Appreciating Differences - Jack Falt - Ottawa area, Ontario, Canada

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Book Review by Jack Falt

Berens, Linda et al, Quick Guide to the 16 Personality Types in Organizations, Huntington Beach (now Fountain Valley), CA: Telos Publications, 2001, ISBN 0-9712144-1-7, 44 pp.

This book is the first in a series of applications booklets for use in follow-up with the MBTI® instrument or any of the other Jung/Myers personality type models. It is intended as a handout to be given when presenting to corporate clients. Most of the booklet is devoted to two pages for each of the sixteen types. However, there are a couple of pages briefly describing the meaning of personality and the importance of finding one’s best fit type.

Each type description includes a paragraph by various authors on the following topics:
Snapshot (short descriptions) by Linda Berens
When Solving Problems by Linda Berens
Styles of Leadership by Roger Pearman
Creative Expression by Marci Segal
On a Team by Linda Ernst and Melissa Smith
• Naturally Being on a Team
• Teamwork Style
• Potential Blind Spots
• To Help Them Succeed
Dealing with Your Stress by Sue Cooper
How You Learn by Linda Berens
For Your Career Mastery by Charles Martin
Reminders for Personal Growth by Dario Nardi
Also listed for each type is its temperament, interaction style and cognitive process (type dynamics).

In an appendix there is some information on the eight MTR-i™ team roles as developed by Steve Myers. In a second appendix the two ways of organizing  the 16 types in a type table are discussed. The traditional format of Isabel Myers makes it easier to compare function pairs; and the temperament matrix of Linda Berens shows the relationship between temperaments, and how the four temperaments along with the four interaction styles give another logical arrangement of the 16 types.

This is quite an impressive collection of authors who are outstanding in the field of personality type. It is perhaps even more impressive to get this many people organized enough to write down their descriptions and put them together in one booklet. A workshop leader would find the variety of topics quite useful. They provide an overview that could be developed in later training sessions.

There are so many booklets available now that it is getting hard to choose which one to use as a handout, but I think this is one well worth considering. It is one that you will want in your own library for reference.

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