My MBTI & Me
Personal Human Relations Skills
My MBTI
Kurt Stuke
Franklin Pierce University
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of
HTL 605 Collaborative Leadership
James J. Freiburger, PhD
9Jan2010
As a director within a corporate operations group, one of my primary roles is to guide a team of auditors as they travel the challenging terrain of driving compliance and positive change. The metaphorical “due-north,” upon which the very possibility of such a task rests, is the baseline, i.e. the agreed upon set of standards, accepted processes, and actions as accepted by the company, upon which, all measurement rests. Within this essay, I shall focus upon on the responsibility of setting and maintaining the baseline against which the measurement of compliance rests and the launching of positive change occurs. While this task might appear straightforward and is therefore somewhat out-of-place within a general discussion concerning collaboration, the establishing of a baseline (fortunately or unfortunately) does not occur in a vacuum. There is more to the setting of a baseline than merely joining required regulatory standards, desired financial goals, and tested best practices. Often the aforementioned standards, like Platonic forms floating tranquilly high above the earth, are beyond the capacity of the current-state field and corporate “dream-teams” in place. Even more frequently, battle is waged as to how to first understand the ideal and then as to where the metric or baseline should be set. While such a task is nearly impossible when all groups involved are motivated by concern for the company, quality, and the bottom-line, it is not unprecedented that less than noble motives are often present within the discussions. In such cases, the baseline remains under siege; a victim of the war between self-interest and altruism. Comprise, not collaboration, is accepted and a sort of dull-witted “treaty” is often set. After the treaties are signed and put in place, each group tends to ignore what was agreed to and attempts to enact their own position such that the agreed to standard, like an abandoned truce flag, flaps wildly in the winds of chaos. In short, the very premise upon which measurement and quality rests, i.e. a baseline, should be more likened to the building of a sandcastle in the face of a rapidly oncoming tide than to the erection of a massive and unyielding tower of truth high on a hill. Yet, despite the difficulties and challenges, the baseline is the “that without which not” for the quality team. Given the centrality of the baseline, I have spent the last year attempting to use collaborative methods of leadership as a weapon in guiding the team and protecting the baseline. For the remainder of this essay, I shall examine the tactics I have used as treated through the filter of my MBTI code. That is, how did my cognitive processes and personality type color my attempt to apply collaborative leadership?
One of my first tactics as I tried to introduce order into an environment that seemed to favor freedom over structure was to create a document referred to as the “tool tips.” My thinking was that even within a small centralized audit team of five members, there was still a need to have each member measuring to the same standard. Also, given the tendency for the baseline to be deconstructed by the groups in play, I needed to be able to articulate and define the baseline, educate the team as to the baseline, and we all needed to be able to defend our measurements. As an ISTJ, I naturally oriented internally and relied on the lessons learned over the past several years as I constructed the tool tips. I turned to the library of policies and procedures and mountains of training modules and process guides as I created the tool. I suppose my actions were quite consistent with the tendencies of an introverted senser (Si). Out of loyalty and a need to protect my team and to create structure that would help us streamline the mission, I endeavored to create a tool for their benefit but did not include them in the very building of the tool!
A second necessary invention was the introduction of weekly staff meetings in order to ensure that the baseline was understood, to address any gaps, and to instill some sense of team even though were we scattered throughout the country. To be honest, I did not anticipate the need for staff meetings. The need became apparent in a reactive way, i.e. disagreements as to how to interpret and apply the baseline exploded like IEDs around us. Instinctively, we would “circle the wagons” and teleconference sporadically in order to understand what just happened. My personality type definitely stunted the desired growth and goal of collaboration among the team. As an introverted feeler (Fi), I tended to become “self-righteous” when reeling from the challenges erupting around me and my team. I felt as if I had a higher ground based on some sort of objectivity that my “opponent” did not. Unknowingly, my “more-objective-than-thou” attitude tainted not only how I lead the team in specific melees and firefights but also in how I conducted the meetings. I lead each meeting and supplied ample structure to each meeting out of a need to protect the team. While I intended the meetings to foster autonomy and to encourage each member to grow and become a creative problem-solver, my insistence on sticking with proven methods coupled with my “more-objective- than-thou” foolishness did not produce the desired outcome. On the positive side, the baseline was more consistently understood and enforced. As a result regulatory concerns and financial goals were more accurately monitored, thus allowing for better root cause failure analysis and growth of some sense. The drawbacks were at least two-fold: first, the quantified stability and measurable corporate growth was procured through the limited growth of collaboration and individual growth of the team; second, as the work load is zero-sum, and my leadership tactics limited the growth of collaboration, I become the donkey bearing a heavy and disproportionate load. I suppose the end result proves that poetic justice does exist in corporate America!
As I endured the post-mortem of the previous year and began planning for the next, I just happened to read Stagich’s criteria for collaboration. He depicts collaborative groups as being “characterized by mutual sharing, respect, diversity, participation and the transformations which occur through high order thinking and communication.” (Stagich, 2001) As I read the text I realized that I had only partially implemented and respected the values as advocated by Stagich. For example, the weekly meetings could be a forum for mutual sharing and high order thinking but only if I backed off sufficiently and let the experience take root. I was like an over attentive gardener. In my attempt to grow the best possible crop, I over-weeded and actually prevented optimal growth. Similarly, participation existed but only in a shallow two-dimensional way, i.e. in ways that I deemed appropriate. In order to break my self-imposed cycle of collaborative dysfunction, I have asked each of the team member to act as the subject matter expert (SME) on
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