Empowering career search and enrichment

Written by Catherine Rains

Even though I don’t always guess accurately (although I’m pretty darn good!), my guesses help me to quickly form a hypothesis as to how I can be most effective with the person in front of me, or with the group I’m working with. For instance, if I observe behavioral cues that indicate a new client might prefer Thinking, I will flex my Feeling preference to Thinking so that my communication with them will be more effective. So I will get right to business at the beginning of a meeting with someone who prefers Thinking, rather than establishing a personal connection first, which is what I prefer with Feeling. If my guess is wrong, and they really have a Feeling preference after all, they will usually divert our business discussion at some point to establish that personal connection early on in the discussion. People who prefer Thinking also want a personal connection, but they usually want this after the purpose of the meeting is fully addressed.

Guessing type helps us to be more effective in working with all types, rather than just our own*. Knowing what a person prefers shows us when and how to flex when the situation indicates that the opposite of our preferences would be more appropriate. 

So when do you flex to your opposite preferences? I would love to hear your stories about when you flex to be more effective in both your professional and personal lives.

*It is important to understand that you cannot assess a person's type based merely on type cues; having the person take an assessment and giving them a proper interpretation is always recommended. The point of the blog is to try to understand how to pick up on certain type cues when in the absence of giving someone an assessment and self-verification, such as in a job interview.



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 Written by Catherine Rains

I was recently teaching the MBTI® Certification course in Kansas City, and after 2 hours together on the first day of the course, I asked the group to guess my MBTI preferences. Much to my delight, they guessed 3 of the 4 letters wrong. They might have guessed incorrectly because some in the room were just beginning to learn type, however many in the group already knew type quite well prior to the first day and they guessed wrong as well. They couldn’t pick up my type because I was only showing them one of my preferences, which is the one they picked up correctly. I was purposely flexing my type to the opposite of my preferences because it was appropriate to do so. In that situation, I needed to present complex material in a verbal, enthusiastic, concrete, linear, objective, timely and structured manner because that is what was required of me for those two hours.


So did the class fail at guessing type? Actually they demonstrated that they could already pick up type accurately, assuming the person they were guessing was showing their true type. When I am asked to guess someone’s type, which often happens when people find out I teach type, I always begin by saying I can accurately guess assuming they are showing me their best fit type. All I can really do is look for behavioral cues that would indicate a person’s preferences, and if they aren’t behaving in a way that would indicate their type, I will also guess incorrectly. So when guessing type, we need to be careful because all we can really do is look for behavioral cues, and then make a guess based on what we are observing.

So what is the value in guessing type? We’ll explore this question next week, but I would love to hear your perspective on this in the meantime. What do you think?

*It is important to understand that you cannot assess a person's type based merely on type cues; having the person take an assessment and giving them a proper interpretation is always recommended. The point of the blog is to try to understand how to pick up on certain type cues when in the absence of giving someone an assessment and self-verification, such as in a job interview.