MBTI® Step ITM Exercise

laptop with email communication notification

2 minute read

Original content by The Myers-Briggs Company

You've Got Mail

Text, Teams chat, email – we use multiple channels to communicate with our colleagues and customers throughout the day.  But how does type impact the way these messages are received?

This fun team activity explores how process pairs are useful when exploring communication between Myers-Briggs personality types. The exercise uses the process lens, focusing on the type table’s four columns: ST, SF, NF and NT. These process pairs are particularly useful when exploring communication between the different MBTI® personality types.

Applications

  • Communication
  • Email

Type preferences studied

  • Sensing, Intuition, Thinking & Feeling

Time required

  • 30 minutes

Materials required

  • Flipchart paper and pens (one per group)

Instructions

  • Put one piece of flipchart paper in each corner of the room, labelled ST, SF, NF and NT
  • Split people into these four process pair groups.
ST SF NF NT
Specific information
Logistical analysis		 Specific information
People/values
orientated		 Vision
People/values
orientated		 Vision
Logistical analysis

You can use these high-level descriptions as clues on your flipchart paper, or refer
your participants to other resources.

  • Ask groups to design a poster to appeal to their opposite process
    Pair grouping:
    (ST - NF) (SF - NT)

Participants should write out the email in full, including subject heading and greeting. Use one of the
following scenarios or create your own:

  • Send a meeting request to a colleague to discuss a new project you are going to be working on together.
  • A colleague has asked for your feedback on an article they have written. Write an email giving your feedback.
  • A client has asked you how to get to your office for a meeting with you. Write an email response.

Ask each group to read out their email to their opposite group, at whom the communication is aimed.
Ask the group receiving the email to comment on the effectiveness of the communication. Ask what the
‘target’ group liked and what worked for them, plus one thing they would change to make the email
more appealing to them.

Debrief
Use the functional pair posters and the following points to debrief the exercise.

STs may: SFs may:
  • Value specific information (e.g., where/what is the meeting? what time what will happen?).
  • Be annoyed by vague or inaccurate information.
  • Want the email to have a clear point.
  • Value specific, accurate information (as for STs, but with particular interest in ‘who’ questions).
  • Want the email to have a clear point.
  • Value personal emails that include greetings and pleasantries.
NTs may: NFs may:
  • Be drawn in by an email that intrigues them, provides a novel perspective or flatters their sense of competence.
  • Be irritated by emails that contain excessive detail or irrelevant information.
  • Want the email to have a clear point and be concise.
  • Value an appealing and intriguing concept.
  • Like emails to have a personal touch and want the writer to be supportive and approachable.
  • Be turned off by impersonal treatment and excessive detail, especially facts or instructions.

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