B were gracious enough to share how their unique organizations use the MBTI for various applications including Leadership, Team-Building, Coaching, Executive Coaching, Emergency Preparedness, Conflict Management, Change Management, and Stress Management. (Videos will be posted on this session later this week).

One of the more popular sessions was led by Jeff Johannigman who presented on using pop culture icons to illustrate personality preferences. He used clips from Star Wars, Star Trek, Parenthood, Shrek, and the X-Files to illustrate each of the 4 dichotomies of the MBTI. Then taking a temperament approach, we looked at the 4 main characters of various shows and plotted them into temperament styles (MASH, Sex and the City, Desperate Housewives, Harry Potter, The Wizard of Oz, etc.). Again…this topic deserves its own post and will be covered sometime next week.

Finally, Norma Barr of Barr and Barr discussed the issue of true dramatic personal change through the MBTI. Her stories were touching, emotional and amazingly salient examples of true type development out of tragedy, crisis and stress. Sometimes the worst moments in life can create the most dramatically positive life changes. No blog could do her stories justice, so you’ll definitely want to watch her presentation on video next week.

All in all, this has been an inspiring conference. I have material for months of blog posts, and have such a more deep appreciation for the application of the MBTI instrument.

My goal is to bring a 2 day conference like this to other areas of the United States. Would you come to a conference like this in Denver, Kansas City, or St. Louis? What would you like to see at a local MBTI Conference?

Tomorrow’s topics: Using the MBTI for Team-Building, Type and the 5 Dysfunctions of a Team, and using Type from an Artist perspective!

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