‽istis reclaims knowing me, knowing you (weekending November 13th 2021)
This week as ‽istis again completed a Belbin assessment (1) as part of a new manager’s approach to trying to understand the team and the roles that we could play in helping (or hindering) effectiveness, ‽istis pondered ‘personality’ and how we might seek to understand the perhaps glorious, possibly frightening, maybe mysterious nature or nurture that is me and you....
‘Tests’, ‘assessments’ and ‘indicators’ abound (2) - just type ‘personality tests’ into a search engine and the extent will begin to be revealed - free, to purchase, for anyone, for professionals, only for those who are registered or trained to administer and interpret etc, etc...
Who am I? What am I? How am I? Where am I on a scale? What role do I play/could or should I play? How will I fit? Who might be my ideal partner? Which other roughly twelfth of the world’s population am I like and what will my day/week/month/future be? How do I learn? What is my intelligence? What is my intelligence type? What can explain what and how I do, think or feel? How do I explain problem-locus and solution focus (3) and what therapeutic approach might be congruent? What political party am I most in affinity with? How can I understand and relate to you better? Which of two kinds of people am I - one of those who think that there are two kinds of people in the world or one of those who don’t?!... (4)
...and on and on...
‽ Shaper, Implementer, Completer finisher, Co-ordinator, Team worker, Resource investigator, Plant, Monitor evaluator, Specialist (after Belbin)
‽ Extroverted - Introverted; Sensing - Intuitive; Thinking - Feeling; Judging - Perceiving (after Myers and Briggs) (5)
‽ Sanguine, Choleric, Melancholic, Phlegmatic (after Hippocrates) (6)
‽ Structured - Flexible, Sensitive - Tough-minded, Reactive - Stable (7)
‽ Kinaesthetic (body smart), Linguistic (word smart), Logical (number smart), Interpersonal (people smart), Intrapersonal (myself smart), Musical (music smart), Visual (picture smart) (8)
‽ Follower - Leader, Borrower - Lender (9)
‽ Freedom -- Determinism, Rationality -- Irrationality, Holism -- Elementalism -- Constitutionalism -- Environmentalism, Changeability -- Unchangeability, Subjectivity -- Objectivity, Proactivity -- Reactivity, Homeostasis, Knowability -- Unknowability (10)
All potentially extremely interesting, but perhaps leaving one with a sense of being at the far end of a scale that runs from ‘full of energy’ to ‘exhausted’!
And then, ‽istis wonders about the potential influences - the ‘why’ of how I am or you are. Nature and nurture may be offered as ends of a spectrum but ‽istis tends to find talk of ‘interactive equations’ and the territory in the middle sections of a continuum more helpful than the bi-polar ends (“oh, so you’re one of those sort of people!”).
Having gone through the hard work of undertaking learning-style inventories several times (11), ‽istis is aware that there seems to be a continuing strong tendency towards ‘reflector/theorist’ but hopes that there can be room for ‘activism’ and ‘pragmatism’ too.
After the pondering and the wonder-ing (perhaps there are 'wonder' - in both senses of the word - and 'appreciation' scales‽) just perhaps, possibly, maybe the thinking and the feeling leads to the doing, lest one is so ‘heavenly minded’ that one is ‘no earthly use’...
© Pistis
NB: further reflections and comments linked to this week’s theme and past blog
entries to be found on Twitter: replies, retweets (which don’t necessarily indicate approval, sometimes the very opposite!) and ‘likes’: @Pistis_wonders. ‘Follows’ and respectful comment and dialogue welcome...
For example: https://www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/research/dmg/tools-and-techniques/belbins-team-roles/
An article by Louis Menand in ‘The New Yorker’ suggests that there are more than 2,000 personality tests on the market in a $2bn industry https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/10/what-personality-tests-really-deliver
See ‘Brief Counselling: A Practical Guide for Beginning Practitioners’ Windy Dryden and Colin Feltham OUP ISBN10: 0335099726
With thanks to the article above. I am definitely the type of person who appreciates this joke!
https://www.truity.com/myers-briggs/story-of-mbti-briggs-myers-biography
https://www.thecolourworks.com/hippocrates-galen-the-four-humours/
‘Persona Bubble’ see: https://www.themuse.com/advice/14-free-personality-tests-thatll-help-you-figure-yourself-out
After Howard Gardner https://www.smartbrainpuzzles.com/blog/theory-of-multiple-intelligences/
https://www.inc.com/lolly-daskal/10-signs-youre-a-follower-instead-of-a-leader.html & http://shakespeare.mit.edu/hamlet/hamlet.1.3.html (neither says Polonius)
See Hjelle, L. A., & Ziegler, D. J. (1992). Personality theories: Basic assumptions, research, and applications (3rd ed.). Mcgraw-Hill Book Company.
https://vark-learn.com/the-vark-questionnaire/ (VARK styles) & https://www.open.edu/openlearn/ocw/pluginfile.php/629607/mod_resource/content/1/t175_4_3.pdf (Honey and Mumford styles)
