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Personality Testing

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®
Reviewed by Kellie Fowler

Ever wanted to know your personality type? Or, perhaps as the leader of a team, you quite rightly want to understand more about the different personalities of your team members?

At http://www.knowyourtype.com, you can find this out and more. In fact, relying on the KnowYourType™ personality test, you will get important insights into how and why people understand and approach the world in such different ways.

It's called the "Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® Instrument".

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, also referred to as the "MBTI® Instrument" or "the Indicator" provides a useful way of describing people's personalities by looking at their preferences on four scales (extraversion vs. introversion, sensing vs. intuition, thinking vs. feeling, and judging vs. perceiving). These preferences combine to yield one particular type.

There are 16 dynamic energy systems or types. There is no right or wrong type, and there are no better or worse combinations of types in work or relationships. As the site points out, each type and each individual bring special gifts.

The purpose of learning about type is to help you understand yourself better and to enhance your relationships with others and the site emphasizes that each person is unique.

Certainly, you are the final judge of your best-fit type and your results on the MBTI Instrument suggest your probable type based on the choices you made when you answered the questions. The same holds true for colleagues, spouses, etc.

Of course, type does not explain everything. Human personality is much more complex. Instead, number scores on the MBTI Instrument indicate clarity of reporting a particular preference. They do not measure skills or ability or degree of use, but may be quite useful in cultivating a stronger understanding of a person or even for appropriate job placement.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® Instrument is a self-report questionnaire designed to make theory of psychological types understandable and useful to everyday life. MBTI® Instrument results identify valuable differences between normal healthy people, differences that can be the source of much misunderstanding and miscommunication.

Past clients who have relied on the KnowYourType® personality test include America Online, Ernst & Young, Kaiser Permanente, US Cellular, Schwab, Raytheon, Whirlpool, the US Military and more, proving this test is a reliable tool that, when used correctly, can yield strong results.

You can get a similar assessment at http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes1.htm for free, but please bear in mind that this is not quite the same thing .

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