Personality---Leaders,You Have One!

 The germ of this blog post came late at night (in fact early early in the morning as I was watching my 13 year old son's friend creatively play "games" at his sleep over and I, the ever watchful adult, had one eye open and one eye on a Google search for LEADERSHIP TRAITS.  It led me to this inventory and the Myer's Briggs test, which I had taken several times before.

Before I bog you down in all of the trivial details that led up to this post, the next day I couldn't get it out of my mind the connection between personality and leadership, and in particular the meaning of being an I (introvert) or E (extrovert)

So, I conducted a very unscientific poll of my friends (through FB and Twitter) to see what their personality types were. I asked Church leaders, teachers, moms, coaches, bankers and more to give me their personality scores from MBIT and let me see where they fell on the scale of "normal" and "above normal" (my friends are anything but normal.

Here's what I found:  It didn't matter what career you were in, or what skills you had, or what experiences you brought to the table, leadership was not dependent upon personality.  There... I said it! You don't have to have a personality to be a leader (Roar from the crowd who have been waiting for validation of this fact)  But, what you do have to have as a leader is a good understanding of yourself and how you react in certain situations.

In some of my friends I found that their personality types were "solid"--never changing; while others found themselves adapting their personality types to the given situations or moments in which they had to exert their leadership.

What I found in digging through the MBIT test is this--we need LEADERS, all kinds of leaders.  We don't just need extroverts but we need introverts; we don't need just sensing leaders but intuiative leaders; we don't need just judging leaders but we need feeling leaders too.  Finally we don't just need factual people, we need perceptive people too.

Introverts (according to MB) think first and then act.  They need time to reflect.  We need leadership like that that will count the cost of decisions.  But we don't need leaders who do just that--reflect.  There must be action.

Extroverts (according to MB) act first and then think.  They reflect after the fact.  We need leaders who will take action and get the ball rolling, but at the same time we don't need action all of the time.

Sensing (according to MB) is the rational considerations of facts, while at the same time we need not discount the unknown in decisions in leadership

I(N)tuition is the ability to think beyond the facts (to the probablity of) and we need leaders who do this (take risks) but not to the detriment of solid evidence.

Thinking- we need leaders who think and ponder great things, but as I said before--don't just Think!
Feeling- we need leaders who can sense the emotion of the moment and seize the day and capture the experience, but if all we get are experiences then we are left hollow.
Judging- we need leaders who will come to a conclusion and give a final closure to a moment, and yet we need them to not be so "rock solid" that they close down the show before it's over. There might be one more "moment"
Perception- we need leaders who can see "beyond" the box and keep us reaching for possibilities. But, if we never achieve something in the now we are left in the land of tomorrows.

This seems like a really heavy post and I may have lost some of the readers in the first bit, but felt like I needed to work through these things and ponder the mysteries of leadership. Whether we realize it or not we all have the potential and opportunity to be leaders ("Leadership is influence") in all of our daily activities and relationships.  What will we do with what we know will determine the kind of leaders that we will become.

The Sixteen Types
US Population Breakdown
The table organizing the sixteen types was created by Isabel Myers (an INFP).
ISTJ 11–14%	ISFJ 9–14%	INFJ 1–3%	INTJ 2–4%
ISTP 4–6%	ISFP 5–9%	INFP 4–5%	INTP 3–5%
ESTP 4–5%	ESFP 4–9%	ENFP 6–8%	ENTP 2–5%
ESTJ 8–12%	ESFJ 9–13%	ENFJ 2–5%	ENTJ 2–5%
Estimated percentages of the 16 types in the U.S. population.[29]

Generalizations of the MBIT Personality Types

ISITEJ	ISIFEJ	INIFEJ	INITEJ
Inspector	Protector	Counselor	Mastermind
ISETIP	ISEFIP	INEFIP	INETIP
Crafter	Composer	Healer	Architect
ESETIP	ESEFIP	ENEFIP	ENETIP
Promoter	Performer	Champion	Inventor
ESITEJ	ESIFEJ	ENIFEJ	ENITEJ
Supervisor	Provider	Teacher	Fieldmarsha

Myers Briggs Web Site