Psychological type theory is about how we fundamentally operate in the world. No matter the task, our psychological type colors how we interpret information and make decisions. Application of MBTI® results presented within the context of Jungian psychological type thus spans almost everything we do – in our work and personal lives – as well as how we choose to grow and develop. MBTI® type has a breadth of applications.
“Type concepts are useful whenever one person must communicate with another or live with another or make decisions that affect another’s life.”Isabel Briggs Myers, Gifts Differing
The fundamental principle of all MBTI® applications is to first understand from the lens of our own type, and then learn to appreciate, anticipate and accommodate differences through the type framework. We can teach, coach and apply type to just about all life’s situations.
We have only listed a very few of the resources that are available for use in each of these application areas. Additional resources can be found at: www.cpp.com and www.capt.org
Our Learning: Education
Isabel’s first subject of study in the development of the Indicator was to develop and test questions for reliability with high school students in her son Peter’s classes. She then went on to investigate type as it related to medical students and nurses. The MBTI® Manual, Third Edition states that perhaps more than any other application area, the MBTI® Indicator holds great promise for assisting our efforts to deal with social change and adaptation in an increasingly complex and pluralistic world. To download the PDF, Jane Kise on education, click here.
Curriculum differentiation in elementary education
Curriculum differentiation in secondary education
Curriculum differentiation in higher education
Type and cultural differences in education
Educational aptitude and achievement
Click for Educational Resources
DiTiberio, J. K. & Hammer, A. L. (1993). Introduction to Type® in College. Palo Alto, CA: CPP Inc.
DiTiberio, J. K. & Jensen, G. H. (1995). Writing and Personality, Finding Your Voice, Your Style, Your Way. Palo Alto, CA: Davies-Black Publ.
Kise, J.A.G. (2006). Differentiated Coaching: A Framework for Helping Teachers Change. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin
Kise, J.A.G. (2007). Differentiation through Personality Types: A Framework for Instruction, Assessment, and Classroom Management. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin
Kise, J.A.G. and Russell, Beth (2008). Differentiated School Leadership: Effective Collaboration, Communication, and Change Through Personality Type. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
Kise, J.A.G. and Russell, Beth (2010). Creating a Coaching Culture for Professional Learning Communities. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree.
Provost, J. A. & Anchors, S. (2003). Using the MBTI® Instrument in Colleges and Universities. Gainesville, FL: CAPT.
Our Work: Career Counseling
The MBTI® personality inventory has been used in career counseling from the early days of its development. In fact, one of the main reasons Isabel created the Indicator was to help women find satisfying jobs during the WWII war effort. Today it is a standard in the “tool kit” of career counselors. Career counselors use the MBTI® instrument and psychological type in a wide variety of settings including private practice, schools at all levels and for all specialties, and outplacement counseling. The application of type in career counseling applies to people at all levels and all walks of life.
“We are naturally disposed to understand everything in the sense of our own type.”C.G. Jung
Career Counseling Application Areas:
Identification of preferred work environments
Navigation of the job search and interviewing processes
Specialization within an area of expertise
Click for Career Counseling Resources
Dunning, D. (2001). What’s Your Type of Career? Unlock the Secrets of Your Personality to Find Your Perfect Career Path. Palo Alto, CA: Davies-Black Publ.
Hammer, A. L. (1993). Introduction to Type® and Careers. Mountain View, CA: CPP, Inc.
Hartzler, M. (2004). Using Type Theory in Career Counseling. Palmetto, FL: Type Makes a Difference, Inc.
Kumerow, J. M. (Ed.). (1991). New Directions in Career Planning and the Workplace, Practical Strategies for Counselors. Palo Alto, CA: CPP, Inc.
MacDaid, McCaulley, Kainz. (1991). Atlas of Type Tables™. Gainesville, FL: CAPT.
Martin, C. R. (1995). Looking at Type® and Careers. Gainesville, FL: CAPT.
Tieger, P. D. & Barron-Tieger, B. (1992). Do What You Are, Discover the Perfect Career for You Through the Secrets of Personality Type. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company.
Zichy, S. (2007). Career Match, Connecting Who You Are with What You’ll Do. New York, NY: American Management Association
Our Workplace: Organizational Development
Over the last 20 years, type has permeated most aspects of organizational life. Employee development and training in “soft-skills” has become an accepted component for the achievement of organizational effectiveness and success. Today, over 800,000 of the personality Indicators given yearly are administrations in organizational settings. Consultants and internal practitioners provide training and development for individuals, teams and leaders at all organizational levels.
Organizational Development Application Areas:
Professional development / self management
Individual development planning
Improvement of communication
Problem solving / decision making
Sales training and customer service
Diversity and multicultural work
Time and resource management
Click for Organizational Development Resources
Barger, N. J. & Kirby, L. K. (2004). Introduction to Type and Change. Palo Alto, CA: CPP, Inc.
Brock, S. A. (1994). Introduction to Type and Selling, Building Customer Relationships with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Palo Alto, CA: CPP, Inc.
Dunning, D. (year). Introduction to Type and Communication. Palo Alto, CA: CPP, Inc.
Fitzgerald, C. & Kirby, L. K. (Eds.). (1997). Developing Leaders, Research and Applications in Psychological Type and Leadership Development. Palo Alto, CA: Davies-Black Publ.
Hammer, A. L. (year). Type and Retention. Palo Alto, CA: CPP, Inc.
Hirsh. E, Hirsh K. & Hirsh, S. K. MBTI® Teambuilding Program: Leaders Resource Guide. Palo Alto, CA: CPP, Inc.
Hirsh, K. W. & Hirsh, E. (2007). Introduction to Type and Decision Making. Mountain View, CA: CPP, Inc.
Hirsh, S. K. (1992). Introduction to Type and Teams. Palo Alto, CA: CPP, Inc.
Hirsh, S. K. & Kise, J. A. G. Introduction to Type and Coaching. Palo Alto, CA: CPP, Inc.
Hirsh, S. K. & Kummerow, J. M. (1998). Introduction to Type in Organizations (3rd ed.). Palo Alto, CA: CPP, Inc.
Killen, D. & Murphy, D. Introduction to Type and Conflict. Palo Alto, CA: CPP, Inc.
Kirby, L. & Barger, N. (2003). The Challenge of Change in Organizations. Palo Alto, CA: Davies-Black Publ.
Kirby, L. & Barger, N. MBTI® Type and Change, a Leader’s Resource Guide. Palo Alto, CA: CPP, Inc.
Myers, I. B. (1998). Introduction to Type (6th ed.). Mountain View, CA: CPP, Inc.
Pearman, R. R. (1999). Enhancing Leadership Effectiveness through Psychological Type. Gainesville, FL: CAPT.
Pearman, R. R. (1998). Hardwired Leadership; Unleashing the Power of Personality to Become a New Millennium Leader. Palo Alto, CA: Davies-Black Publ.
Pearman, R. R. (2002). Introduction to Type and Emotional Intelligence, Pathways to Performance. Palo Alto, CA: CPP, Inc.
Pearman, R. R. The Leadership Advantage Training Program, Using the MBTI® Instrument for Effective Leadership Facilitator’s Guide. Palo Alto, CA: CPP, Inc.
Pearman, R. R. (2005). You:Being More Effective in Your MBTI® Type. City: Lominger, Ltd.
Richmond, S. L. (year). Introduction to Type and Leadership. Palo Alto, CA: CPP, Inc.
VanSant, S. S. (2003). Wired for Conflict; the Role of Personality in Resolving Differences. Gainesville, FL: CAPT.
Our Growth and Development: Personal Growth and Spiritual Applications
The MBTI® Indicator is a doorway for lifelong development (Click for more information about the 5 Levels of Understanding™). This can be a spiritual journey in and of itself. Counselors and religious leaders, parents, partners, friends and relatives can use the MBTI® Indicator to help themselves and others grow and develop through type.
Personal Growth and Spiritual Application Areas:
Counseling and psychotherapy
Development of spirituality
Click for Personal Growth and Spiritual Application Resources
Corlett, E. S. & Millner, N. B. (1993). Navigating Midlife, Using Typology as a Guide. Palo Alto, CA: CPP, Inc.
Hartzler, M. & Hartzler, G. (2004.) Using Type with Couples. Palmetto, FL: Type Makes a Difference, Inc.
Jones, J. H. & Sherman, R. G. (1997). Intimacy and Type, a Practical Guide for Improving Relationships for Couples and Counselors. Gainesville, FL: CAPT.
Kise, J. A. G. & Hirsh, S. K. (1992). Soul Types. New York, NY: Hyperion.
Kroeger, O. & Theusen, J. M. (1994). 16 Ways to Love Your Lover: Understanding the 16 Personality Types So You Can Create a Love that Lasts Forever. New York, NY: Dell.
Millner, N. B. (1998). Creative Aging, Discovering the Unexpected Joys of Later Life through Personality Type. Palo Alto, CA: Davies-Black Publ.
Provost, J. A. (1993). Applications of the MBTI® in Counseling (2nd Ed.). Gainesville,FL: CAPT.
Quenk, N. L. (2003). Was That Really Me? How Everyday Stress Brings Out Our Hidden Personality. Palo Alto, CA: Davies-Black Publ.
Stein, M. (1983). In Midlife, A Jungian Perspective. Dallas, TX: Spring Publications, Inc.
Our Families: Couples, Parents and Children
Knowledge of your MBTI® type can provide you with a framework to anticipate, accept and neutralize the differences you see in others; this is especially helpful when it comes to our family relationships. (Click here for an illuminating article on parenting and type by Janet Penley) Type provides a non-judgmental lens for looking at the differences you see in your family; it allows you to recognize that others may just have different ways of seeing things. It takes away negative judgments or projections and allows us to allow those in our family to simply be themselves. The more we remove our own negative judgments from others, and the more we can see our family members for who they really are, the better our family relationships will be.
Abella, K., Allen, M., Hayman, C (2009). Discovering Type with Teens, a Comprehensive Leader’s Guide with Materials for Presenting Psychological Type to Young People. Gainesville,FL: CAPT.
Farris, D. (2000). Type Tales, Understanding and Celebrating Diversity through Type. Gainesville, FL: CAPT.
Ginn, C. W. (1995). Families: Using type to Enhance Mutual Understanding. Gainesville,FL: CAPT.
Golden, B. J. & Lesh, K. (1994). Building Self-esteem, Strategies for Success in School…and Beyond. Scottsdale, AZ: Scarisbrick Publishers.
Kise, J. A. G. & Johnson, K. (1999). Find your Fit: Discovery Workbook. Ada, MI: Bethany House Publishers, 1999.
Kise, J. A. G. & Johnson, K. (1999). Finding Your Fit. Ada, MI: Bethany House Publishers.
Murphy, E. (1992). The Developing Child, Using Jungian Type to Understand Children. Palo Alto, CA: CPP, Inc.
Murphy, E. (1987). Questions Children May Have About Type Differences. Gainesville,FL: CAPT.
Neff, L. (1988). One of a Kind, Making the Most of your Child’s Uniqueness. Portland, OR: Moltnomah Press.
Penley, J. P. & Stephens, D. W. (1995). The M.O.M.S Handbook: Understanding Your Personality Type in Mothering. Wilmette, IL: Stephens Penley & Associates.
Tieger, P. D. & Barron-Tieger, B. (2000). Just Your Type, Create the Relationship You’ve Always Wanted Using the Secrets of Personality Type. Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Company.
Cutting Edge Type Applications
The Magnificent 16, a Multimedia Gallery of Type Portraits
The Magnificent Sixteen, created by Danielle Poirier and her team, uses paintings, animation, music, and interviews, in which people tell how type shapes their approach to life. It enables the viewer to inhabit, just for a moment, another person’s world – to experience the world from within another’s perspective – that will enable them to know the richness of differences in type from the inside out.
Here, the author tells us a bit about the DVD. It can be obtained through CAPT at this location.
I find Jung’s model of human differences – and the subsequent refinements brought about by Myers and Briggs – disturbingly beautiful in its elegance. Like an elaborate ecosystem, it describes how each of the different elements fit together to create a whole that heals and renews itself.
It tells each one of us that we belong, that we have a purpose in being, that we have something unique and wonderful to contribute that is essential to the whole – whether the whole is a family, a classroom, a business, a neighborhood or a nation.
Its power, depth and breadth can be unleashed when it is introduced to a group; differences come alive under the careful guidance of an adroit trainer. Biases fall to the wayside as differences are carefully sculpted into assets.
Removed from the group experience, I find that the intensity with which these differences are experienced in everyday life is somehow lost in translation with most mediums: words have precision but are dry; images are inspiring but nebulous; and interviews are insightful but idiosyncratic.
In marrying all of these mediums to each other in a joyfully polygamous collage, I find that the grace and magnificence of the model come to life. What does it feel like to approach life with sensing, intuition, thinking, or feeling? What does it feel like to be faced with one’s gifts, or one’s Achille’s heel? We not only learn what differences look like, but how they shape each individual’s subjective experience of life.
It is my understanding, my belief and my hope that by understanding differences from within – by inhabiting for just a moment another person’s world as it is experienced by his or her typological predisposition – we will come closer to opening our minds and grasping what the promise of wholeness really holds for each one of us.
Understanding the individual is one of the keys that unlocks the secrets of our social ecosystem. As diversity thickens the plot of human interactions, finding meaning and purpose in our differences will give us the needed humility and courage it takes to embrace it in our everyday lives.
An Animated Introduction
An elegant short animation film introduces the theory with graphics that immediately make type dynamics accessible and real in understanding our personalities – even for newcomers. The map for the individual psyche unfolds into a mandala that is whole only through our differences.
For each portrait musicians have improvised music to create the womb in which each world comes into being.
Paintings, drawings and pictures are woven together in animations that define the heart and soul of each personality type: its dominant function. We explore each in terms of its psychological purpose, how it apprehends the world, what captivates its attention and brings it to life, to fruition.
In-depth interviews with numerous people tell us candidly – via video – how type actually shapes their approach to life.
Real people, real stories. Some are experts who share their wealth of knowledge, such as Kathy Myers, Linda Berens, Margaret and Gary Hartzler, Otto Kroeger, Laurie Lippin, Roger Pearman and many more. Some people are new to type and share their spontaneous, refreshing insights into their type.
We’ve added texts, stories and behind the scenes elements that breathe additional life into the portraits and how they shape the gallery itself.
Danielle Poirier has been working with teams and leaders to leverage their differences for success and creativity for over 30 years. She is a provocative, warm and compelling trainer and speaker who authored The Magnificent 16 and holds APTi’s 2009 Innovation Award. Since 1990, she has delivered the MBTI® qualifying workshops in both French and English all across Canada and is considered an expert on psychological type with a purposeful consideration of Jung’s approach to psychology.
As a senior consultant, she has worked with engineers (mining, nuclear, civil), universities, banks, government, military as well as with the circus, with managers as well as executives.
She has presented at conferences on four continents and is a frequent presenter at the Association for Psychological Type’s biennial conference; She has been on the board of several non-profit organizations as well as Montreal’s APT chapter founder and regional chair of APT Canada.
Virtual Type Workshops
Vicky Jo created virtual type workshops in order to deliver a more cost-effective and flexible method of type training. Millions of people are now moving through the world of cyberspace, many of them anxious to know more about type. Nowadays we shop on the internet, read our newspaper virtually, and even stream movies via the World Wide Web — so why not learn about type through this convenient medium as well?
“Can You Spot It?” is targeted at individuals who already know something about the MBTI® and its dichotomies, but realize there must be more to psychological type than four letters. If the MBTI® doesn’t catalog traits, what is it describing? This may be the most important question of our time. Given the millions of people who take an assessment every year, and given the number of MBTI® practitioners, how many can actually say they understand what is really being assessed? What does type actually describe? How can it be used with precision?
These issues prompted Vicky Jo to create a remarkable virtual workshop titled “Can You Spot It?” that draws on the knowledge of multiple experts, combining it with the original genius of C.G. Jung, and then animating the whole experience with entertaining graphics, movement, and interactive quizzes to keep the learning experience light and enjoyable. This is an ever-moving feast of color and sound, and individuals completing the program report gaining a newfound appreciation for type — even experienced practitioners who’ve been working in the field for more than thirty years! Unlike live workshops that require a commitment to attend at certain times, this program can be completed at your own pace in the comfort of your own home at the screen of your own computer.
Type is most often expressed in words, typically with written communication — starting with Jung’s groundbreaking book, Psychological Types. Since it was published in 1921, people have been studying and writing brilliantly about type. The trouble is, our egos all-too-easily twist words to fool ourselves about what we read. The ego has a harder time deceiving us when confronted with the power of images. A picture is worth a thousand words, they say, and it’s especially true when it comes to learning type. Nothing communicates as well as real-life examples, and when those examples are captured on film, we have the perfect vehicle for instilling an understanding of the different expressions of type. The course is titled “Can You Spot It?”, and I guarantee you will spot type more readily as a result of completing the program. 6 credits may be earned toward MBTI® Master Practitioner status by those who are eligible.
Vicky Jo Varner is a MBTI® Master Practitioner and Certified Professional Co-Active Coach trained by the highly-respected Coaches Training Institute. She often presents sessions on various aspects of personal development and psychological types at international conferences. She is currently working toward a PhD in Depth Psychology (with an emphasis in Jungian and archetypal studies) at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Vicky Jo can be reached at: .
The 8 Colors of Fitness, authored by Suzanne Brue, applies the principles of the eight Jungian mental processes and the MBTI® to physical exercise. Brue’s research indicated that people mostly like to exercise based on their perceiving process. The book is therefore organized into eight chapters. Each chapter highlights two psychological types that share the same perceiving process. The types are color-coded to capture the essence of their fitness personality. For example ESFP/ESTPs are Reds, ISTPs/ISFPs are Greens. The 8 Colors of Fitness includes success stories and activity preferences from Brue’s research, along with exercise recommendations, roadblocks and tips for each fitness personality. Click here to read more about The 8 Colors of Fitness.
Suzanne Brue, MS, is a researcher, writer, and consultant on the connection between psychological type and physical activity. As an avid exerciser and MBTI® Master Practitioner, she became intrigued as to how type could help people enhance their experience of physical activity. In 2008, Suzanne’s six-years of research culminated in the publication of her book The 8 Colors of Fitness, Discover your Color-Coded Fitness Personality and Create an Exercise Program You’ll Never Quit! (Oakledge Press). http://www.the8colors.com.
Suzanne was a founding board member of the Vermont Association for Psychological Type, and served as President from 2002-2006. She served as a board member and President of the Association for Psychological Type (APTi) from 2008-2010. Suzanne is a member of the Vermont Governor’s Council for Physical Fitness and Sports and The American College of Sports Medicine.
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