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The MBTI Aspects of Communicating Online

Guest post by: Robert Whipple

Article Overview: We all have a personality style. Most of us know our MBTI Type. In communicating online it is helpful to remember the differences in Style as documented by the MBTI. This article gives specific information that will help.

The MBTI Aspects of Communicating Online

Since we usually know our readers when sending e-mails, we may even know their style type. A well-known and much-used tool for this purpose by Isabel Briggs-Myers and Katherine Cook Briggs, called the "Myers-Briggs Type Indicator" (MBTI). It is based on the work of Dr. Carl Jung, a protégé of Sigmund Freud.

Myers-Briggs creates an array, looking at four dichotomies. Through an extensive set of questions, you identify preferences on the four dichotomies and their relative strength. Your style is matched to one of sixteen categories in the array, based on combinations of the four dichotomies. Each of these combinations has a set of characteristics associated with it.

Extraversion/Introversion How you are energized and focus attention

Sensing/Intuition How you gather information

Thinking/Feeling How you decide things

Judging/Perceiving How you deal with the world

Studying your dominant style helps you recognize patterns of behavior. More importantly, understanding the style of others helps decode certain built-in conflicts between individuals. The instrument is helpful because it prescribes ways to deal with people's different styles.

The Myers-Briggs indicator has high validity, with data on thousands of people going back more than 50 years. It allows you to compare your preference data to other people's easily, with no distortion. It increases your self-awareness for the purpose of getting along with others more effectively. It also allows you to identify the source of problems in relationships.

Drake Beam Morin, Inc. has developed a set of helpful hints for e-mail communications that ties in with the MBTI.

"Once you have recognized your own communication style as well as that of others, you can determine the primary style of the people with whom you communicate on a regular basis. As you do this, you will become more sensitive to the strengths and blind spots associated with your own style of communicating with others."

When you e-mail sensors, people who pay close attention to the facts and details of their experience and rely heavily on what they can see, hear, touch, taste, and smell:

• Get to the point.

• Don't overanalyze.

• Be decisive; avoid minutia.

• Make brief, actionable recommendations.

• Be practical.

• Stay focused.

When you e-mail feelers, people who are most comfortable making decisions based on their own personal values and a strong need to empathize:

• Warm up your message; use greetings.

• Use the collaborative pronoun "we."

• Reassure them that you have considered "people aspects."

• How you state the idea is paramount.

• Tradition is very important.

• Harmony is key.

When you e-mail thinkers, people who are driven to make decisions based upon logic and impersonal analysis:

• Organize your thoughts.

• Be logical, fact based, and thorough.

• Flesh out the details.

• Demonstrate considered alternatives.

• Document your sources; cite statistics.

• Assume nothing; explain yourself.

When you e-mail intuitors, people who are much more interested in the meanings, possibilities, patterns, and relationships in what they perceive than they are in specific facts:

• Try an original approach.

• Relate your message to the big picture.

• Praise worthwhile suggestions.

• Get "out of the box" in your thinking.

• Be adaptive.

• Be creative.

Of course, you will actually use a blend of all these ideas since we all have a blend of styles. The outline is a good guide to help sharpen the focus of your methods once you know the primary style type.

If you do not know the MBTI category of your reader, it is still helpful to keep track of the kinds of communication methods that work for an individual and those that do not. Build a mental "profile" of your reader so you can communicate on the most open channels.

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Article Tags: email, Leadership, MBTI, online, Style, Trust



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