MBTI Step two – the new MBTI.

MBTI 2 (or, more properly and formally, the Myers Brigss Type Indicator, Step Two) is a relatively recent development of the well-know MBTI. The original (which gives the now-famous four letter descriptions of personality types, such as ENFP and INTJ) is a fabulously powerful tool for helping you to understand yourself…

… as well as the people around you.

It’s also useful things like figuring out how to communicate with them, understand them and lead them (or be led by them). A anyone who’s taken an MBTI assessment will testify, it can be a remarkably powerful tool. (Like all tools, of course, MBTI needs to be used, not just learned about!)

But (and it’s a big but) the process isn’t a very subtle differentiator. There are only 16 different Types in the Step One model and so, inevitably, people who are fairly different from each other end up being labeled with the same Type.

Of course, it’s not as simple as that, because your MBTI Type doesn’t stop you behaving in pretty much any other way you want to, but the point stands.

The MBTI Step Two process is designed to get passed this limitation by breaking down each of the four binary preferences of the ‘traditional’ MBTI into five subscales which unpack the different components of each preference. In doing so it allows for the fact that people are likely to behave differently in different situations, no matter what their MBTI type is.

For example, the MBTI Step 1 preference of Extravert vs Introvert is broken down into five scales (in Extravert to Introvert order):

  • Initiating to Receiving
  • Expressive to Contained
  • Gregarious to Intimate
  • Active to Reflective
  • Enthusiastic to Quiet.

The first of these is an exploration of how ‘meet-and-greet’ orientated a person is. Typically an MBTI-style Extravert would score fairly high on Initiating, suggesting that they are comfortable with being outgoing, making social chat, and taking the conversational initiative. On the other hand, Introverts typically have a high Receiving score, suggesting that they prefer ‘being introduced rather than doing the introductions’ and tend to leave social chit-chat to others who are more comfortable doing it, perhaps better able to do it and regard it as important.

Other scales within the MBTI preference of Extravert vs Introvert measure such things as how ‘easy to get to know’ someone is (versus how much they ‘play their cards close to their chest’) and such issues as how large a group someone feels comfortable in.

As a side note, because of the validity of the overall concept of Extravert vs Introvert these five scales tend to have a degree of statistical associated, of course.

However, there are plenty of exceptions to these correlations, which is where the MBTI Step two approach very useful. An overall Extravert (in the MBTI sense) may, for example, have a relatively high score on Contained (which is more typically associated with Introverts). This suggests that while they are (in the big picture and overall) an Extravert, they don’t tend to give much about themselves away in their social chit-chat!

I am an MBTI practitioner (based in Newcastle but working throughout the UK) and I find the increased sophistication of the Step two approach very helpful indeed.

Not only does it allow me to explore someone’s MBTI Type in greater depth, it is also very helpful to those people who find themselves conflicted, having difficulty identifying with either of the two choices for a preference.

Genuine dfficulties with MBTI are pretty rare, but the most common issue I hear from people who are having trouble getting to grips with their preference is “But when I…”. Having the scale-score option for unpacking their MBTI preferences means they feel their ‘oddness’ is recognised. It also, in doing so, gives them an increased faith in the whole concept of MBTI.  Their recognition that there are some circumstances when they don’t feel the simple, binary  preference option suits them is now part of the MBTI, (and an interesting one at that!) rather than an aberration.

The shift from simple binary choices to continuous scales is kept within the MBTI concept of binary preferences, however. Scales are not ‘freestanding’ – a list of 20 attributes of someone’s personality. Instead they are seen as drawing upon the ‘higher order’ concept of, for example, Introversion.

For example, an over-all Introvert may be high in Initiating (a typically Extravert tendency). That doesn’t make them an Extravert/Introvert hybrid. It makes them an Introvert with an OOPS, standing for Out Of Preference Score. Scores which lie significantly on the other side of the divide between Introverts and Extraverts of described as being Out Of Preference…

In the example above, the preference is still to be an Introvert but with one OOPS. The way an OOPS fits into the bigger picture is often the most rewarding element of working as an MBTI facilitator. I often hear “Ah! So that’s why….!”  Typically this epiphany will be related to they way they’re regarded or treated by co-workers: if a clear Introvert has a strong OOPS in Initiating (the meet-and-greet scale) it’s no wonder that people who don’t know them well treat them as an Extravert, with all the pressure and exhaustion on the now-continually-talked-to Introvert that this implies.

Don’t get me wrong – the MBTI Step 2 is a great leap forward (as far beyond the traditional MBTI step 1 as that is beyond astrology!) but it’s not perfect.  For example, it’s now computationally complex because of the statistical analysis the computer has to do to create it, compared to the MBTI concept of four simple preference scores.

It is, however, a remarkably useful tool!

Free training in Liverpool – what’s not to love? :)

Free Training for guinea pigs

Free training for guinea pigs in Liverpool

We’re developing some new courses here at Aware Plus. One of then – communication skills – is ready to go.

Almost.

We need to check it’s as ready as we think it is.

So here’s the deal. If you – or anyone you think is going to benefit – can be in central Liverpool on March 11 for a free day’s training, get in touch.

You get a day’s free training and we get feedback on the course before it goes live to paying clients. Fair deal?

Thoughts from a cafe…. ;)

“Soft skills – ahhhhh, wish I could take time to learn the easy stuff: I’ve got too much to do, just with my real job!”

If we had a couple of quid for every time I’d heard that, or something like it, we’d barely have to work every again.

The thing is though, it misses the point.

In today’s world it’s not a question of “the real job plus…” because the soft skills are the real job.

Technical skills alone don’t cut it. Technical skills alone don’t differentiate you from the competition. Technical skills these days are taken as a starting point. They’re the baseline, they’re a given.

These days the differentiator is the so-called ‘soft skills’.

Make no mistake, by the way, soft skills are hard – but that’s a different issue, perhaps.

Think about it… if there are two people in front of you and both of them can do their job, which of them are you going to pick? The one who can talk about his job, too, of course.  And if everyone can do the job but only one of them can talk about it?

You get the idea, I’m sure.

(By the way, I’m not alone in this thought: the erudite Mind Tools site has a similar, but more in-detail post.)

So what’s the point? The point is that anyone who wants to get on in their job – particularly if that job isn’t simple repetitive/mechanical work – needs to up their game. The kinds of training you need to do your job aren’t the kinds of tools you need in management and leadership.

What got you here won’t get you there.

That means you need to get your soft skills up to spec.. .and the less you agree, the more you need to! 😉

The speed of training.

I’ve been prompted to write this by a feedback form (only 23/25, shock horror!) that suggested the the content, the materia, the most important bit of our training, could have been delivered in an hour less.

They’re right, it could have been.

Instead of finishing at half past four, we could have delivered the material more quickly and finished at half past three in the afternoon. It would certainly have been easier for us (we’d have avoided bad travel conditions) and very popular amongst the people on the course.

And it wasn’t as if we didn’t know this before we started (hey, we’re expert trainers after all!).

So why didn’t we? Why didn’t we go for the easy hit?

Because training it’s not about what we say, it’s about what people hear. It’s not about how fast we can deliver material, it’s about how fast people can receive that material. It’s not about how short a time we can make it take to get information into people’s heads – it’s about how long a time we can make it stay there!

By taking that extra hour over the day, we had time for what we call ’embedding exercises’.

Training is only effective if it sticks – if people can not only receive it, absorb it and recall it – but only if they can then apply it. By allowing time for reflection and for having a go, for things like looking at case studies and discussing personal circumstances, we make it much (much!) more likely that what we train people in can and will be applied…

…that it will be used to make a difference in the real world.

For us, it’s all about use, not convenience.

Seth Godin is almost a genius

Well, okay, he is. At what he does he’s one of the best. So when he writes that

True professionals don’t fear amateurs

we’re going to shut up, sit down, and read.

He’s right, of course.  The better you are at whatever you do, the more comfortable you are (and the more you enjoy) working with gifted and talented amateurs in the same area. They’re no threat, business-wise, and it’s a lot of fun bringing on someone who is enthusiastic.

But here’s the rub. Sometimes an amateur, no matter how well intentioned, is dangerous. You’d not want an amateur heart surgeon, I’m guessing. And how about the brakes on your car – done by a professional?  Probably.

Training is similar. Amateur trainers aren’t neutral, they’re potentially, positively dangerous. It’s something I’ve ranted about before – both in passing on this very blog (Training checklists) and over on our presentation skills blog (presentation bullshit) as well as in a couple of guest blogs in various places.

The difference about when amateurs are to be encouraged or looked at with a raised eyebrow lies, it seems to me, in when third parties are involved. A talented amateur cook will probably only poison his or her own family, I’d guess. A talented amateur trainer can screw up an awful lot of people’s working lives at a time.

The thing is, being a talented amateur is great whenever things aren’t going wrong – that is, if the person you’re training learns needs things doing in the same way as you… but what happens if it doesn’t work. You’r stuck.

Worse, so is your client.

If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail

If you’re a giften amateur, chances are that you’re damned good with that hammer. Good for you – and I’ll willingly, happily help you all I can. But if it needs a screwdriver and all you’ve got is a hammer I can’t let you anywhere near my clients.

Training people is easy. Training people well is hard.

How to pick a training company. (Preferably us!)

Let’s face it, it’s hard to know one training company from another, just by looking at their website. None of them is going to say “We’re not very good at this”.  Everyone is going to claim to be the best there is at what they do.

(As an aside, I can’t prove we’re the best there is any more than anyone else can, but we’ve got the evidence that we’re pretty darn good! 🙂 )

The thing is, there are some things which are probably at least as important as the quality of the training company and the training they deliver – but which doesn’t get a look-in during a lot of decisions about which company to use…

… fit.

What’s fit?

Fit is the interaction between you and the training company. They might be absolutely brilliant trainers but (like in anything) different training companies do the same thing in different ways – or do things which look at sound the same but are subtly different in ways that are profound enough to change your experience of their training.

Now, obviously it’s in no one’s interest to hire us if they aren’t going to like us…  so with that in mind, enjoy the show! 🙂

How to use us on Prezi

Training checklists…

Readers of our other blogs will know that we’re not too keen on what we call WIKI-trainers. That is, trainers who know something about their subject but not about training. The risk is that they shoe-horn their trainees into ‘their’ way of doing things, whether or not it’s the right way for their client.

However, in the real world, I recognise that all too often people are cornered into doing some internal training at work by their boss. With that in mind, I hope this checklist proves useful… it’s not comprehensive, of course (no list could be) but it might be handy for the ‘occasional presenter/trainer’ for things to have checked before they start.

What other stuff do you check before you start training? 🙂

MBTI for UNN

(or, how many acronyms can you fit into one blog title?)

Just a quick brag, really! 🙂   We’ve just been asked if we can do an MBIT psychometric profile for every single one (yes, really!) of the leadership team at the University of Northumbria at Newcastle (UNN).

Looks like we can probably afford Christmas after all 🙂

Soft skills as a marginal advantage – tales from the Olympics

Victoria Penbleton

Victoria Penbleton

Back in the summer (remember that?) Britain was a very cool place to be. Not only were we hosting the Olympics but we were hosting them very well.

On top of that, we were doing well in the competition elements too – and no where more so than in cycling.  So what was it that made our cycling team so very successful?

It’s been widely reported (here, for example) that there was no one simple, single ‘magic bullet’ but instead the success was the result of the accumulation of a lot of little things – of what was called ‘Marginal Gains’.  A lot of them were simple common-sense things but they all added together, incrementally to mean we had a very high-performing team.

Wheels which give a two percent increase give a two percent increase: but wheels which give a two percent increase on another two percent increase from (say) a different saddle give a much, much bigger margin of improvement – obviously!

So it is with the soft skills of things like presentations training, time management, stress management and client relationship training. They’re not killer blows that flatten your opposition – instead they’re part of a subtle, incremental approach. Put together, they’ll make you better at what you do – and better than the other guys, too! 🙂

Let’s say you’re about neck-and-neck with another job candidate in terms of, say, how well you write your computer code… but you can talk about it and explain what you’re doing a little bit better than him/her… or perhaps your time management is fractionally better so you’re 5% more productive… you get the picture.

And to shift scale from the individual to the organisation, the same thing applies. If you’re customer service team is five percent better than the opposition’s and your staff are five percent happier (and therefor more productive) and there are fewer off with stress because you’ve provided training in how to cope with pressure… well… you get the idea, I’m sure.

In other words – just because soft skills are subtle (and it’s very hard to measure their impact directly) it doesn’t mean they’re not the thing that turns you from an Olympic finalist to and Olympic medalist, so to speak.

Meeting rooms are not training rooms…

… and visa versa!meeting room - not the one I'm talking aobut! :)

I’m sitting here, waiting for a client in a venue in the middle of town (or toon as the native  Geordies say it) in one of the nicest meeting rooms I’ve ever seen.  For a start there’s free tea and coffee and (impressively!) a very large supply of chocolate chip cookies in the middle of the table.

It’s clean and warm and the reception staff were very helpful and friendly.

But despite all these wonderful things my heart sank as I walked in. Why? Because it’s a wonderful meeting room – and I’m here to do training.

What’s the difference, in terms of room layout and facilities?  Well facility-wise not much, I suppose. Fast wifi would be appreciated for both activities, decent soundproofing too… along with reasonably comfortable heating and air conditioning!

But in a training room, at least the kind of training I need to use today, there’s a fundamental problem.

In a meeting room everyone needs to be able to see everyone else. In a training room, everyone needs to be able to see the trainer (as well as everyone else!).

In a typical meeting room the layout might be, say, a dozen chairs around an oval table, which is exactly what I’ve got here. Putting a flipchart of a screen at one end immediately means that three people at one end have to turn their necks 180 degrees. Preferably they should move, so that they’re not blocking anyone else’s view.

Adding to that is the lack of space around the table. Even if the three head-turners move, where are they going to move to? The table was full already. What’s more, the next two or three people down the table may very well find that they’re unpleasantly, uncomfortably close to the trainer and his or her material, be that flip charts or slides etc.  The problem is compounded, of course, for the approximately 50% of the population who are Introverts!

If people aren’t comfortable in their learning environment, they don’t learn as well – it’s as simple as that!

So what things should a training room have that a simple meeting room needn’t?

  • Space – space for people to get far enough away from the screen or whatever, so that they’re not overwhelmed by it. A lot of venues simply put a laptop on the end of a boardroom table, point it at a white bit of wall and call it a training room!
  • Individual lighting control – no one wants to sit in the dark for an hour at a time and yet all too often that’s the only way to be able to see slides! The whole room is dark or the whole room is light. Training rooms need to be able to dim the lights near the screen only.
  • Screen – speaking of screen, training rooms need somewhere to show slides (you may not want to use them – I often don’t – but the option needs to be there). Taking pictures off the wall to create a blank space doesn’t qualify, sorry!
  • Speakers – let’s face it, if the trainer is going to show video (and why shouldn’t they?!) you’re going to need to play the audio. Speakers built into laptops and/or data projectors just don’t cut it. Sorry guys – you need a proper system.
  • Flipchart – (or a whiteboard at least) There are times when a bit of interactivity is what’s needed and flipcharts are ideal for this. Whiteboards are fine, but with a flipchart you can keep the stuff you scribble and refer back to it at any part later in your work. Speaking of which, some way of displaying flipchart sheets is nice – my favorite way is a thin corkboard around the room about six feet off the ground so that I can pin the tops of sheets of flipchart paper to it around the room
  • Chairs – chairs are designed ‘by the hour’. That is, manufacturers recognise the trade-off between the cost of the chair and how long you can sit in it, comfortably. Meeting rooms tend to be equipped (sensibly) with two-hour chairs or (possibly) even one-hour chairs. Meetings don’t often run longer than this… but training does. Three or six hour training sessions (with breaks, obviously!) aren’t uncommon and a one-hour char in a three our session is just asking for trouble.

So there you go – I’m sure we’ve missed things on this list… these are just the things that occurred to us immediately. And don’t get us started on the meeting room which masqueraded as a training room but then made the situation worse by the host saying “I’m afraid we’ve had a bit of a flood over the weekend – the smell should go by lunchtime – but I’m afraid the electricity supply won’t be back until tomorrow at the earliest.”

Sigh…..