Newsletter #40

In this issue:

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® and Communicating with ESFJs

About the Strong Interest Inventory®: 2004 Realistic Theme Scores

About the FIRO-B™: Team Development – Role Satisfaction Part I

The 16PF®– The 16 Personality Factors: Factor M – Abstractedness

Communicating with ESFJs

Like many Feeler types, ESFJs prefer people who are encouraging, appreciative, and who show support. They like to hear the facts, practical applications, and as many details as possible. Most like to work on immediate issues, with concrete solutions. Many ESFJs like clearly defined tasks, with specific, identifiable steps, and often are attracted to or strive towards efficient operations. They like clear lines of authority and delegated tasks that are clearly outlined. It’s common for ESFJs to respect traditional hierarchical organizations. They prefer to receive a lot of acknowledgement for their contributions to the group. Harmony and lots of feedback are often important qualities in any relationship they have.

Some things to avoid when communicating with ESFJs include constant change, lots of theory or abstract ideas, and concentrating only on logic or numbers and ignoring the people involved. They often dislike people who treat them indifferently or impersonally. ESFJs generally do not like being in ambiguous or unpredictable situations, especially without any guidance. People who fail to meet their obligations or promise more than they deliver will not have many ESFJ friends. Likewise, those who show little respect for traditions or authority will have trouble speaking with ESFJs.

About the Strong Interest Inventory: 2004 Realistic Theme Scores

The latest version of the Strong was released in December 2004. There were a number of changes to the test questions and the resulting reports. One change was the ranking of the different professions for men and women in each theme code, according to the most and least likely to choose that theme.

Let's start with the men. The occupations most like to choose Realistic as the top theme included Firefighter, Engineering Technician, Electrician, Automobile Mechanic, Engineer, Landscape/Grounds Manager, and Chiropractor. The least likely included Buyer, Advertising Account Manager, College Instructor, Broadcast Journalist, and Retail Sales Representative.

For women, the list was quite similar. Among the most likely to choose Realistic were Engineering Technician, Firefighter, Chiropractor, Electrician, Engineer, and Network Administrator. Among the least likely were Buyer, Retail Sales Representative, Retail Sales Manager, Financial Analyst, and Production Worker.

The FIRO-B: Team Development – Role Satisfaction, Part I

For many of us, our scores on any particular FIRO-B scale can fall in the medium range, either high or low. In such cases, it might be worthwhile to look at your highest score and see how it relates to those aspects of being on a team that are most important to you. Let's start with those cases where Inclusion is your highest score.

It's common for those with Inclusion as the highest scale to feel that it's important for the team members to share the workload equally. Many report they'd like the team to feel like members in a club or social association. Along with that, people with high scores on this scale want to have a sense of team identity and the feeling everyone is in this project together. Others say they really prefer frequent and regular contact with the rest of the team. Recognition, praise, and encouragement both within and outside the team are important, as is having everyone contribute. Open communications, with a free exchange of ideas, recommendations, progress reports, etc. are good. Finally, many report they want this team to be highly visible within the organization (or even outside), with prestige a nice side benefit.

As usual, most of us will share some of the above desires to some degree. It's more a matter of which factors are most important to you and whether or not your needs can be met on your team.

The 16 Personality Factors: Factor M – Abstractedness

The next 16PF scale for discussion is the Factor "M" scale, which is Abstractedness (Grounded vs. Abstracted). What exactly does this scale measure?

It shows what people pay attention to, think about, or notice in life. Those who score on the high end of this scale tend to be oriented towards internal ideas and mental functions. They say it's easy to generate new ideas, so this scale is related to creativity. However, some of their ideas have no practical basis, and can overlook people, processes, or situations that would be necessary for the ideas to work. High scorers often say they get lost in their thoughts and forget time, or lose things, and that they overlook the details because they are so interested in thinking about their ideas. The film stereotype of the absent-minded professor would be a high scorer on this scale. They can have accidents because they are so preoccupied with their thoughts. Fantasy and imagination are common traits for high scorers.

In contrast, low scorers are practical, down-to-earth types. They focus on their senses and observable data. They do what needs to be done instead of daydreaming. Their ideas are realistic and practical. Some may focus so much on what's practical that they have trouble generating new ideas or solutions to problems. They can be too literal or concrete.

As with all the 16PF scales, major insights come from the interactions among the 16 scales, and not from each scale in isolation.