Roxanne,

Jungian archetypes like MBTI, DISC, Social Styles and many more have been around for a good long while, and are very useful in helping us understand why we do what we do, and why we perceive the world as we do. There are some important pieces here. First, there are billions of shadings of each style, and they are not immutable. For example, over time and experience, your preferred style, your home base as it were, may shift as you mature and evolve. While we tend to cotton to what makes us feel at home, the secondary and tertiary qualities can strengthen or weaken. Second, while we do have preferences, the real challenge and opportunity offered by these styles is to learn about, understand and adapt to others. Lots of people misunderstand this as trying to become another style. Not at all. It does mean that we might slow down our delivery, increase or decrease volume or speed, use more or less detail. Highly adaptive people are harder to peg because they are respectful of others’ styles and do their best to help others feel at ease. I’ve been teaching these styles for more than thirty years and continue to find them useful but not absolute. Perhaps what’s been least understood by folks who take these tests is that if I happen to discover that I’m an INTJ or ENFP, that doesn’t mean that the world now has to accommodate me and my preferences. It does mean that this helps me undersand myself, and why I might be in conflict with those around me. Too many people get their own profile and forget that the point is to help understand and get along with others, most particularly styles under stress. I wrote a piece about that a while back (not about MBTI, for that’s a little complex for most to remember easily) but the simpler DISC version. Good stuff. We can never see it enough, for we regularly forget.