In 1998 I was working for the Canadian Alpine Ski Team as Director of Finance. I reported to the CEO, Patrick LaForge. If I were to sort my many bosses into three groups - good, mediocre, poor - Patrick would definitely be in the good category.
He was quite new in his position and he hired me to replace a senior bookkeeper who had made quite a mess of the books. Most of the rest of the management team were also new in their positions. The organization supporting Canada’s national ski team was failing and Patrick was hired to clean house and rebuild.
Early in 1998 Patrick retained a consultant to lead the management team through a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator exercise. I do not remember the exercise having much impact on the team. I suspect that it mostly served as a tool which Patrick could use to gain quick insight into those who reported to him.
I do remember one thing Patrick said to me at the time. On a Tough-Tender scale Patrick scored 1 and I scored 9. His background was in the hockey world and his management style was much like a kick ass hockey coach. He told me he would never have hired me had he known about my sensitive, tender side which I had hidden well in the interview process. But, reflecting his skill as a leader, he did not try to manage me the way he managed others. We worked very well together in spite of our differences and I very much respected him.
When I moved from Calgary to Mexico I had my archives shipped to Ajijic. Recently, I had the MBTI report scanned so that I could add it to my website. On my August 7, 2022 birthday I reviewed the report and I will now document some of my reflections.
All things considered, I think the report captures me very well.
First, however, I would like to state my main criticism of the Myers-Briggs approach to personality. It puts people in one of sixteen boxes. But people are extremely complex and MB is overly simplistic and this framework is inevitably very incomplete. And MB implies that people can be understood. In my experience, I can know someone’s MBTI and yet find them very difficult to understand. In my opinion, it is our uniqueness as individuals that should be emphasized, and celebrated.
The Self Portrait of Me Generally, page 2, still feels quite accurate. However, “Broad range of interests” resonates with me more than “Deep interest in a few things” and “Like to be active and to participate” resonates with me more than “Like to watch and reflect”.
Me at Work on page 3 also still feels quite accurate,
The exercise identified Me Generally as an INTJ and Me at Work as an ISTJ. I took a closer look at the N and S components on page 5 which begin to hint at complexity. I do not agree with scoring only a 2 for Imaginative. As a teenager and as a young man I read a lot of science fiction. I think that greatly stimulated my imaginative side and I think I have had a vivid imagination ever since.
Pages 9 to 16 are rich with detail and reflect human complexity. The report states that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” and would be better expressed in bold caps, “THE WHOLE IS GREATER THAN THE SUM OF ITS PARTS”.
I hope to someday write the many chapters of my career and I have many good stories from my year with the Canadian Alpine Ski Team.