The Psychometrics Canada Professional Development Conference: Type Takeaways! Last week, Psychometrics Canada hosted its 3rd Professional Development conference, welcoming type practitioners from all over Canada as they took part in two full days of delving further into type. The hope was that the attendees from our valued community of Type practitioners would leave with an enhanced understanding of how to apply the MBTI® assessment to their professional practice, while connecting with other consultants, facilitators, coaches, therapists, OD specialists and type advocates alike! I thought today’s blog should be dedicated to some of the key moments from our conference as a way to wrap up an incredibly successful week, due entirely to all those who came out to the Novotel Centre in Toronto,Ontario on the 29th and 30th of October- we couldn’t have done it without you! The two-day conference started out with a brief Welcoming Ceremony led by Mark Fitzsimmons, President of Psychometrics Canada. During this welcoming, Mr. Fitzsimmons also presented the 2014 MBTI® Innovation Award. From dozens of entries, the award was given to Maralyn Ellis for her unique and creative way of helping individuals verify type! Using these cleverly designed two-sided coins, Maralyn akins preferences to a weighted coin – one side will come up more often, almost by default because it is most ‘natural’; but, as we all know, we have access to either side, and as effective individuals we can and should use the other side when appropriate. She has found great success helping clients navigate their way through verifying a best fit type. Congratulations, Maralyn on such an imaginative as well as practical application (S and Ns would both approve!). Our key-note presentation was delivered by Patrick Kerwin, Master MBTI Practitioner and a facilitator with over 20 years of experience using the MBTI instrument with various clients and industries. From his copious experiences, he has written, developed and published a book called“True Type Tales” that give anecdotal and very potent examples of type in action (Definitely a recommended read). Using his book as a platform to explain the use of story-telling when using Type with clients, Patrick delivered a dynamic and insightful hour on the value of making preferences real for those you work with via personal and practical examples. Following the keynote, individuals spent the next two days attending various talks of their choice – presented by various facilitators that we have worked closely with and whom some of you may have recognized from your very first certification! Topics that were covered included Sustaining the Legacy of the MBTI Tool (yours truly), Type Tips for Trainers (Chuck Pratt), A Refresher course to consolidate some foundational knowledge (Shawn Bakker), Type and Career Coaching (Donna Dunning), Type and the Slippery Slopes of Conflict (Patrick Kerwin) Type and Emotional Intelligence (Chuck Pratt), Type and Communication (Donna Dunning), Using type to Develop Leaders (Shawn Bakker) and Type and Diversity (Chuck Pratt) to name a few. There was also an opportunity to get some one-one-one face time with the facilitators to enhance some personal understanding of type, as well as a a Cocktail meet-n-greet to catalyze those connections amongst the various type practitioners in attendance! From all of us here at Psychometrics Canada, thank-you to those who helped make the 2014 Professional Development Conference such a success. Without our valued Practitioners in attendance, it would not have been possible. And, if you didn’t have the opportunity to attend this year, worry not – based on the success of 2014, there just may be some additional professional development conferences on the horizon. Stay tuned! Tell us what you think!
