type and goal setting

One of the challenges that we face is embedding learning and development into our clients' everyday lives. Everyone is busy - so we need to make it as easy as possible.

But often very language of goal-setting and action planning can itself get in the way, and make things harder not easier.

Sensing works step by step from now into a close future.

But those with a Sensing and Perceiving/go with the flow preference will just do what they do - they don't plan, or set goals and work towards them.

Sensing and Judging - they like short term goals, and action plans that set out the small steps to success. For them - the traditional language and processes of time planning, goal setting and action plans work - and they implement them.

iNtuitives - especially those with a Thinking /logic preference - work backwards from the future to now. Go with the flow iNtuitivies (NPs) hate the concept of a single goal (they feel constrained and tied in, and so the first thing they will do is something that's not on the list. Better for them the language of FOCUS, and DIRECTION, and OUTCOMES.

So as an (ENTP) Innovator - here I am proving my own point. If I had an action plan that said I had to post to my blog once a week - it would just add to my guilt list of things I should have already done. By having a focus of exploring how type plays itself out in everyday life, I get to create my direction, and end up with a result that actually gets me the outcome I want.

tuning into the clues

Poker players know all about the "tell" - those signs that indicate whether a player might be bluffing.

At a recent seminar on Type at the Movies (a great way to spend a winter's afternoon) Peter Malone (INFJ) remarked that people with a Feeling (F) preference will often use the word "Lovely".

So I was really amused to receive a copy of a genuine email that really shows type preferences in daily life:

'...wonderful job you do...you could probably send me a really good version...Our scanner is pathetic. No, that's pejorative. Our lovely scanner produces pathetic scans...How lovely! This will make my job [...] a lot easier...'