MBTI® Tool and Influencing—The Power of the Mental Processes
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I slept well and was excited about what day 2 of the MBTI® Users Conference would bring. The first session of the day was an exciting keynote by Damian Killen, Founder & Managing Director at Thrive, and Rich Thompson, Divisional Director of Research at CPP. The session was titled “MBTI®—The Missing Piece in the Influencing Jigsaw.”
Anyone who attended the conference received a very informative and snazzy white paper on influencing, based on current research from 2014–15 with a sample of over 3,600 individuals. We learned that the mental processes (ST, SF, NF, and NT) are truly where it’s at when it comes to how we influence others and how we like to be influenced. This included percentages of respondents, sorted by process pair, endorsing a particular option as the most important element in influencing. The influencing elements were “Appreciation of my point of view,” “Trust,” “Understanding,” “Rapport,” and “Willingness to compromise.” “Trust” was endorsed as the most important element by all process pairs, though not surprisingly those who prefer Sensing endorsed it more. Those with a preference for Intuition endorsed “Appreciation of my point of view” more than did those with a preference for Sensing. Of course, a lot more information was covered during the keynote.
Also presented were barriers to influencing, with “Absence of listening” being the biggest barrier for all four process pairs, though those with a preference for Feeling endorsed it more than did those with a preference for Thinking. Other barriers explored were “Being told what to do,” “Lack of time to debate and discuss” (can you guess who endorsed this most?), “Either party being ill-prepared or unclear,” and “Closed to alternatives.”
Finally, summary data on what most likely describes the influencing style of each process pair and the least effective strategy for influencing each pair were also presented. My NF influencing style (“Connecting with people and offering inspiring options”) and least effective style to influence me (“Close-minded and narrow-focused approach”) fit me very well.
Want to read more about my experience at the 2015 MBTI® Users Conference? Check out my last blog series: