Personality

We have been doing a lot of personality testing in the office lately. That perhaps is a misleading statement to start off with, actually we've only been doing one personality test, but it's per person so once you multiply that by 70-odd (very odd) people it does seem like a lot of testing is going on.

We're not doing it through some fancy organisation or anything right and proper. We sourced a couple of free links, and sent it out to our teams to let them complete it at their leisure. Leisure sometimes interrupted by a pointed reminder. At one stage there was a vision of a large board or poster with everyone shown on it, but restriction on printing prevailed and much smaller, and much more fun, things have been done instead.

A lovely website has posted everyone's Myers Briggs results as a type of shoe. This has the rather dubious attraction of being instantly categorisable, rather memorable, and also presents the opportunity for a shoe-themed dress up day if anyone could get the motivation to get something like this organised.

I want to be absolutely clear on this point - I'm not volunteering. If you're from my office and you've stumbled across this blog that I've brilliantly disguised by using by real name then you can put it right out of your head.

My personality type may enjoy an organised desk, but it does not get on well with the minutiae of everyday life. Unless I happen to be really incredibly into something at the time, in which case I can happily pour hours of my life into finding out every last detail of something that no one will ever want to include in polite conversation.

The relative temperature of decomposing bodies for instance, and the rises therein caused by insect activity at the height (it ain't lofty) of the Christchurch summer. How this varies according to different insect species, and how insect species vary according to locale. For some reason these things just never seem to slot into the conversation after 'lovely weather we're having,' though it always seems possible to me that it could.

But I ramble.

I've discovered that my personality type according to Myers Briggs is INTJ. I actually discovered this many years ago, and each time I take a personality test it comes through stronger. That's lucky, because it would be embarrassing to tell everybody about how great your personality type is, explain exactly how to interact with me, and then have it change.

Interestingly, it appears that the main characters in my stories are also INTJ personality types. Totally unexpected that. Suppose the words 'made-up' don't hold as much weight as it may sometimes appear.

Again though, this is okay because INTJ is the greatest personality type in the world. Everyone else in my team has this weird thing in their stressors list - it goes something like 'dismissing how I feel' and 'not being appreciated for the daily help I give.'

What are we? Hippies?

Mine says 'dismissing my logical decisions,' which is just practical advice because everybody knows that the INTJs in the office are the ones who have the best and most practical solutions. If it isn't going to work, it doesn't appear in our heads.

There's also something in there about 'challenging my competence.' Yeah. Don't do it. If you question me about my capability I'm likely to do something like - oh, I don't know - dismiss how you feel as I point out how inferior you are in every single way and why you're not the person to be sitting in judgement of me because you just don't have the required ability and your opinion is not appreciated.

Sometimes even I think I'm harsh in these situations, and I don't do feelings.

I presume that everybody is like me in the sense that they think their personality type is best. It would be a sad thing indeed if you were, say, an ESTJ but desperately wanted to be an ISTP.

And if you're wondering what type of shoe I am, it's a goth boot. Self-contained, clever, and just a little scary.

How about you?