Enterprise Leadership - Mbti

200912 Enterprise Leadership Module 2

• understand personality and how it relates to you
• apply concepts of self-awareness and mindfulness in work practices
• understand ‘soft skills’ in relation to the future world of work.
• Being a firefighter is strenuous and difficult, and requires unique physical and psychological traits. Often, firefighters are required to exercise initiative. Working in teams, they will make important decisions that impact, not only their own lives, but also those of their team members. Firefighters are often the first at the scene of accidents and other traumatic events. Emergency organisations, such as fire brigades, need to ensure the well-being of firefighters to counter the threat of psychological stress such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Part of the New South Wales Fire Brigade recruitment process is extensive psychometric testing
• In this module, you will look at one type of psychometric testing: the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). With increasing numbers of university graduates outstripping the demands of the workforce, psychometric testing is becoming the first hurdle that most occupations will require from you (either as a participant or as a tester). The personal inventory assessment is a collection of psychometric tests that allow you to understand more about yourself, your characteristics and how you work with others. It also helps you identify areas for development. Including results of these tests in your e-portfolio or your résumé will give a prospective employer an indication of your performance. You can also talk comfortably about the things that you have done to improve yourself.

2.3 Individual behaviour and workplaces

Individual behaviour and workplaces

• When we consider individual behaviours and workplaces, we need to understand that there is a great difference between what knowledge is overt (open and obvious) in an organisation and what is covert (concealed) knowledge. Very often this is referred to as explicit (stated clearly) and tacit (implied without being stated) knowledge. Those of you who explore organisational learning and development will learn about tacit and explicit knowledge in detail. 

Attitudes

The role of attitudes is extremely important. Attitudes are composed of three basic elements:

1. Cognition—belief system.
2. Affect—feelings and emotions.
3. Behaviour—actions and responses.

Attitudes affect communication (verbal and non-verbal) in the workplace and in your personal life. You should be experts at what is said overtly as well as read body language to understand nuance of language and how it is being used.

In exploring attitudes, we need to consider the nature of prejudice and bias, and the use of stereotyping to exhibit power and control. Often there is a great gap between personal attitudes and societal attitudes. Have a look at genuine—and confronting—personal attitudes in this excerpt of the documentary series, First Contact.

 As an example of negative stereotyping, when people were surveyed regarding their attitude towards people with disabilities, results showed personal attitudes tended to be more negative than their societal attitudes. This is generally the case because societal attitudes are often based on political correctness rather than personal experience.

Service companies look extensively at attitudes. This is highlighted in the case study of Singapore Airlines. Singapore Airlines staff strive to achieve minimal negative feedback from customers because it goes on their company record. The negative feedback is investigated thoroughly and can lead to them being removed from flight schedules for a period of time. Companies with high standards of service take these aspects of attitudes and behaviour seriously.

Machiavellianism

Even if you have never come across the term before, Machiavellianism is something that you may have encountered from time-to-time in your professional and personal lives. In the 15th century, Niccolò Machiavelli wrote a book called The Prince that details the case for gaining power to manipulate people. You will find that it is still common (both in organisational contexts and in personal behaviour) to control, intimidate and sometimes even blackmail individuals, group or organisations. Emotional blackmail or threatening someone with unethical behaviour are clear examples of Machiavellianism.

If you have seen the movie about the creation of Facebook by Mark Zuckerberg (The Social Network) or followed the careers of other entrepreneurs, you will know there is a fine line between being an entrepreneur and a Machiavellian leader. Consider what it takes to operate at this level without doing it 'at any cost'.

2.4 Personality indicator testing

Myers-Briggs personality test 

This personality test was developed to make the theory of human psychological types, as defined by Carl Jung, practical and understandable to people without a psychology background. This test promotes the understanding that seemingly random variation in behaviours between people is consistent due to the basic differences in the way individual people prefer to use methods of perception and judgement (The Myers & Briggs Foundation 2017).

What does it measure?

Jung identified four dichotomies in his theory of profiling human psychological types; it is these four dichotomies the Myers-Briggs personality test is based upon. Your personality profile is measured against your preference for each of the following dichotomies:

• Favourite world—whether you prefer the outer or inner world, represented as Extraversion (E) or Introversion (I).
• Information—how you prefer to interpret information, represented as Sensing (S) or Intuition (I). 
• Decisions—your preference on how you like to make decisions, represented as Thinking (T) or Feeling (F).
• Structure—when dealing with the outside world, your preference in how to understand a situation or scenario, represented as Judging (J) or Perceiving (P).

2.5 The Johari window model

• The Johari Window Model is a psychometric test that identifies communication styles. It is also recognised as an edumetric test. By taking the test you learn to think about things that may not have been in the forefront of your mind, and it might lead you to research more of these aspects.
• The Johari Window Model is about identifying interpersonal communication style, and it addresses authenticity in communication—how fake or real things are. For example, Keeping Up with the Kardashians is not an authentic show. They are staged life events for public consumption and for ratings. We come across a lot of this in communication. We have facades that, when examined, are hollow behind. And certainly we put on masks when we are dealing with people.

The Johari Window

There are four main quadrants in the Johari Window, and this diagram will allow you to explore them in detail.

Known to self & others

Behaviour

The self we present to the world. The way we align our behaviour to present our personality in the four dimensions of Empathy, Dependability, Analysing and Activity.