Me and Myers Briggs

Most people are familiar with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) personality inventory. I was initially skeptical of the concept. However, after taking numerous tests over the past 20 years and getting the same result, I’ve come to a reluctant acceptance.  I am ENTP.

ENTP=Extroverted, Intuitive, Thinking, and Perceiving

While I couldn’t find any faults with the test’s assessment, I never felt like it offered an adequate explanation of my professional personality. So I stored the information in the back corner of my mind. I only brought it out when required at various HR sessions and team building retreats. At least the Myers-Briggs test was consistent—if not completely compelling—in it’s descriptions.

Logical Explorer

It was not until coming across the writing of Donna Dunning that I realized that  Myers-Briggs was more than simply four letters to mull over. It can be used to as a framework to explain more rounded personality types. Donna identifies holistic personality types that brings together the four preferences and packages them together.  This makes it easy to highlight your personal brand.

According to Donna’s research, I am a Logical Explorer.

Explorers are constantly scanning the environment looking for associations and patterns. They naturally link ideas together and see connections. They like to focus on what could be rather than what is. They see many possibilities in everything they can sense, experience and imagine. Explorers are enthusiastically and outwardly focused on the future and like to initiate change. They see every situation as an opportunity to try something different.

[The Logical side] balance this approach of innovation and initiation with an internal focus on logic and analysis. They like to create a complex system of patterns and models by evaluating and critiquing new information.

Logical Explorers make up between 3-5% of the population.

The Possibilities are Endless

Coming across this description was a revelation to me. It joined two seemingly opposite personality traits: my desire to explore and find new information, and my ability to logically analyze and look for patterns in data.

The extroverted part of me enjoys spending a lot of time interacting with others and gathering new insights and ideas. However, the more introverted part needs downtime to reflect on and analyse the insights I have gathered. This also explains why I am night owl. The world seems to move a bit slower after midnight, allowing me the opportunity to think and ponder.

My intuitive side loves the spontaneity of new ideas and new people. Of not planning but ‘going wit the flow.’ While deadlines motivate me, I am a firm believer that the perfect is the enemy of the great. Most assignments are better viewed as iterations rather that completed projects. In other words—for the explorer in me—everything is a work in progress. Products can be improved upon in the future based on experience and feedback.

As a result, my ideal career would let me respond to ideas and people constantly. it would offer the freedom I need to explore and analyze to get great results. I enjoy dealing with internal and external clients in fast paced environments. I pursue solutions through analyzing, evaluating and recommending options. I like to work with diverse people and see new possibilities and new ways of doing things that help me not only with the challenge at hand but others as well

In Summary

Some of the traits of a Logical Explorer that I most identify with are:

• I like to work with and create new ideas.
• I make connections and see relationships between things and ideas.
• I would rather initiate and conceptualize projects than complete them.
• I anticipate, seek, and create change, and like to help others do the same.
• I balance innovation and initiation with an internal focus on logic and analysis.
• I like to create systems of patterns and models by evaluating and critiquing new information.
• I am as comfortable in a suit and tie as in sandals and t-shirts

So that’s me—or at least how I like to work—in 700 words or less. I hope you now have a better idea of how I operate; especially while working and writing.

I’d be interested to here from my readers what your Myers-Briggs personality typology is, and if you feel it is accurate.