Estate Living Magazine #liveyourbestlife - Issue 46 December 2019 | Page 49

C O M M U N I T Y
reporting questionnaire that shows how different personality
types perceive the world.
It looks at four psychological functions or preferences: whether
you prefer to focus on the outer world or on your own inner
world; how you process information; whether you look at logic
and consistency or people and special circumstances; and
whether you like to get things decided or prefer to stay open to
options.
Based on that, you fall into one of 16 distinct Myers–Briggs
personality types, coded according to Extraversion (E) or
Introversion (I), Sensing (S) or Intuition (N), Thinking (T) or
Feeling (F), and Judging (J) or Perceiving (P) – hence, the gentle
ISFJ, the playful ESFP, the get-things-done ESTJ, and so on.
Sure, it may sound like horoscope hokum. And yeah, you could
take the test again tomorrow morning and get a different four-
lettered result. But for Tuffin, the point is less about the tool itself,
and more about self-reflection.
‘For many people, it’s the first foray into going, “Oh, okay! These
things that I thought everyone thought were important, aren’t.
It’s just what my type feels is important. So this is me, and this is
how I tick … and other people don’t necessarily think the same
way that I do, and they’re okay.”’
There are, of course, dozens of personality type tests out there,
each with its own merits and critics. Tuffin prefers Myers–Briggs
because, she says, ‘it’s accessible, and there’s loads of stuff
L I V I N G
around it that’s available for free. The model we use says: “You
can do this too!” You don’t have to be a black belt in Myers–
Briggs in order to apply it.’
That’s also why so many corporates (80% of Fortune 500
companies, according to one count) are using the tool as part
of their recruiting process, and to develop their management
teams. After all, if you’re sitting around a boardroom table with a
dozen other people, it helps to know where they’re coming from
– and where your own decisions are coming from! ‘And how to
use the team’s different leadership strengths,’ adds Tuffin. ‘Each
personality type has a different kind of leadership strength, and
different work focus. There are certain tasks that one type might
prefer compared to another.’
The greatest value, she says, is found in the differences between
the various personality types. ‘If there’s someone that holds the S
position and another who holds the N position, for example, the
magic happens in the tension between those. If all of you collapse
completely into S, you don’t have the big picture tension; and if
you collapse into N you don’t have the execution tension.’ 
So there’s no ‘best’ type. An intellectual INTP isn’t ‘better’ than,
say, a practical ESFJ. The secret sauce lies in finding the balance
or tension between the two.
As Tuffin says: ‘I’m still trying to figure out the magic of it. But
every time we use it, there’s magic that happens.’
H
Mark van Dijk