Type Insights
insights into psychological type models

Eric recently posted a comment on my blog that read:

Don’t take the shortness of my previous post to mean I don’t have any experience. I’ve started learning about this from the book “Please Understand Me” 14 years ago. Since then I have sought to apply this knowledge to the people I interact with. As an INTJ I am constantly analyzing my environment and the people around me. I don’t need to go to a workshop for this because I think that real knowledge comes from self-discovery. But that may just be the dominant Ni in me speaking.

I appreciate Eric’s comments since they got me thinking about the necessity of experiential learning. Certainly I am under the impression that a number of people I have met online feel the same as Eric — that they can figure type out adequately enough without ever leaving their chair.

I might even go so far as to suggest this is the conceit of iNtuiting types in general — myself included — believing their imagination is sufficient and that engaging in real-life learning simply isn’t necessary.

Contrast this with an idea from Confucius:

I hear and I forget.
I see and I remember.
I do and I understand.

Since he is invoking the 5 senses in this prose, it would seem that Confucius would be more inclined to come down on the side of live workshops.

Here’s a parable that further illustrates his point:

A young man who lived in a small inland village in Greece had never been to the ocean and wanted to learn about it. He spent hours and hours in quiet libraries reading books that explained and described it and he learned many things about it. He could describe its size, name the creatures that lived in it, and he even knew the colors the setting sun cast on it at the end of the day. His mind was filled with all sorts of wonderful impressions and images of this thing called ocean.
 
Then one day, he was invited to take a journey to the coast. When he arrived, the sun was setting over the water. The sound of the breakers, and the splashing foam was magnificently beautiful. He ran down to where it lapped against the shore, dipped his hands into it, and brought some of the salty water to his lips. Taking off his shoes, he walked into the ocean, and felt the water gently pull the sand out from under his feet. As the water swirled around his legs, and the rich colored sunlight danced off the water into his eyes, he thought to himself, “So this is the ocean!”

Because my husband and I attend and conduct live workshops, we both wanted to put our two cents in — following is a 12-minute video we recorded about their value.

Our intention is to provide Eric and others with some new perspectives to consider when evaluating their competence around applying psychological type models.

I welcome your thoughts.

Training programs that offer live workshops using the 8-function model include these:

www.Interstrength.com
www.type-resources.com
www.hpsys.com
www.qualifying.org

(more to come as I identify them)

November 23rd, 2008 | Tags: Learning, live workshops | Category: 8-function model, Clarifying Type, video | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL