Mutual Use of Opposite Type Preferences
Understanding people with different preferences can be beneficial in every day work situations. It can help teams clarify problems, make decisions, create more positive meetings and unify communication.
According to the work of Carl Jung, when your mind is active, you are involved in one of two mental processes:
- Taking in information (Sensing or Intuition)
- Organizing that information and coming to conclusions (Thinking or Feeling)
Each polar opposite preference holds the key to better-rounded perceptions. Use the following table to reflect on the gifts of each preference.
Sensing team members:
Intuitive team members:
- Bring up pertinent facts
- Face the realities of the current situation
- Apply experience to the problem
- Read the fine print in a contract
- Focus on what needs attention now
- Face difficulties with realism
- Stay aware of the joys of the present
- Bring up new possibilities
- Anticipate future trends
- Apply insight to problems
- See how different facts tie together
- Focus on long term goals
- Face possibilities with excitement
- Anticipate joys of the future
Thinking team members:
Feeling team members:
- Analyze consequences and implications
- Find the flaws in advance
- Hold consistently to a policy
- Give needed critical feedback
- Stand firm for important principles
- Create rational systems
- Be fair
- Forecast how others will feel
- Praise what is right and positive
- Make needed individual exceptions
- Teach and coach others
- Stand firm for human centered values
- Organize people and tasks harmoniously
- Appreciate the thinker along with everyone else.
Resource: Introduction to Type, by Isabel Briggs Myers