This past week I had the opportunity to be in two workshops. The first was put on by the Justice Institute and was called ‘Dealing with Hostile People’ and the other was ‘Motivational Interviewing’ by Empowering Change Inc.

Both of these workshops were excellent and had really good facilitators. What was interesting to me was that many of the principles used in these courses are parallel to those learned when one does the Myers-Briggs® Assessment and has it debriefed. What was more evident was the ability of the facilitators to ‘read’ the participants and deliver information in a manner which suited them. If they saw it wasn’t hitting home they would come at it from a different perspective. Knowledge of type as it influences learning style is extremely valuable in communication. The facilitators may have had training in personality types or may have gained their style through experience. Whichever way, they used the knowledge well!

For both of the workshops, communication was key to the topic. If you communicated poorly, you would obtain a much different result than if you communicated well. This is the same in anything that we do, whether at home or at work. Our communications with our spouses, friends and families as well as our co-workers and contacts on the job are all influenced by personality type. The more knowledge we have in this area, the better equipped we are to head off potential miscommunication and the resulting consequences.

Taking the Myers-Briggs® Type Indicator is a personal choice and cannot be mandated so not everyone you know is going to take it. Even if only you have had the assessment it will be beneficial to your relationships with others. In any organization, whether it is a church group, a service club, a task force or senior management team, all benefit from knowing how to effectively communicate with their peers.