You, Me & God

How Personality Type Influences How We “Do Relationships”

For The Spring Growth Group season at Fair Oaks Church, I will be leading a study group on how our personality Type influences how we “do relationships.” This group study is a follow up to the Family Relationships/MBTI Workshops that I’ve conducted at Fair Oaks Church and will build on the foundation of personality Type to explore our relationships with God and each other. Key topics in our discussions will be marriage, family dynamics and spiritual growth.

Because this study is a continuation of the material taught in the MBTI workshops, the participants who sign up must already have a foundation and knowledge of MBTI and Type. It’s not necessary to have gone through one of my workshops, but they need to have gone through the MBTI with a qualified administrator (not just one of those free online tests), they need to know their 4-letter type and have validated that type (meaning they know enough about it to have affirmed it is a true and accurate type for them) and be hungry to learn more and be stretched in their spiritual and relationship journeys.

It will not be necessary to purchase a book for this Growth Group - although you’ll probably feel compelled to before we get to the end of it. I will be supplying the participants with books-on-loan from my personal library for the duration of the Growth Group. The idea is that each participant has something different that they want to get out of this deeper study – perhaps it’s about marriage, parenting, work, spiritual growth, or just more about self – so the participants will be able to choose a book from one of those many topics that will speak to their individual angle of Type as we go through a dichotomy-by-dichotomy discussion at each of our sessions.

So here’s what it will look like (for all you “J” types who need a list and schedule):

When: Every other Wednesday 6:45 to 8 p.m.

Where: Fair Oaks Church Chapel

Session 1: Wednesday, May 4th – Group introductions and discussion of our own type. Selecting the book(s) we each want to use throughout the study.

Session 2: Wednesday, May 18th – Group discusses the Introversion/Extroversion dichotomy.


Session 3: Wednesday, June 1st – Group discusses the Sensing/iNuition dichotomy.

Session 4: Wednesday, June 15th – Group discusses the Thinking/Feeling dichotomy.

Session 5: Wednesday, June 29th – Group discusses the Judging/Perceiving dichotomy and wrap up the study.

Growth Group Resources – The MBTI Lending Library

The following books will be made available to the group participants throughout the study. Participants are welcome to take the books home, highlight in yellow or underline in pencil, switch books out from week-to-week if the one they picked isn’t hitting the mark, whatever helps make the most of the study.

16 Ways to Love Your Lover, Kroeger, Otto & Thuesen, Janet M., New York, NY: Delacorte Press, 1994, ISBN 0-385-31031-5

Differing Gifts: Understanding Personality Type, Myers, Isabel B. & Myers, Peter B., Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press, 1980, ISBN 0-89106-064-2

How We Belong, Fight and Pray: The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator as a Key to Congregational Dynamics, Edwards, Lloyd, New York, NY: Alban Institute, 1993, ISBN 1-56699-114-5

Just Your Type: Create the Relationship You’ve Always Wanted Using the Secrets of Personality Type, Tieger, Paul D. & Barron-Tieger, Barbara, New York, NY: Little, Brown & Co., 2000, ISBN 0-316-84569-8

Knowing Me, Knowing God, Exploring Your Spirituality with Myers-Briggs, Goldsmith, Malcolm, Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1997, ISBN 0-687-01705-X
Life Types, Hirsh, Sandra& Kummerow, Jean., New York, NY: Warner Books, 1989, ISBN 0-446-38823-8

Looking at Type and Spirituality, Hirsh, Sandra Krebs & Kise, Jane A.G., Gainesville, FL: Center for Applications of Psychological Type, 1997, ISBN 0-935652-30-2

MotherStyles: Using Personality Type to Discover Your Parenting Strengths, Janet P. Penley, Diane Eble, 2006 Distributed Product, ISBN 0738210455

Nurture by Nature: Understanding Your child's Personality Type And Become a Better Parent, Tieger, Paul D. & Barron-Tieger, Barbara, Toronto, ON: Little Brown, 1997, ISBN: 0-316-84513-2

Personality Type and Religious Leadership, Oswald, Roy M. & Kroeger, Otto, Washington, D.C., Alban Institute, 1988, ISBN - None, Lib. Of Congress - 88-70758

Personality Type in Congregations: How to Work with Others More Effectively, Baab, Lynne M., New York, NY: Alban Inst., 1998, ISBN1-56699-193-5

Please Understand Me: Character & Temperament Types, Keirsey, David, & Bates, Marilyn, Del Mar, CA: Prometheus Nemesis, 1978, ISBN 0-9606954-0-0

SoulTypes: Finding the Spiritual Path That Is Right for You, Hirsh, Sandra Krebs & Kise, Jane A.G., New York, NY: Hyperion, 1998, ISBN 0-7869-8289-1

The Art of Speedreading People, Tieger, Paul D. & Barron-Tieger, Barbara, New York, NY: Little, Brown & Co., 1998, ISBN 0-316-84525-6

Type Talk at Work: How the 16 Personality Types Determine Your Success on the Job, Kroeger, Otto & Thuesen, Janet M., New York, NY: Delta, 1993, ISBN 0-440-50928-9

Who We Are Is How We Pray: Matching Personality and Spirituality, Keating, Charles J., Myrtle, CT: Twenty-third Publications, 1987, ISBN 0-89622-321-3

Your Personality and the Spiritual Life: Understanding Who You Are Can Deepen Your Relationship with God, Johnson, Reginald, Gainesville, FL: Center for Applications of Psychological Type, 1999, ISBN 0-935652-47-7

Typological Shortcuts – A Cautionary Tale

On line tests, emailed results and other MBTI fails

In my workshop travels, I’ve encountered a lot of people who tell me they’ve “done the MBTI” before.

80% of the time that means:

• they’ve taken a free online test that gave instant results with no explanation or application (other than to tell them that Harry Potter is their Type too!)
• they took the test in college in the placement office and the administrator just handed them the results with no explanation (other than to tell them what major they should choose)
• they took it with their employer who just handed them their results with no explanation (other than to tell them what career track they should be on)

Most of the time these experiences were unmemorable … or memorably bad because they felt pigeonholed into something or someone that they didn’t feel fit quite right.

For the other 20%, they had a decent experience with an appropriate delivery method (meaning a coach, counselor or trainer actually walked them through a self-discovery/self-assessment processes) and they actually remembered their 4-letter type, knew what it meant and how it related to them and felt the explanations were right on.

I wish more people had that kind of experience … I believe the people who experience one of my sessions or workshops would tell you it’s the only way for the MBTI to have meaning and impact. Otherwise, what’s the point of doing it at all? What’s the value of knowing you’re an ENFP or ISFJ or WXYZ if you don’t know what that means, why it matters, how it impacts those around you and how you can use it to grow… grow professionally, grow spiritually, grow academically?

So what’s wrong with the free online test?
From the time the MBTI went public in 1942 after Katharine Briggs and her daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers, spent more than a decade vetting and perfecting the precise language used in the questions to indentify preferences in an unbiased way, professional psychometricians have continued to revise and perfect it to improve the accuracy and validity of the tool. Today the Center for Applications of Psychological Type (CAPT) owns the proprietary rights to the questions.

That means that the questions you see on the free online “MBTI” tests are not the actual MBTI questions. They can’t be. That means whoever wrote the questions had to come up with their own questions which don’t have a professional team of psychometricians and nearly 70 years of refining to ensure unbiased results. Even if a seasoned and trained type practitioner like myself took the original MBTI questions and changed them just enough not to get sued by CPP or CAPT, I would destroy the integrity of what makes the questions work as a whole and in combination with each other.

Additionally, my own preferences as an INTJ would certainly influence how I go about changing those questions and could bias them either toward or (in over compensation) away from INTJ answers and end up with an unusual number of INTJ or ESFP results. Of course only I would notice that. The unsuspecting taker of the test only knows they tested as an INTJ and will probably blow off the validity of the “whole MBTI thing” because the description doesn’t seem to fit them.

Okay, so give me the real MBTI and just email me the results.
I get this request at least once for every workshop I run. I understand that not everyone has time to sit through a 4-hour workshop or a 1-hour personal session with me, but the MBTI preference inventory (or “test”) isn’t really the determinant of what someone’s Type is. The self-identification process that an MBTI practitioner walks someone through is what determines the most accurate assessment of preferences and 4-letter type. The test is just a validation tool to affirm what a person has already decided without it.

And here’s the bigger secret… the tests aren’t always accurate. Okay, that’s not really a secret. CPP reports that their most current version of the MBTI inventory has a 90% reliability. That’s actually 10 – 20 points higher than any other personality inventory out there, but it does leave room for error. There are additional factors that could influence an even greater disconnect between the self-determined results and the test results but in my experience at least half of the participants in any given workshop or session I conduct have at least one letter different if not two. If a person doesn’t have the context and information from the workshop, how will they recognize if or which letters might be wrong and identify which one(s) make more sense?

For someone looking for a quicker yet reliable way to explore their Type without actually interacting with another human being, there is a self-driven on-line “test”/workshop combo that is an authentic MBTI (endorsed by CPP and the Myers & Briggs Foundation) but it is $60.00 per test and it still takes an hour to go through the whole module.

Whenever possible, I personally try to offer the MBTI at no cost to the participant. A company might hire me to come in and do a workshop for their employees so the company will pay the fee but the participants get the experience at no cost. If I use it in a counseling situation, I’m usually already compensated for my time so the MBTI is just an added tool I can “throw in” without charging extra for it. If you ever have the chance to do the MBTI with a Certified Practitioner and it’s FREE…? DO IT! It’s going to cost a minimum of $60 to do the MBTI with a legitimate online tool and a company who hires me to come out and do a half-day workshop is going to pay anywhere from $800 - $2000 (depending on the size) so free is always better than that.

One last note… when I went through my certification process, it was drilled into us that we could not just hand someone their results (because that’s not the true determination of their type) we have to walk them through the discovery process for self-determination to reach their conclusion about their 4-letter Type. It’s actually written into our agreement with CPP that authorizes us to purchase and administer the test. If anyone does administer an MBTI and does just hand over the results, they do so in violation of their covenant with CPP which would make me question their ethics. Do you really want someone with questionable ethics analyzing and determining YOUR personality preferences?

Do the workshop!

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A Journey’s Intermission

Two and a half years, 60 credit hours, a 32 page petition, 3 character references and a 4 week review/ waiting period and it’s finally official! I’m adding a few new letters after my name: MCLC – Master Christian Life Coach!

When I finally put the postage on that 32 page packet, the last step in my process after completing the course work, and put it in the mail box, there was a great sense of accomplishment. In a way, it felt like a journey’s end, a finished work. But the whole purpose of the accomplishment was to pave the way for a new journey, a future journey.

Certainly, I do a lot of coaching in my current occupation – the skills these classes have given me will (and have) come in handy – but having formal credentials are for a calling of another sort. God has blessed me with many gifts in this area and he seems to keep putting people in my path who need someone with these particular gifts. I believe He’s been trying nudge me in this direction for quite a while.

So I do a lot of coaching (much of it pro bono) on the side. I do have a really good “day job” that I love – good people I work with, a non-profit with a mission I believe in – but in my spare time, I take a client or two as God leads me. This fulfills my purpose in a way a job just can’t.

About six years ago when I began my journey to earn my BCBC credintial (Board Certified Biblical Counselor) I seriously entertained the idea of going into Christian counseling full time, but that wasn’t God’s plan for me at the time. Working in the “real” world in a secular environment gives me so much more opportunity to witness that I might not have otherwise and I have seen God’s hand in my placement there.

But at some point, when I retire from the business world, I’ll be well equipped to pursue my passion of helping people. In the meantime I know I can count on God to keep putting people in my path who need my help and it brings me great joy to oblige.