Ah, yes, the MBTI. Here's my li'l tale:
For my Systems Design class, we took various personality tests &
such. These tests were supposed to help our beloved teacher group us
with complementary classmates in order to achieve success in our
semester-long project (that is, fashioning a system for the Cartoon
Actors Guild that would bring them into the 21st century yadda
yadda). Ideally, the groups would be balanced with computer-saavy
folk and "where's the AnyKey types", aggressive and non-aggressive
types, leaders & followers, and we'd be able to meet our goals
successfully.
I THINK I was an INTP; don't exactly remember. Something about being
creative, but needy, introverted, and not a take-charge kinda guy.
Regardless, I was grouped w/ 4 other folks, and off we went on our
journey together. The leaders of this group (supposedly take-charge
types) were the most laidback, non-committal types you'd ever want to
work with. Group Member #3 was a computer whiz, but totally going
off on his own little tangents, unable to come to grips with the
necessary requirements of the assignment. Group Member #4 was nice
(they all were, actually), but couldn't come up w/ much in terms of,
you know, ideas or work or any such stuff. And then, li'l ol' me.
The semester rolls on, the leaders do fuck all to really organize our
efforts, #3 is off designing a Cray Supercomputer, and #4 giggles
every so often. And I'm losing my freakin' marbles. After about a
month of dicking around, I decide to (covertly) take charge - offer
more assertive suggestions, parse out duties, organize the reports
(the Design Analysis, the Cost Analysis, etc), organize the oral
presentation, put together the PowerPoint slides to accompany the
oral presentation, and so on. During all this, we're supposed to
keep a journal, charting the progress made during the semester - I
spend most of the journal bitching about how I'm stuck with all the
work, how I had to take charge even though I don't like being in
charge, how I was losing my hair and breaking out all over my body,
couldn't eat solid foods, saw spots, etc. (I get stressed, you see.)
Somehow, our group makes it through the entire process, creating the
tersest, least detailed design presentation out of the 5 groups in my
class, and I escape with high marks and many, many kudos. (My
teacher, during our post-class conference - she met with the groups
as a unit and separately, even complemented me on the vocab I used in
my journal - hot diggity. She also chastized the other group members
for dropping the ball.)
Conclusion: Group work SUCKS, and personality tests SUCK even more.
And this concludes another Chapter from the Book of Obvious Duh.
― David Raposa, Thursday, 6 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)
Exactly. At my last job, a co-worker was in an evaluation and
disagreed with his boss about some things. She pulled out a binder
and opened it to his MBTI results and said, "well it says here that
you're x type and that tells me that you have trouble doing y". And
then, being the only "brainstormer" type in the department, I had to
write all of the reports and mission statements, etc.
― Kerry, Thursday, 6 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)