Mapping Community Archetypes to Myers-Briggs

Tara Hunt asks: "What's Your Archetype?" in a blogpost last month, which I only saw today.

Worth a read especially if you're interested in building online communities and have an interest in the Myers-Briggs classifications.

Based on my own recent Myers-Briggs test results, I'm apparently a Planner in Tara's line-up.

Planners - INTJ

Planners are your project managers and they are the best. A planner has the uncanny ability to imagine an event or an experience and account for every little detail. They are good delegators and hard workers. They are also extremely hard on themselves and strict perfectionists.

Planners expect a great deal from others and would not do well paired with Dreamers, Spectators or Networkers. To them, these types are flaky. Planners are people you want to pair with Workers and Organizers to move forward methodically on a project, especially an event.

From: What's Your Archetype?

And at some point several years in the past, I was more a Leader.

Leaders - ENTJ

Leaders can’t stand to let things idle for too long. As soon as there is an opening, they will come along and direct a project. Once in that steward position, there is no stopping the leader. If pointed in the right direction, Leaders will be your saviors in getting things done.

Leaders need to be teamed up with Creators and Caretakers in order to be effective. They may sometimes have good ideas, but quite often, they are too effective at leading people astray. Think the Pied Piper.

From: What's Your Archetype?

I find these archetype descriptions helpful to keep in mind, especially for those situations where I find myself part of a project where success is dependent on getting a multi-disciplinary team with very different personality types working well together.

Which Four-Letter Acronym are You?

Via Laura Spencer's Writing Thoughts blog:

Michael Haislip is conducting a little experiment to see if there's a correlation between a blogger's Myers-Briggs personality type and their blogging style.

I took this particular personality test for the first time over a decade years ago, because a project manager I worked with believed that knowing each individual's personality type would allow her to better tailor her communication and interaction style with each team member. I remember testing as an ENTJ back then.

A few years later, I took the test again as part of yet another team building exercise, and surprisingly, I tested back as an ExTJ. Apparently, my answers had placed me smack in the middle of the iNtuitive-Sensing spectrum, so the facilitator used the letter X instead of an N or S.

A friend of mine who specializes in personnel development reassured me back then that it's only natural for the test result to evolve, especially over the span of many years, because people adapt and grow over time.

So when I saw Michael Haislip's blogpost tonight, I gamely took the Jungian Typology test online. I guess I shouldn't have been completely surprised to see a new four-letter combination -- I'm now an INTJ.

The Typelogic.com website offers a write-up on the various personality types, and I must say that their write-up of the INTJ personality type does describe me with frightening accuracy.