BEYOND MYERS-BRIGGS: THE ART OF USING YOUR WHOLE BRAIN Lya Sorano
This article first appeared in the Jan/Feb 2001 issue of Competitive Edge® magazine.
"The workshop had barely run 10 minutes, when the hunched-over woman in the blue dress in the front row raised her hand. “Is Myers-Briggs ever wrong?” With graphs and drawings plastered all over the walls and a standing-room only crowd in attendance, the facilitator had encouraged questions, but this one came too soon, too early on. Except that . . . it was such a good question! Others in the audience had wondered about this also, even if they had never voiced their doubts. Myers-Briggs, after all, is the widely-used, undisputed vehicle for personality testing, isn’t it? Companies use it all the time, to find out if a new hire should become a financial analyst or join the marketing team. Women who hire coaches for personal growth and development – such a nineties thing! – are routinely given the test and offered advice and encouragement based upon its results. Is Myers-Briggs ever wrong? How could that be possible?“Yes, yes,” the facilitator’s eyes lit up, her engaging smile became a beam and she was obviously thrilled with the interlocutor’s question, “and let me tell you why!”Based upon the groundbreaking work of Dr. Carl G. Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist who first developed a theory of psychological types and identified eight elements that became the tools for understanding, guiding and helping people, both the mother-daughter team of Myers and Briggs (in the 1950s), and Katherine Benziger, Ph.D. (in the 1990s) designed instruments for personality assessment. The difference between the two instruments (Myers-Briggs’s MBTI and Benziger’s BTSA) is that the former is based on only the first five of Jung’s elements, while the latter makes use of all eight. Dr. Jung developed his theory in the 1930s and had absolutely no interest in a popular/commercial application. Myers-Briggs had the application interest, but stopped short of the more complicated – and interesting! – science behind Jung’s theory. Then, thirty years after the MBTI was introduced, Dr. Benziger, a neuropsychologist by training, took the whole thing and designed her BTSA, which is now available for personal assessment as well as a workplace testing tool, both online and in print.Once you have an understanding of your preference, you will be able to use the guidelines provided in Thriving in Mind to help you lessen the extent to which you falsify type - by leveraging your preference consciously and frequently each day, and by consciously managing how you handle all tasks that require skills not managed by your preference.“The person who gave me the test,” the woman in blue continued, “told me I was an extravert and should think about a career in sales, but I know I am an introvert and I don’t think selling is my strong point.” “Myers-Briggs works very well,” the workshop leader commented, “if the person being tested thinks true to his or her type. But if type is falsified, the outcome of the test is often wrong.” Jung, Myers-Briggs and Benziger work with the same types of thinking: intuitive, thinking, feeling and sensing (Jung’s element 1); they also use the two established directions of focusing energy (introversion and extraversion: element 2). They agree that everyone has a dominant (preferred, lead) mode of thinking (element 3) and that this mode combines (Jung’s 4th element) with the focused energy direction to form a person’s personality type: the introverted thinker and the extraverted thinker, the introverted feeler and the extraverted feeler, the introverted intuitive and the extraverted intuitive, the introverted sensor and the extraverted sensor. Element 5 of Jung’s theory is described as “Living True to Type” – the extraverted thinker acts as an extraverted thinker, the introverted intuitive acts as an introverted intuitive, etc. – and this is where Myers-Briggs leaves us. Katherine Benziger, however, continued with elements 6, 7 and 8 of Jung’s theory (e.g. “Falsifying Type”, “The Cost of Falsification” and “Links between Living True to Type and Wellness on the one hand and Falsifying Type and Illness on the other”) and offers the world her BTSA assessment tool.The woman in the front row was much relieved, but others in the audience now had their hands up: “What do you mean by falsified type?” “What makes us falsify type?” “How do we know if we falsify type?”Briefly, this is what the workshop leader conveyed to her audience:
If, during the day, day in and day out, you mostly use your non-dominant, non-preferred mode of thinking most of the time, your mode of thinking is falsified, not natural, not true to your innate thinking type.
Conditioning causes us to set aside our natural thinking type and adopt a false one. The US educational system is geared towards the adoption of a falsified thinking type and our workplaces perpetuate the process.
There is a simple test. If you lack energy and enthusiasm, if you feel tired or depressed, if you are prone to illnesses, even minor ones, if you experience boredom at work or lack of “centeredness” at home, chances are you are falsifying your natural thinking type. Hungry for far more than the 90-minute workshop was able to provide, the facilitator referred her audience to Dr. Benziger’s Web site (www.benziger.org) and her book “Thriving in Mind” (order information available on the Web site). The woman in the blue dress left the room with a smile on her face and noticeably straightened shoulders, her Myers-Briggs experience explained and well put behind her. Now she knew how to get beyond its limitations".
Showing posts with label whole brain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label whole brain. Show all posts
10/04/2007
12/13/2006
Various authors
Other Contemporary Authors on Type
Written by Donwilliams
Many authors from psychology to wellness to business have discovered that typology is more important than most of us ever dreamed. Some of these authors can be found below. We invite you to explore them.
For those wanting to learn more about C.G. Jung, the web site, The C. G. Jung Page at www.cgjungpage.org is the most complete web site available. Information presented includes: articles, papers and interviews, workshop schedules, links to Jungian institutes and related websites, book reviews as well as a glossary of Jung's terminology.
For those interested specifically in falsification of type, one of the most interesting new books is Now Discover Your Strengths. The book, written by a team of Gallup researchers-consultants, Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton, with the Gallup International Research and Education Center, reveals that Gallup Consulting did a 25-year retrospective study of their global consulting practice in order to understand why the had not been more successful in helping clients achieve their goals. Their discovery and the most significant point in made in the book is that they were not more successful because throughout the world in businesses of all sizes 80 percent of the employees were being encouraged to develop and use their weaknesses rather than their strengths. In other words, they discovered that 80 percent of their clients' employees around the world were falsifying type, and concluded that it was impossible for any business to be highly effective when 80 percent of its workers are falsifying type. The Gallup Findings confirm Dr. Benziger's findings in her book, Falsification of Type, that falsification of type is a tremendous global problem affecting production, individual and corporate effectiveness, health and mental health so dramatically that it can be understood to be as serious as AIDS.
Elaine N. Aron's book, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You, reporting the experiences of introverted people living in the United States, continues to attract attention from introverts seeking to understand why they are so overwhelmed. Again, not surprisingly, Aron's work confirms Dr. Benziger's observations in Overcoming Depression, that the American culture tends to have a predictably negative effect on introverted persons such that they report suffering from depression more than the average person. The point that Dr. Benziger has added to the discussion is that the depression is the natural result of these people feeling overwhelmed, the natural result of our 2nd crisis response, conserve withdraw trying to help these people stay alive and survive when they are living continuously in an impossible world.
Robert Fritz's book, The Path of Least Resistance, continues to be a top seller among the self-help books. Fritz's insight that people can make change more often when they are set up and keep the tension between what they want and their current reality. Benziger's use of The path of least resistance includes honoring Fritz's work, and at the same time pointing out that when people falsify type to survive they generally do so using the brain's path of least resistance, across the corpus callosum. For this reason, when people have been wounded early in life their home base is often not their true preference, but the type of thinking across their brain's corpus callosum from their preference - because this is indeed the path of least resistance they take unconsciously in life to try to survive.
Natural Health September-October 1997 Issue contains an article on "Danger: Men At Work" in which the author quotes the president of the American Holistic Medical Association as saying that many people actually get sick and die from holding jobs they dislike. Although the author does not know about Benziger's work with Jung's Falsification of Type, he has observed what Jung referred to as the "serious Costs of Falsification" for the individual and society.
When people do jobs which suit their natural lead function and natural level of extraversion/introversion, they feel happy and internally energized. The dislike here identified as a health risk is generally a powerful inner message that the person is outside their area of natural effectiveness.
The Harvard Business Review July-August 1997 Issue contains an article on "Putting Your Company's Whole Brain to Work" in which the authors suggest that contemporary neuroscience is validating Jung's model; and that businesses are well served to seek to apply at least three key features of Jung's model to assure their success: the four functions or functionally specialized regions of the cortex, the tendency for each person to have only one natural lead, and introversion/extraversion. That the authors are recommending business leaders look to Jung's work is important. For, as they say, less sophisticated models lack a full appreciation of features such as extraversion and introversion. That the authors suggest business look into and apply Jung's model by looking at and using the MBTI assessment indicates only that the authors are unaware personally of the BTSA, which is a solid and important next step beyond the MBTI.
Written by Donwilliams
Many authors from psychology to wellness to business have discovered that typology is more important than most of us ever dreamed. Some of these authors can be found below. We invite you to explore them.
For those wanting to learn more about C.G. Jung, the web site, The C. G. Jung Page at www.cgjungpage.org is the most complete web site available. Information presented includes: articles, papers and interviews, workshop schedules, links to Jungian institutes and related websites, book reviews as well as a glossary of Jung's terminology.
For those interested specifically in falsification of type, one of the most interesting new books is Now Discover Your Strengths. The book, written by a team of Gallup researchers-consultants, Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton, with the Gallup International Research and Education Center, reveals that Gallup Consulting did a 25-year retrospective study of their global consulting practice in order to understand why the had not been more successful in helping clients achieve their goals. Their discovery and the most significant point in made in the book is that they were not more successful because throughout the world in businesses of all sizes 80 percent of the employees were being encouraged to develop and use their weaknesses rather than their strengths. In other words, they discovered that 80 percent of their clients' employees around the world were falsifying type, and concluded that it was impossible for any business to be highly effective when 80 percent of its workers are falsifying type. The Gallup Findings confirm Dr. Benziger's findings in her book, Falsification of Type, that falsification of type is a tremendous global problem affecting production, individual and corporate effectiveness, health and mental health so dramatically that it can be understood to be as serious as AIDS.
Elaine N. Aron's book, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You, reporting the experiences of introverted people living in the United States, continues to attract attention from introverts seeking to understand why they are so overwhelmed. Again, not surprisingly, Aron's work confirms Dr. Benziger's observations in Overcoming Depression, that the American culture tends to have a predictably negative effect on introverted persons such that they report suffering from depression more than the average person. The point that Dr. Benziger has added to the discussion is that the depression is the natural result of these people feeling overwhelmed, the natural result of our 2nd crisis response, conserve withdraw trying to help these people stay alive and survive when they are living continuously in an impossible world.
Robert Fritz's book, The Path of Least Resistance, continues to be a top seller among the self-help books. Fritz's insight that people can make change more often when they are set up and keep the tension between what they want and their current reality. Benziger's use of The path of least resistance includes honoring Fritz's work, and at the same time pointing out that when people falsify type to survive they generally do so using the brain's path of least resistance, across the corpus callosum. For this reason, when people have been wounded early in life their home base is often not their true preference, but the type of thinking across their brain's corpus callosum from their preference - because this is indeed the path of least resistance they take unconsciously in life to try to survive.
Natural Health September-October 1997 Issue contains an article on "Danger: Men At Work" in which the author quotes the president of the American Holistic Medical Association as saying that many people actually get sick and die from holding jobs they dislike. Although the author does not know about Benziger's work with Jung's Falsification of Type, he has observed what Jung referred to as the "serious Costs of Falsification" for the individual and society.
When people do jobs which suit their natural lead function and natural level of extraversion/introversion, they feel happy and internally energized. The dislike here identified as a health risk is generally a powerful inner message that the person is outside their area of natural effectiveness.
The Harvard Business Review July-August 1997 Issue contains an article on "Putting Your Company's Whole Brain to Work" in which the authors suggest that contemporary neuroscience is validating Jung's model; and that businesses are well served to seek to apply at least three key features of Jung's model to assure their success: the four functions or functionally specialized regions of the cortex, the tendency for each person to have only one natural lead, and introversion/extraversion. That the authors are recommending business leaders look to Jung's work is important. For, as they say, less sophisticated models lack a full appreciation of features such as extraversion and introversion. That the authors suggest business look into and apply Jung's model by looking at and using the MBTI assessment indicates only that the authors are unaware personally of the BTSA, which is a solid and important next step beyond the MBTI.
11/30/2006
Using whole brain (taken from Herrmann Brain Dominance)
YOUR “WHOLE BRAIN” IS THE SUM OF ITS PARTS
The most widely recognized thinking styles are illustrated as left-brained and
right-brained approaches to problem solving. The left-brained preference is described
as analytical, logical and sequential, while the right-brained preference is described as
intuitive, values-based and nonlinear.
The awareness of one’s own thinking style and the
thinking styles of others combined with the ability to act
outside of one’s preferred thinking style is known as
“Whole Brain Thinking.” This methodology has been
scientifically proven to help individuals at all levels to
become more cooperative and productive, and can lead
to heightened levels of employee and team performance.
By taking advantage of Whole Brain Thinking and
its many applications, companies have addressed issues
including leadership, creative problem solving,
communication, productivity, and more. Companies
who’ve applied the principles of Whole Brain Thinking
have found that once employees are aware of their own
and others’ thinking preferences, they’re much more
likely to want to improve their skills in less preferred
quadrants or to make sure they use other resources to
“bridge the gaps.”
While individual performance improvement is
certainly important, companies are finding that the richest
rewards come from the long-term business results they
WHOLE BRAIN THINKING
The highly validated Whole
Brain Model is scientifically
designed to help people learn
to think better. Training that
utilizes Whole Brain
Technology™ focuses on
showing people how to use
their whole brain – not just the
parts with which they feel most
comfortable.
The Herrmann Brain
Dominance Instrument™
(HBDI™) evaluates and
depicts the degree of
preference individuals have for
thinking in each of four brain
quadrants:
Rational —Blue / A / upper left
Practical —Green / B / lower
left
Feeling —Red / C / lower right
Experimental —Yellow / D /
upper right
Research has shown that
everyone is capable of flexing
to less preferred thinking styles
and learning the necessary
skills to diagnose and adapt to
the thinking preferences of
others. Presenting information
in a way that recognizes,
respects, and is compatible
with different preferences is
crucial to meeting co-worker,
customer, and client needs and
expectations.
The Brains Behind Your Organization’s Success 3
get when they apply this “technology” across their organization and to their customer
relationships.
The most natural place to start applying this “technology” is to diagnose the brains in
your organization. Although a number of different diagnostic tools and assessment
instruments exist for measuring brain dominance, their proponents agree about these basic
points:
• Preferences cannot be labeled inherently good or bad
• People can learn how to act outside their preferred styles
• Understanding others’ preferences supports good communication and promotes
collaboration
Scientific studies have shown that instruments
that classify and describe how people perceive and
interact with the world around them can be powerful
tools in developing employees and achieving
business objectives.
The Hermann Brain Dominance Instrument™
(HBDI™) and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator™
(MBTI™) are two of a number of assessment
systems that have earned scientific and experiential
credibility. The profiles they reveal build selfawareness,
self-esteem and performance. By
helping individuals understand why they “get” some
people and not others, the profiles encourage
individuals to communicate and collaborate more
effectively.
The MBTI is a psychological profile tool to
assess personality type, while the HBDI specifically
measures not only a person’s preference for rightbrained
(intuitive) or left-brained (realistic) thinking,
but also for (cognitive) upper or (visceral) lower
thinking. The HBDI model is more complex because
it is based on scientific research conducted specifically on thinking styles, and thus has
applicability beyond individual profiling. But because it is based on the way our brains are
organized, it is also intuitive and easy to remember. In the HBDI, the different thinking
preferences are categorized into four distinct quadrants, and a person who uses the HBDI
process can easily learn which quadrant(s) for which he or she has a preference and how
those preferences may differ from others they work with.
Valuing different thinking preferences is the key to fewer mixed messages, improved
working relationships, and gaining business advantage. People who understand the nonjudgmental
differences between quadrant preferences can expand the range of their own
behaviors and work productively outside their preferred styles of thinking.
Taken from www.hbdi.com
The most widely recognized thinking styles are illustrated as left-brained and
right-brained approaches to problem solving. The left-brained preference is described
as analytical, logical and sequential, while the right-brained preference is described as
intuitive, values-based and nonlinear.
The awareness of one’s own thinking style and the
thinking styles of others combined with the ability to act
outside of one’s preferred thinking style is known as
“Whole Brain Thinking.” This methodology has been
scientifically proven to help individuals at all levels to
become more cooperative and productive, and can lead
to heightened levels of employee and team performance.
By taking advantage of Whole Brain Thinking and
its many applications, companies have addressed issues
including leadership, creative problem solving,
communication, productivity, and more. Companies
who’ve applied the principles of Whole Brain Thinking
have found that once employees are aware of their own
and others’ thinking preferences, they’re much more
likely to want to improve their skills in less preferred
quadrants or to make sure they use other resources to
“bridge the gaps.”
While individual performance improvement is
certainly important, companies are finding that the richest
rewards come from the long-term business results they
WHOLE BRAIN THINKING
The highly validated Whole
Brain Model is scientifically
designed to help people learn
to think better. Training that
utilizes Whole Brain
Technology™ focuses on
showing people how to use
their whole brain – not just the
parts with which they feel most
comfortable.
The Herrmann Brain
Dominance Instrument™
(HBDI™) evaluates and
depicts the degree of
preference individuals have for
thinking in each of four brain
quadrants:
Rational —Blue / A / upper left
Practical —Green / B / lower
left
Feeling —Red / C / lower right
Experimental —Yellow / D /
upper right
Research has shown that
everyone is capable of flexing
to less preferred thinking styles
and learning the necessary
skills to diagnose and adapt to
the thinking preferences of
others. Presenting information
in a way that recognizes,
respects, and is compatible
with different preferences is
crucial to meeting co-worker,
customer, and client needs and
expectations.
The Brains Behind Your Organization’s Success 3
get when they apply this “technology” across their organization and to their customer
relationships.
The most natural place to start applying this “technology” is to diagnose the brains in
your organization. Although a number of different diagnostic tools and assessment
instruments exist for measuring brain dominance, their proponents agree about these basic
points:
• Preferences cannot be labeled inherently good or bad
• People can learn how to act outside their preferred styles
• Understanding others’ preferences supports good communication and promotes
collaboration
Scientific studies have shown that instruments
that classify and describe how people perceive and
interact with the world around them can be powerful
tools in developing employees and achieving
business objectives.
The Hermann Brain Dominance Instrument™
(HBDI™) and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator™
(MBTI™) are two of a number of assessment
systems that have earned scientific and experiential
credibility. The profiles they reveal build selfawareness,
self-esteem and performance. By
helping individuals understand why they “get” some
people and not others, the profiles encourage
individuals to communicate and collaborate more
effectively.
The MBTI is a psychological profile tool to
assess personality type, while the HBDI specifically
measures not only a person’s preference for rightbrained
(intuitive) or left-brained (realistic) thinking,
but also for (cognitive) upper or (visceral) lower
thinking. The HBDI model is more complex because
it is based on scientific research conducted specifically on thinking styles, and thus has
applicability beyond individual profiling. But because it is based on the way our brains are
organized, it is also intuitive and easy to remember. In the HBDI, the different thinking
preferences are categorized into four distinct quadrants, and a person who uses the HBDI
process can easily learn which quadrant(s) for which he or she has a preference and how
those preferences may differ from others they work with.
Valuing different thinking preferences is the key to fewer mixed messages, improved
working relationships, and gaining business advantage. People who understand the nonjudgmental
differences between quadrant preferences can expand the range of their own
behaviors and work productively outside their preferred styles of thinking.
Taken from www.hbdi.com
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