Ok so I am still absorbing Friday and what took place. Personality profiling in the workplace. Being a true ENTP I am going to kick this one off and chip in where I feel the need. Basically we went to the countryside to an amazing wee pub with a great backroom (ooh er) the kind with a nice big table and china in a ye olde sideboard thing and a REAL fire. Hazel our therapist/organiser? Not sure of the terminology, arschlosch to titles. This talented individual known the NM peeps showed us some stuff about ourselves. I am overwhelmed. I shall end there for now. Sushi seems more appealing than writing blogs just now.
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Interestingly, Josh, Will, Jenni, Pat and I were all ENTPs.
Read our profile here
In true ENTP-style, they prefer to talk while thinking. Or before, it seems. ;)
And I thought us INFPs were cryptic…
it’s why i dislike typing my thoughts. they can’t keep up with me and i often make too many mistakes. i need to get it out there, superfast, and then it bed’s in.
As I said that afternoon, it was the most rewarding day and experience I’ve had in the entire history of NixonMcInnes. No doubt. No comparison. Sitting there as a whole team, there in our entirety, such nice, talented people, and finding out about ourselves and one another, and talking openly and honestly (Introverts included :). It was like the polar opposite of every cliched business team bonding sketch. Down to earth, real, honestly meant, open, a bit scary, funny, brilliant. Thank you :)
Thanks to all of you.
It was amazing to see how aware and professional the team is.
Healthy, helpful, funny, open and intelligent communication was the base to a structured analysis of how we can improve the way we work together.
Thank you to Hazel who facilitated the process. Brilliantly I might add.
I’ll never forget that day. It brought more knowledge to the team awareness.
I am looking forward to see the outcome of that day. I’ll apply the valuable lessons to my next email, on our next meeting or lunch together and they will be on my mind on the way to work.
I was very close to ENTPs. I am an ENTJ.
Thank you for your honesty. Thank you for sharing. I learn more about every one of you.
It was a historic day for NixonMcInnes.
I feel kinda weird interrupting what seems to be a very personal set of comments! :)
It seems like you had a really interesting day, but there’s no detail here as to what exactly happened. Was it just a MB analysis or much more than that? I’m very interested to know why the exercise came about, what you did and what the outcome was — it sounds amazing!
Thanks for sharing. It was not knowing what an ENTP was that made me look it up. I’m has been very interesting to read about the favoured career types of the ENTP. I may try my hand at ‘professional skateboarding’ – i’m 72!
Even more interestingly – I have the highest Extro in the company. Watch out :o)
What needs to happen next is we turn this information into something useful. Meetings and brainstorms need to be held with an array of personality types. This is not always possible and so Edward de Bono’s ‘six hats’ could be a good strategy for lateral thinking. This would make for more productive and collaborated meetings. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Bono_Hats
@Matthew Hill
Tom organised this as a team day out. Rather cleverly he emphasised that the day was going to be held in a pub (the Ram Inn @ Firle) and that food and booze and a country walk would be involved! Before we went we were emailed a form to fill out (Tom’s partner Hazel is a Myers-Briggs practitioner).
Once at the pub and settled into a rather cosy room, Hazel lead us through a series of exercises to understand the types and, more importantly, lead us in identifying our own character traits. She then handed out the results from the initial form and we compared and contrasted those with our own assessments. We broke out into groups composed of those with the same character types and ran through exercises to help us all understand how we prefer to communicate, how we learn best, what tasks we are naturally suited to.
For me it was less about the MB test itself and more about having a forum and a format that allowed an unusually open and honest conversation. We spend so much time together in the workplace, and yet we are a randomly selected, disparate group of people. We select our friends and partners (and learn to live with our families) but colleagues are just there and we have to choose how best to get along. This team day was really a helping hand in how to do this – for our own personal benefit, but also for that of the company (and as a by-product our clients).
I’m looking forward to seeing if / how it affects our day to day interactions but it certainly helped me view my colleagues in a new and illuminating way.
Sounds really good — a far cry from most other companies who simply want to hide anything real from ‘the workers’. And of course, good food and beer in a warm pub is always going to bring out the best in people. ;)
Now I’m disappointed I left!
As an ISTP, I’m still thinking about my response to this post. :)