MBTI® Workplace Behavior

In Careers, MBTI, Personality Type by Jonathan Bollag, Owner and Founder

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®  (MBTI®) is useful in many different ways. It is used for career counseling, couples counseling, self-help, business building, employee retention, conflict management, assessing leadership characteristics, and many other areas. The area we will be discussing today is how different personality types affect MBTI workplace behavior, which corresponds with how individuals act and respond to other personality types, including, but not limited to, co-workers, groups, and team members. In addition, we will discuss how you behave in your work surroundings.

 

Myers-Briggs (MBTI) Personality Dichotomies in the Workplace

For those of you who believe you are of the Extroverted Type, do these characteristics sound familiar?

Extroverts MBTI Workplace Behavior:

  • Prefer energetic situations and job atmospheres
  • Want to follow a leader who is action-oriented
  • Are enthusiastic when approaching change
  • Find a small amount of interaction with others stressful

How about Introversion?  Does the following sound familiar?

Introverts MBTI Workplace Behavior:

  • Prefer a calm atmosphere
  • Prefer a business leader who contemplates and thinks before acting
  • Prefer to start the problem-solving process individually
  • Find too much person-to-person interaction stressful

How about the remaining characteristics of the type? Read on and choose what characteristics sound most like you in the workplace. If you have completed the Myers-Briggs® test, which of course I highly suggest, compare workplace behavior and the information to follow to your MBTI test personality type. Know and learn your MBTI Type and how it coincides with your workplace behavior and compare this behavior with the following list of on-the-job traits.

Sensing Type MBTI Workplace Behavior:

  • Want practical and pragmatic leadership
  • Feel stressed when overloaded with theories as opposed to concrete facts
  • Value being surrounded by realistic people

Intuitive Type MBTI Workplace Behavior:

  • Talk in general terms
  • Value being surrounded by imaginative people
  • Want visionary leadership
  • Create new problem-solving methods

Thinking Types MBTI Workplace Behavior:

  • Offer objective advice
  • Want standards that are fair to people
  • Desire just leadership
  • Find incompetence stressful

Feeling Types MBTI Workplace Behavior:

  • Offer  supportive advice
  • Want standards that are sympathetic to people
  • Desire compassionate leadership
  • Find lack of cooperation stressful

Judging Types MBTI Workplace Behavior:

  • Want communication to be systematic
  • Prefer their environment to be scheduled
  • Are comfortable moving toward a fixed solution
  • Find indecisiveness stressful

Perceiving Types MBTI Workplace Behavior:

  • Want communication to be spontaneous
  • Prefer a flexible environment
  • Are comfortable keeping options open
  • Find premature closure stressful

After reviewing this information, you should have a sense of how your MBTI results relate to your workplace preferences. If you haven’t taken the MBTI test, now is a perfect time to get a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Report to see where you fit in work preference categories. Simply complete your Myers-Briggs Type Indicator assessment and utilize our Blogs and Resource Center to take your personal and professional growth to the next level.

(Hirsh, E. et al. 2003).