Estate Living Magazine #liveyourbestlife - Issue 46 December 2019 | Page 48

C O M M U N I T Y
L I V I N G
SHOULD YOU USE
MYERS–BRIGGS
IN YOUR MANAGEMENT TEAM?
Despite widespread scepticism, more and more organisations are using personality tests like the
Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) to create and manage their teams. Should you?
Can estate managers use personality tests like Myers–
Briggs to create (and manage) better teams, boards and
bodies corporate?
If you’ve ever sat with a team – say, a management
meeting, or a board or body corporate gathering
– you’ll know what chaos can look like. Dr Heather
Tuffin, a medical doctor turned improvement scientist,
remembers the feeling well. ‘I felt as if I was going mad
when I was in management meetings,’ she says. ‘I felt as
if we were having three or four different conversations,
and people were talking past each other.’ Then she
discovered – and applied – a personality test technique,
and everything changed.
‘It hugely benefited me in realising that people use
different languages, and different things are important
to different personality types,’ she says. ‘Knowing that
taught me how to bring it all together in a meeting.’
Tuffin now does consulting work, helping organisations
to create and manage better teams. Her work is partly
based on Patrick Lencioni’s landmark work The Five
Dysfunctions of a Team, and also relies on on the MBTI.
You may have heard of Myers–Briggs. Developed
during World War II by mother-daughter duo Katharine
Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers, and based on
the psychiatric work of Carl Jung, the MBTI is a self-