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 Behrentz, internationally renowned for her innovative typology approach. Come with us beyond the indicator results to rethink what you know about personality types. Are you ready to move beyond simply handing out personality test results and start truly unveiling what lies beneath the surface of your clients and yourself? Hello and thank you for tuning in. In today's episode of Beyond Personality Types, we're diving deep into the differences between the well known Myers Briggs Type Indicator and the interstrength approach.

If you're searching for tools, stories and new frameworks to enhance the way you talk about and use personality type theories, this episode will expand your perspective and empower you to support others with greater accuracy and depth. Let's see how this comparison will help us go beyond personality type.

Nowadays, the MBTI stays one of the most known and used. Far from test and other indicators, there is the interstrength approach. It offers another way to unveil a personality. What is this other way? What does one get more from it? What are the differences between the two? Linda, if you are ready without further ado, let's start the comparison.

Well, I'm just really excited about this word you used, unveil, because that's what we're doing. It's personality patterns are there and we're removing the veil that hides ourselves from ourselves as well as ourselves from others. I like that.

Good.

So. Well, this is a big topic here. Dear to my heart, I started out learning about temperament first and more holistically about their four patterns and the ways they become dysfunctional and then oh, and by the way, here's what they look like when they're functional. What David Kersey did was describe those four patterns and then we took the Myers Briggs Type Indicator to find out which one fit us. I took it scored INTP but 1 point INFP. In those days we didn't know a whole lot about it. They had some descriptions for each of the 16 type patterns and I did relate to both descriptions. The Myers Briggs was becoming more and more popular.

We're talking about 1980. I was in this community, the association for Psychological Type that was all built around the Myers Briggs itself. Sometimes people had to point out that it was the association for Psychological Type, not The association for the Myers Briggs. Because there seemed to be a lot of confusion.

Yes, indeed.

And in those days, we took the instrument that means we gave it to people and pretty much assumed that that was what fit them. Then I started doing MBTI qualifying programs. They didn't want to do a certification, but they did a qualifying, which meant that we taught the tests and measures requirements for it to be a psychological test. In other words, you had to be a psychologist or have had certain courses in order to purchase that instrument. It was such a popular thing. It just spread like wildfire. I was always using temperament with it. The more I learned about each of the 16 types, the more I discovered that the results someone reported might not agree with what was really their best fit.