Everything You Need to Know About the MBTI and the 16 Personality Types

What is the MBTI®?

The MBTI® is a model designed to help us understand different personality types.

Each of us is born with natural ways of perceiving information and making decisions.

These preferences strongly influence how we react, how we communicate, our leadership style, our needs, our strengths, and our development path. The combination of these preferences leads to 16 distinct personality types: the 16 MBTI® types.

MBTI® training has become very popular because it helps people discover their own personality profile and improve communication with those around them.

 

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The MBTI® is based on the work of Carl Jung and his book Psychological Types, which describes 16 personality types, their strengths, their potential challenges, and how each type can grow.

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What Do the Different MBTI® Letters Mean?

The MBTI® identifies four pairs of preferences. Each person has one preference in each pair, giving a total of four preferences.

Isabel Myers and Katherine Briggs (the creators of the MBTI® - Myers Briggs Type Indicator®) chose to represent each preference with a letter. This makes presenting your profile much easier. Instead of saying, for example, that you prefer Introversion, Intuition, Feeling, and Perceiving, you can simply say: I am an INFP.

Much shorter, isn’t it?

These preferences are:

Extraversion or Introversion – our source of energy:

• A person who prefers Extraversion (E) draws energy from engaging with the external world.
• A person who prefers Introversion (I) draws energy from quiet moments and time alone.

Sensing or Intuition – how we take in information:

• Sensing (S) is used when we perceive information through our senses, step by step, focusing on factual and tangible reality (present or past).
• Intuition (N) is used when we make connections between pieces of information, focus on possibilities, project ourselves into the future, or link past, present, and future.

Thinking or Feeling – how we prefer to make decisions:

• Thinking (T) is used when we make decisions based on logical criteria.
• Feeling (F) is used when we make decisions based on subjective criteria (alignment with a value system or consideration of the impact on others).

Judging or Perceiving – how we approach life:

• Judging (J) seeks structure, predictability, and continuity.
• Perceiving (P) seeks adaptability and flexibility.

 

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A person who prefers Extraversion (E) + Sensing (S) + Thinking (T) + Judging (J) is an ESTJ.
An INFP is the type that prefers Introversion (I) + Intuition (N) + Feeling (F) + Perceiving (P).

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The 16 Personality Types

Myers and Briggs developed a table to represent each of the 16 personality types. You will find it below.

Each link takes you to a more detailed description of the profile. You will discover its main characteristics, leadership style, communication style, approach to conflict management and change management, how it functions under stress, the strategies that suit it best for managing stress, as well as its potential development over the course of life.

 

How can you discover your MBTI® type?

Many people search for a free “MBTI test” on the Internet hoping to find out their MBTI® personality type.

It is important to understand that the MBTI® is not a “test”. Completing an online questionnaire only gives what is called your apparent type.

To determine your validated type, you need to have a feedback session with a certified MBTI® practitioner.

Understanding your personality type is a deeper and more complex process than simply answering a questionnaire.

 
Be cautious with free MBTI® tests

Free MBTI® questionnaires are often not validated and can contain significant inaccuracies.

For this reason, you should be very cautious about free online tests.

 

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Relying only on the questionnaire results to determine someone’s profile is a professional error!

The presentation of MBTI® results must always be accompanied by validation of the individual’s type.

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What are the applications of the MBTI®?

The MBTI® (Myers & Briggs Type Indicator) helps you identify your preferred ways of functioning, as well as those of the people you interact with.

It supports more effective, more productive and more enjoyable relationships.

You can use it to improve:

• Your management style
• Your communication and conflict management
• Your stress management
• Your career management
• Change management
• The effectiveness of your coaching journeys, through what we call differentiated coaching
• Sports coaching
• Team cohesion, etc.

 

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The MBTI® is a tool that offers many practical applications.

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Why use the MBTI®?

In addition to its many applications, here are three further reasons to choose the MBTI®.

• Its universality
  The MBTI® is a widely used model, which helps when interacting with many different people. It is even used in coaching and team-building contexts.
  
  
• Ease of use
  The MBTI® is relatively easy to use.
  
  
• Its dynamic aspect
  Some professionals rightly criticise the MBTI® for being static.

 

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In our MBTI training program, qe use Jung’s explanation of how the 16 profiles function to provide a dynamic approach:

• How I can evolve over time;
• How I function under stress;
• What my paths for professional and personal improvement are.

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What are the misconceptions about the MBTI®?

We sometimes hear certain misconceptions about the MBTI®.

 

MBTI® results would not be reliable

The MBTI® is a type indicator (MBTI® stands for Myers & Briggs Type Indicator®). It gives a first idea of a person’s profile (what is called the apparent type). Through dialogue with the coachee or participant, they will determine their own profile (validated type).

It is therefore entirely normal for someone to conclude that their validated profile differs from what their questionnaire responses initially seemed to indicate.

In fact, the quality of an MBTI®-based facilitation depends largely on the MBTI®-certified practitioner’s ability to ask the right questions in order to help participants discover their type.

 

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A little tip? A good way to choose a trainer is to ask them how they help someone see, for example, whether they are ISTJ or INTJ.

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The MBTI® does not allow practical applications

As you have seen above, the MBTI® allows many practical applications.

I presented them in detail in my first book on the MBTI®: “Vous êtes unique, vos interlocuteurs aussi.”

 

The MBTI® is static and typologising

People who think this often do so because of presentations of the 16 personality types in a table and some descriptions that can feel quite typologising.

However, the MBTI® is based on Jung’s work, which is dynamic (how different functions develop in us, how we can evolve over a lifetime — what is called the individuation path — and why we can become so different from ourselves under deep stress).

Also, John Beebe’s work on archetypes has added an even richer, more dynamic dimension.

When done properly (i.e. including the Jungian approach), the MBTI® opens the door to understanding a person’s dynamics and proves to be a potentially very rich model.

This requires giving it enough time; half-day sessions, for example, inevitably lead to a rather simplistic and reductive approach.

 

The MBTI® is complicated and hard to remember

Human beings are complex; trying to reduce them to simplistic information (such as four colours) is reductive, caricatural, and offers few concrete paths to improving how they function.

Our professional experience has taught us two key points:

• Using Jung’s model (in addition to or instead of the MBTI®) greatly helps understanding and remembering one’s profile, making it accessible to everyone.
• Discovering one’s profile is not very useful if it is not accompanied by practical tools.

 

Is the MBTI® complementary to Process Com®?

Yes, the two approaches are complementary.

The MBTI® is an innate model (we are born with preferences), while Process Com® is an acquired model (we develop one of the Process Com® personality types in reaction to our early life experiences).

Training in Process Communication Model® complements training in the MBTI®; it provides practical keys to communicate more effectively, especially in difficult situations (stress, people who are negative). However, it offers fewer axes for self-understanding and fewer practical applications than MBTI®.