Peter Geyer
Type Coaching and Training

Background

In 1991, the Australian Postal Corporation (Post), with its operational Unions (now the Communication Workers Union) agreed before the Industrial Relations Commission to revise its supervisory practices to reflect more modern participatory approaches. At the time, I was an internal Human Resources Consultant at Post's National Headquarters in Melbourne and I became the National Co-Ordinator of the Supervisory Practices Project.

I subsequently organised a Supervisory Practices National Workshop in August of that year which focussed on Post’s Victorian Administration (they were the most interested), but also involving representatives from all other State Administrations. The workshop investigated what supervisors do, asked what they should be doing and looked at skills they would need in order to perform their new role. One of the concurrent presentations for the skills component was a brief introduction to Type to representatives of each study group at the workshop as a means of helping self-understanding and communication for supervisors and managers, which was jointly conducted by myself and Penny Sharples of the Victorian Administration.

The Type presentation was a hit with both those who attended and those they informed. The enthusiasm and interest from this workshop led to my development of a pilot programme Leadership and Communication Skills using Type and Temperament, in the Mails Business Unit (MBU) of Post in Victoria.

Methodology

It was important to devise a programme that met the business operational needs of Post as well as being a means of effective understanding and learning of Type principles and practice. Sessions were therefore conducted with small groups of managers and supervisors at their own workplaces, emphasising the literal relevance of the programme to the day-to-day activities of the participants as well as constructing a learning group who really did work together. A library of Type materials was also established at MBU’s State offices for the use of interested staff. This complemented the library of materials on teams, empowerment etc.already established.

The programme sessions commenced in February 1992 and ran until late October 1992, when operational requirements relating to the Christmas mail period took priority. Plans for continuing the pilot into 1993 conflicted with other priorities in the Human Resources Group at Post Headquarters and it was not completed, although a report was written for the Deputy General Manager (Victoria-MBU), the project sponsor.

The Programme

The programme itself involved an initial introductory session on Type (approx. 3hrs) which included completion of Form G (Self-Score) with feedback and then follow-up sessions (1-1.5hrs), with topics generally requested by the group, held at regular intervals of 3 to 4 weeks. The presentation style was discursive and informal, and attempts were made to minimise the traditional flavour of a training session. The majority of sessions exceeded the time allocated.

Participants came from the MBU State Office and Mail and Parcel Centres throughout Melbourne, including managers of Country Mail Centres. Not all MBU managers and supervisors became part of the programme, but 90% of Mail and Parcels

Centre managers participated, including all key MBU senior managers. Some Centres involved management and supervisory staff at various levels.

A Type Table of the programme participants follows at Figure 1.

Figure 1. Leadership and Communication Skills participants 1992.

The Type Table

Some brief observations. A feature of the spread of Types when compared with similar published samples on Managers and Supervisors e.g. Roach (1986), Macdaid McCaulley and Kainz (1986) and Guthrie (1993) is the higher proportion of people preferring ISTP, ESTP and, interestingly, INTP. The proportionate lack of people preferring Feeling (F) is not unusual, even among the female participants, but it should be noted nonetheless. MBU is also a male preserve, only 19.2% of the sample being female.

The Type Table data reflects the down-to-earth nature of Post’s operations (ST) and in Temperament terms also a desire for autonomy, impact and action (SP) that by personal observation often clashed with the desire for regulation (SJ) coming from within the MBU and other parts of the Victorian Administration and in particular from policies enunciated from Post Headquarters, elsewhere in the city. Interesting also is the higher number of those preferring Introversion (I) over Extraversion (E) and Perceiving (P) over Judging (J). The proportion of Sensing (S) to Intuition (N) is roughly 7:3. Types reported are True Type as identified by the participants.

One person was unclear as to whether they preferred INTP or ISTP, so the reported Type of INTP is included. Others indicated to me their comfort with the Reported Type preference.

Interest and Response

As indicated earlier, there was an extremely high level of interest in Type and its uses within the MBU, with only one or two people wary about others knowing their preferences. This wariness related generally to lack of trust in the motives of certain managers in a downsizing environment, which was unfortunate, but real.

Nevertheless, “Type–Talk”, particularly in the initial stages, became a part of the daily language and banter of MBU managers, even though many of these enthusiasts had difficulty recalling their Type preference formula. Type seemed to be a way of identifying people that had been known to be different and then a way of understanding that difference for most in the programme.

Because the sessions were designed to respond to the needs of the participants, after the initial general distribution of Hirsh and Kummerow’s Introduction to Type in Organizations, materials from a variety of sources were used. This also fitted in with the plan of the pilot programme, which was to experiment with various tools and methods relating to Type and see which were more appropriate and effective.

Many exercises were taken from Sandra Hirsh’s MBTI Team Building Programme. Some of these however (e.g. those using Type Dynamics) were considered too abstract by some groups and on reflection they were inappropriately presented too early in the process. Preference was for simple direct practical uses of Type and these were in the area of communication, relationship and learning.

Something that was particularly revealing for me was the use of Hanson, Silver and Strong’s Learning Style Inventory (1980), and Teaching Style Inventory(1980), introduced on the basis that an important part of the new role of supervisors was to teach and coach and so they needed to know the preferred teaching and learning styles of themselves and the people they dealt with in order to be more effective communicators.

These Inventories categorise learning styles according to the functional pairs and also provide descriptions of types of suggested activities and methods for each of the 4 learning styles. The use of these materials was very popular, particularly for those who had children studying, or were studying themselves, giving some insight and understanding into different ways of learning.

Interestingly, preferred learning styles often did not relate to Type preference. There were many who preferred SF styles of learning, for instance, who did not share that preference. SF learning and teaching methods are considered by the authors of these inventories to predominate in the earlier years of education, with NT and NF methods predominant at tertiary level.

This information suggested to me that some teaching methods characterised as “adult” were not necessarily appropriate for many, given their learning experience and style preference Gardner (1991) has a non-Type view on this which is relevant. Their preferred style of learning according to Type theory may not have been developed effectively. Formal learning might also not have been a successful, enjoyable or valued experience for whatever reason.

I considered this might impact on the effectiveness of particular Post management training programmes that had been implemented from time to time. This included aspects of the participative management programme driven by the Deputy General Manager (MBU) where MBU managers and supervisors were expected to read a number of management books on the topic and, presumably, implement the method or recommendations contained in the text.

This was not a successful tactic with many of the programme participants. Books sent to many workplaces remained unread, or undigested.

Type, Age and Education

The non-Type data generated by completion of Form G (Self-Score) can give some insight into assessing the success of a change process, particularly one driven by the often complex and abstract written word, as well as giving some insight into aspects of the culture of an organisation. This data is essentially about Age and Education and the experience with the learning styles directed me to this data which I present in three ways: Age and Education (Figure 2); Type and Age (Figure 3) and Type and Education (Figure 4).

An interesting feature of this group were the high number of participants (44.8%)who hadn’t completed High School, and this was spread across a number of age groups. Many of those 42.1% who had completed High School had also done so while working.

Particularly interesting were the 7 people who had completed year 9 only. These were spread across Types as Table 4 shows, but the common age group illustrates a feature of employment in Post in that many people started at the bottom of the rung and with minimal education: they left school to go directly to postal employment. Of the people with tertiary qualifications, many had worked elsewhere before joining Post, usually in some professional capacity.

There was a strong undercurrent of suspicion of higher qualifications in the MBU (and elsewhere in Post), to the extent that some people (including a senior manager) chose to hide their academic achievements from their colleagues, considering it would damage their credibility with fellow workers.

This impacted on the pilot programme in terms of responses to some ideas and material and the response was across Type boundaries. It was also in evidence on the in-house Industrial Participation programme, where qualified Post trainers and professionals outside the operational areas had been actively discouraged from participating, presenting and providing input. External formal management courses intended to develop Post managers in contemporary management ideas and techniques also struggled with this view on education.

It is useful to compare Figure 3 below with Figure 1. For instance, while those preferring ISTJ are a significant percentage of the sample, there were none in the 30-39 Age group, while many of this preference in the 40-49 age group indicated to me that they felt specifically under threat by current Post and MBU management policies. At the time of the pilot, the two most influential managers in MBU preferred ESTP and ENTP respectively, which may account for part of this uneasiness, given the different world views.

Interestingly, the large number of ESTPs are relatively well spread across the age groups. The largest numbers in the 40-49 Age group prefer ISTJ and ISTP, and those preferring Introversion in this age group outnumber those preferring Extraversion by more than 2 to 1. There are very few people over 50 in the sample which is a reflection of the successful targeting of older staff members.

The observation can also be made that there is a greater spread of Type preferences in those aged under 40.

It would be interesting to know to what level management decisions to employ, promote or retire specific people relates to their Type attributes rather than their skills and experience. Post has been historically traditional and conservative, with a strong employment base of early school leavers or migrant groups, particularly in Melbourne. Most of the current literature and programmes on management emphasise what might be characterised as E, N and F skills as criteria for successful management and leadership and this may have been taken on board here, with the table exception of F skills which seem to be not understood, or not valued.

The data on Type and Education shows that proportionately those preferring Intuition (N) were more likely to have completed a tertiary qualification, being slightly under half of those qualified as such, but only 29.5% of the sample group. Not completing High School was a feature of all Types represented, with a larger group in the ISTJ and ISTP preferences. The ESTPs belied some of the stereotypes of their preference, having 3 of their number claiming a Bachelor’s degree.

Those that were younger tended to have completed High School as a minimum, although there were some exceptions.

Conclusions

By reflecting on this application of Type and the development of Type knowledge in a busy operational environment , with the educational and organisational issues as described, the following assesment of the programme method is made:

The method used:

• Was congruent with an organisational shift to team-based work;

• Met the operational needs of managers, who had difficulty in releasing staff for training;

• Was flexible in approach, allowing each group to have some ownership of content;

• Provided for a long period of time for enabling people to become familiar with Type language and concepts;

• Provided ongoing development based on group needs;

• Helped build some tolerance and understanding of diversity;

• Was not manipulated or used inappropriately in this time to my knowledge;

• Was perceived in MBU as a positive tool for all staff; but

• Was affected by operational demands (sessions postponed/cancelled without notice; and

• Required a lot of time and energy from the facilitator.

Those who wish to adapt and critique this method are welcome. I think that overall, it was extremely useful and would be effective in a variety of situations and circumstances.

The purpose of this paper has been to describe a particular method used to introduce Type as part of an organisational change programme, present and examine the resultant Type Table and combine that information with other available data gleaned from the Type process as a means of understanding the environmental issues and the typological issues that can impact on a change strategy and which can also say something about the organisation in a cultural sense.

These data and observations were reported to the project sponsor as a positive outcome of the project, notwithstanding its incompleteness.

References

Lee & Norma Barr The Leadership Equation (Eakin, Austin 1989)

Linda Berens & Working Together, A Personality Centred Approach to Management

Olaf Isachsen (Neworld 1991)

William Bridges The Character of Organisations (CPP Palo Alto,1992)

Howard Gardner The Unschooled Mind (Basic Books NY 1991)

James Guthrie The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator at the Australian Management College Mt. Eliza in The Practising Manager, April 1993

Sandra Hirsh MBTI Team Building Program (CPP Palo Alto 1992)

Introduction to the MBTI (Video) (CPP Palo Alto 1991)

Sandra Hirsh & Introduction to Type in Organisations (CPP Palo Alto1990) 2nd Edition

Jean Kummerow

Otto Kroeger & Type Talk at Work (Delacorte 1992)

Janet Thuesen

Gerald Macdaid, MBTI Atlas of Type Tables (2 Vols.) (CAPT 1986)

Mary McCaulley &

Richard Kainz (eds)

Ben Roach Organisational Decisionmakers: Different Types for Different Levels

in Journal of Psychological Type, Volume 12, 1986.

Martine RoBards & Insight (The Leadership Dimension, Heidelberg, 1988)

Ken Dagley

Sue Scanlon (ed.) The Manager’s Toolbox in The Type Reporter

Vol.3 No. 9 - Vol.4 No.3 ,1989.

Harvey Silver & Learning Styles Inventory and Teaching Styles Inventory

J. Robert Hanson (Hanson Silver and Strong NJ 1980)

Note: Part of this material was previously presented by the author and Penny Sharples at a Symposium on Temperament, Type and Teamwork at APT X (Newport Beach) July 8 1993 and published as Type, Teamwork and Management Styles in the Cultural Diversity of Australian Postal Workplaces in the Australian Journal of Psychological Type Vol.2 No.2 July 1993. Much additional data has been introduced and all data has been re-examined and reworked by the presenter for AAPT Melbourne 1994. Copyright Peter Geyer 1994 and 1998. Not to be reproduced without permission.

Note: This paper has beein slightly reformatted and edited for reproduction in this format.

Photograph courtesy of Jamie Johnston, CAPT Library. PETER GEYER (INTP) is a consultant, researcher and writer in the field of C G Jung's theory of psychological types. He conducts MBTI Accreditation programs and presents internationally on a regular basis. Peter is a life member of AusAPT and a professional affiliate of the Australian Psychological Society.