Types are fascinating patterns that are best discovered holistically.

Welcome to Beyond Personality Types, the original Interstrings podcast. Every week we provide you with the better ways to use and talk about personality theories. I am your host, Olivier Caudron, a self discovery facilitator. With me is Dr. Linda Berens, internationally renowned for her innovative typology approach. Come with us beyond the indicator results to rethink what you know about personality types. Why do some people thrive on taking charge while others excel at quietly orchestrating from behind the scenes? And what does this really tell us about personality type? Hello and thank you for tuning in. Welcome to the very first episode of our special series on interaction styles here at Beyond Personality Types.

If you're a type practitioner or enthusiast ready to go deeper than MBTI codes and and familiar frameworks, this series is designed just for you. Today, Linda takes us back to the origins of the interaction styles lens, revealing how it evolved, how it relates to other popular models like disc and social styles, and why focusing on patterns can transform how you guide others and talk about time Type. By the end of this episode, you'll be inspired to experiment with different type lenses and gain practical insights on how to creatively adapt and refine them to fit the unique needs of your clients and communities. Let's see how understanding the origins and foundation flexibility of interaction styles helps us go beyond personality types. How did your last meeting go? How did you reach your goal as a team? Who in the team motivates you the most and who doesn't? How would you have managed that sensitive step differently? Why did they not listen to you? We would like everybody to be like ourselves. Unfortunately or fortunately, we are not all the same. Yet there is a solution. Knowing oneself better to live better with other people.

The Interstrength Institute research on personality types identified four different patterns related to to the interactions. Hence the name of the lens, Interaction styles. Linda, what is the origin of the interaction style Lens?

Oh my goodness. Back in the early days, fairly early days of type maybe I had been involved for about five or six years. Disc came out, the disc test. I took it. I didn't relate to anything, nothing fit me. Other people took it. I remember that we were at a conference and some people said, well, I wonder how type Myers brings in. The Jungian stuff relates to disc and my stance was it's getting at different information so don't try to confuse them.

Interestingly, the disc is based on a model that was developed in the 20s. In the 1920s, the same time Jung was Thinking about personality type and other people. Another book came out on social styles. I read that book and I pretty much liked what they had to say. We started just playing with how might it match? In our certification workshops for the Myers Briggs, we put a little tape on the floor that made a matrix. We had people go there. By this time we would have known their full type. We had a hypothesis that certain letters in the type code went with each of these four different ways of being that related to disc and the four social styles.