Empowering career search and enrichment

Last week I shared an activity called the “Sixteen-Room House Analogy for the Type Table” from our new MBTI® Practitioner’s Field Guide. As you may have seen, this is a simple activity to use with students to help them understand that type is not meant to box them in or be a “trap”.

The purpose of drawing a house is to help students understand that while they may stay in one room of the house most of the time, they likely visit the other rooms for different reasons. For example, the kitchen for when they are hungry or the living room to interact with guests or family, even if they don’t stay in those rooms for very long. Yet their favorite room in the house serves as their place to unwind and be themselves, and where they would spend the most time.

Just as how they visit these different rooms throughout the day, same goes for their type preferences. Even though they have chosen their “best fit” type, they must use the other type preferences in one way or another in order to effectively perform their daily duties at work, school, and even in their relationships. Therefore, their best fit type simply suggests that it is their “favorite room”.

You may find that as the day progresses and your students explore the other “rooms” or type preferences, they may tell you that they would like to “move” to a different room. In this case, you should support their decision as you want to make sure that they feel comfortable with what they have chosen from what they understand.

Written by Catherine Rains

I find that the most common reason for a student to get a slight result is that they did not understand the mindset from which to take the Myers-Briggs® (MBTI®) assessment. For instance, they might have been told to take the assessment from their most natural self, or their “shoes off self”, which is not inaccurate, but is easily misunderstood by students, as well as adults. So they look at the pairs of opposites, and see how they could do both depending on different environments – work, school, home, etc. Since everyone will use ALL the preferences depending on the situation, they end up splitting their vote, and answering on both sides of a scale, resulting in a slight score.

So how do you establish a mindset that reduces slight scores? Stay tuned to next week’s blog for my “perfect world” solution!

Written by Jim Larkin

What do you do to teach your students that their behaviors are not restricted to the definitions associated with their best-fit type?

One process that is often used when interpreting the Myers-Briggs® (MBTI®) assessment in a group context is using the Type Table to allow the group members a chance to see who shares their type and or even just one, two or three of their 4-letter type preferences. The Type Table is a great way to allow everyone to gain insights into their own preferences as well as the preferences of their friends or group.

Yet one common “pitfall” in trying to use the Type Table is that individuals feel trapped or labeled when they put their type in a “box” in the Type Table. One way to get around this response is to use the following activity which is included in the recently released MBTI® Practitioner’s Field Guide: “Sixteen-Room House Analogy for the Type Table”. This activity will help you explain type to your students and it should only take between 5 to 10 minutes.

Here is what you will need:

- Blank type table (you can purchase this, or simply draw it on a flipchart sheet)
- Flipchart and markers

Now tell your students that you know that many participants feel a little uncomfortable at this point because they feel like they are being “boxed in” once they are asked to sign in to their chosen best-fit type box. Let them know that this is not what type is about. Now simply draw a “roof” and a “chimney” above the type table once you have filled out each “room” with the 16 types (much like this example of a type table). You can then have your students enter their names to their corresponding box.

Next week in my last blog, I will provide some cues and advice on how this simple exercise will aid in helping to engage your students to better understand type.

Written by Catherine Rains

Although slight results can and do happen for all age groups, my experience is that students will get them more often. Why? There are three primary reasons, the first two of which have to do with maturity and not knowing themselves as well as someone in their 30’s+.


First, a student could be reporting what they do or how they were trained by parents, teachers, or their culture, rather than who they are. Second, a student could be reporting what they wished they were, or what they think they should be. Students would be more likely to look up to the so-called popular crowd and answer according to what they perceive would make them a member of that group, or what would earn their parents/teachers approval.

Your goal as an MBTI® Certified Practitioner is to help your students understand type to help them in all areas of their development—both while in school as well as beyond graduation. While understanding type can be easier for some more so than others, we know that those who have a harder time grasping it may need more resources from you. For that reason, CPP created the MBTI® Practitioner’s Field Guide. We will start this short three-blog series with an introduction to the guide and we will then provide you with an activity and instructions, pulled directly from it so you can see the value of it yourself.

Now, whether you are a seasoned user of the Myers-Briggs® assessment, or are just starting to use it with your students, you are more than likely to encounter unexpected situations such as:

- Your students are confused or uncomfortable with the thought of being “boxed” in to one of 16 types
- You are struggling with new and different ways to illustrate type
- You have delivered an introductory type workshop in a classroom (or outside) setting where the activities didn’t seem to work or resonate
- Your students use type to limit themselves and/or others or to stereotype

While the activities in this guide may seem to be geared for a corporate or organizational setting, they are just as applicable to students. Here are a few things that you will find within this guide:

- Ways to present and apply type for better understanding
- Tips for successfully negotiating some of the common stumbling blocks in type training
- Strategies for developing presentations and activities

In our next blog, we will share an activity from the MBTI® Practitioner’s Field Guide that you can use to help your students understand type.

 In early 2010 Dr. Ralph Kilmann started a blog series for CPP on various topics associated with the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI) that were published here on ICON Success. As coauthor of the TKI assessment, Dr. Kilmann has an unparalleled depth of expertise and experience with conflict management and the TKI tool and wanted to share his insight with you.

Now, on the 40th anniversary of the creation of the TKI assessment, Dr. Kilmann has taken those separate blogs and put them together in a single collection. As the world’s best-selling instrument for understanding how different conflict-handling modes, or styles, affect interpersonal and group dynamics, the TKI tool measures the frequency with which you use those five styles of behavior: competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding, and accommodating. The tool offers a pragmatic, situational approach to conflict resolution so that your needs, and the needs of others, can be met.

You can use this compilation with yourself as well as your students to become more aware of some fascinating nuances about using and interpreting the TKI assessment. Check out the last section where he talks about a key design issue for all assessments - the social desirability response bias - and discusses how the TKI was designed to minimize that issue. This feature provides a more accurate assessment and has contributed to the long-term success of the TKI tool.

Click here to read Dr. Kilmann’s Celebrating 40 Years with the TKI Assessment: A Summary of My Favorite Insights.