An MBTI Christmas - Hollywood Holiday Character Type Table

You don't have to look very hard to find an MBTI type table that relates your preferences - or, four-letter "Type" - to a set of popular fictional characters. While intended to be a fun easy way to help people relate to their MBTI Type, I'm usually very skeptical of these tables.

Too often they are put together by non-type practitioners and are a poor representation of the actual characteristics of a Type; they make huge assumptions about about what's going on in the mind of a two-dimensional fictional character who's lines don't actually reveal all four of their preferences; it trivializes the real value of actually understanding preference and Type-theory. Of course, it doesn't help that nearly all of them represent the INTJ (my Type) as the evil villain, bad guy, or otherwise undesirable character.

I was delighted to find a Type Table recently that not only had solid matches on every one of the 16 characters, but even better, the INTJ wasn't a "bad guy." Check out this Type Table for the cast of "The Big Bang Theory" posted on http://www.graspingforobjectivity.com.

Now having restored hope in MBTI type tables and in a holiday mood, I searched high and low for an MBTI type table for our favorite Christmas-special characters but could not find one. Well! (...said the INTJ in my head) That must be corrected!

So here you have it, what apparently is the first Christmas Character MBTI Type Table! It was a whole lot more time consuming than I expected. Hope you enjoy!

Some interesting notes about the process...

While I might be the MBTI practitioner in the family, my husband is an ISFJ and his memory and retention of details is far superior to my conceptual "N" so he was a great partner to me in drawing on specific examples of a character's behavior that could narrow them to one preference or another. However... as we started the process, every warm and desirable character was "and ISFJ, of course." Sorry, honey - you don't get all the good guys and I get all the bad guys.

The INTJ on this chart is NOT a bad guy, villain or otherwise undesirable.

There were several Christmas characters that we "Typed" but did not end up using on the chart as we opted for one over another for whatever reason. Here are a few others we discussed:

Miracle on 34th Street (the original)
Kris Kringle* - - INFJ
*While there are several articles and posts out there "Typing" Santa Claus, they all seem to be focused on the general historical figure of Santa, not a specific movie/television version. We figured out pretty quickly that each Hollywood representation of Santa is different from another (and often influenced by the actor). If we looked hard enough, we could probably find a few more Santas of different Types, but I would imagine they'd all be Feelers. Well, except for Willy from "Bad Santa" who is an ISTP.

The Ref
Gus - ISTP
Lloyd - ISFJ
Rose - ENTJ

Christmas Vacation
Clark - ESTJ
Eddie - ESFP

Are there characters we missed? Any of these not feel like a "fit" for your type? If you have feedback, please share.

If you would like to re-post this Type Table on your own blog, feel free - just be sure to link back to this page, please.

Merry Christmas!
 

Managing Management

Over the last nine years I have had several management and business articles published in Parks & Recreation magazine. To my delight, several of those articles have been picked up or reprinted in other digital or print publications.

I enjoy writing (thus, this blog) but since it's not my full time job finding the time is a challenge.

If you've followed my blog for any period of time, you've probably noticed a little bit of digital dust collecting on it. Where I used to make a point of posting two to four times a month, I think it's dwindled to one to two times a year.

One contributor to the lack of writing here has been the increased writing elsewhere. In March of 2013, I was asked to write a regular monthly column in Parks & Recreation magazine called "Managing Management." This column is intended to offer advice and guidance to front-line managers who are trying to develop into leaders and has received quite a few positive reviews.


It occurred to me that the content for Managing Management is just as appropriate here as it is there, so I should probably cross-post the content.

Actually, since, as an INTJ, I tend to be long winded, there are always a few words that end up on the editing room floor (sometimes a few hundred) so the version you read hear may have bonus material you can't get in the magazine!

In the meantime, while I create a Managing Management site to consolidate the content, you can check out a few of the articles from here:

March 2013: It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time
April 2013:  Measuring Performance: Impact vs. Output
May 2013:  Death In The Workplace
June 2013:  Duty To Respond
July 2013:  A Black Swan Song For Unpaid Interns
August 2013:  Battlefield Leadership
September 2013:  From "One Of The Guys" To "The Man"
October 2013:  What Are You Being Paid?
November 2013:  Micromanagement (part 1 of 3)
December 2013: Micromanagement (part 2 of 3)

If there are any topics you'd like to see me write about, please don't hesitate to let me know. While the supply concepts that managers and leaders need to know is endless, I much prefer to focus on topics that are relevant to what readers are experiencing on the job right now.

Enjoy!