Book Review by Jack Falt
Rebel Eagle Productions has now created an interactive CD-ROM to help us understand each whole type, to help us get into the head of each type as much as it is possible. At the APT Conference 2004 in Toronto this past summer there was a booth demonstrating the CD-ROM. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to have it.
These are not sixteen little movies but something much more dynamic. They are a combination of original music, animated graphics, audio-video clips of actual people, resonant voice-overs and text. If you are a video game player, you will love checking out all the cool features. If you are not, you will surely be motivated to learn how to make it work so you can experience what each type is truly like.
Understanding and remembering each of the sixteen whole types is difficult for most practitioners, particularly when one is just starting out. Spending time with this program will give you a wider sense of what it is like to be each of the types. The unique way the material is presented will help you remember each type more vividly.
The introduction is quite dazzling. I have used it in an introduction to basic type with great success. It shows a head being bombarded with coloured lightening bolts. It is animated with Poirier’s voice doing the narration. The colours used are Jung’s colours that he assigned to the four functions. It conveys the sense that we are constantly being bombarded by pieces of information, and depending on our type we are more attuned to certain ones more than others.
This program has many uses. With a laptop computer and an LCD projector portions of the program can be used in basic and any other follow up presentations. The dynamic graphics will intrigue audiences and convey to them the essential concepts in a way that will stay in their minds. Participants will want to investigate the program on their own to learn more about their own types and the types of others. Any two people knowing one another’s type could use the program to have a much better understanding what it is like to live in one another’s world.
Using this program teams would be able to have a better perspective on where each member is coming from. They would also have a better idea what elements might be missing that would make their team more effective. Also, they may be able to understand what is in their organization’s culture that needs to be changed in order to attract the kind of people they need in order to be more successful.
William Bridges has written about how even organizations have a type. Think of how effective it would be to know what that type is conveying to the outside world and to the clients it attracts or repels.
Here is a program that we have been waiting for. It presents type in a way that no book can convey. Writers have urged us for a long time to think of a type as a whole type and not just a collection of four preferences. Now you can see each of these types presented in a vivid and memorable manner.