How did you become involved with the MBTI® Assessment? In 1981 I was a career counselor in a small non-profit organization. A new counselor asked me if I knew about the Myers Briggs® assessment as she had recently completed her Master’s Degree and had taken it in the program. I knew nothing about it, so she got a copy of the Form G for me, and I was immediately interested. There were only 2 books available at that time: Isabel Myers’ early Manual, and a book on Temperament theory by David Kersey called Please Understand Me. I read every word, and actually cried when I read the description for ENFP—at last, someone understood me! At that time the Center taught a series of classes on career direction, the first one being on values. The Director suggested I use some of the information on MBTI type in the first class, and soon most of that three hour session was about type. I met Naomi Quenk who was then President of the South West Region of Association of Psychological Type (APT). I attended my first APT Conference on type in Evanston, IL in 1985, and I learned that several of the researchers were planning to run the first Qualifying Training Program there. There were so many interested people that they ended up running several sessions. Through my perseverance, (actually being rather a pest), Naomi let me attend and pass out papers. She and Katharine Myers were to teach a Qualifying Program in Albuquerque, and Jean Kummerow and I were there as trainees. There were always two trainers in the first years of the program, and I was fortunate to do a number of sessions with Naomi; I learned so much from that experience. What led to the development of the Change Management models and research you have invested in? It was in the early 80’s that I first heard the term “downsizing,” then it really became talked about by the early 90’s. I was a new consultant, and when I went into organizations the effect of the underlying changes going on in the structure of organizations was very impactful, a real cultural change. Before that, people had the belief that if you committed to the organization, there was an unspoken promise that the organization would commit to taking care of you. As we know now, that promise was broken. It seemed so important to me to help reduce the turmoil that people were experiencing. During that time I did a workshop on pre-retirement and thought: “This is about change!” So I asked people in type groups questions about change, and brought the flipchart pages of their responses back to the office. Linda Kirby and I were off and running….we began to incorporate William Bridges’ great work on Managing Transitions into our workshops and saved all the flip chart pages. We had gathered an unfortunate amount of information on people’s pain, confusion, and fear. One of my consulting jobs was with a group of doctors struggling with some of the changes in the health care field. We live in Denver, and I said to one of the men: “Look where we are John, think of those early pioneers and all the changes they had to deal with in crossing the Plains and the mountains. “Yes,” he said, “and some of them died.” And it gave me an idea. On the way back to the office, I stopped at the library and picked up a great deal of books on the pioneer journey. I brought them back to the office and said to Linda Kirby, “Here is the missing link for our book on change that can tie together all our type information and Bridges’ Model of Transition. I read her passages and showed her pictures, but she couldn’t see it (a difference in an ENFP and an INTP.) Three days later she said to me that she could now see how we could do it. And eventually, we incorporated all 3 elements into our book The Challenge of Change in Organizations. What exercises work best for a change workshop? The most straight forward exercise, that works every time, is one that was first published in our books on change and is now published in the binder: Practioner’s Field Guide Divide the group into preference-alike groups and ask the question: “What does this part of you want/need during a time of change?” There is such a great consistency in how each preference group responds that you can count on the answers being true to our knowledge of type. As an example, E’s always want to be involved and I’s want time to think about it. And you can ask people, “How can we incorporate this information in everyday interactions at work?” Nancy J. Barger, M.A. (ENFP) has 30 years of experience in international organizational applications of the MBTI® instrument, working in the U.S., Canada, U.K., New Zealand, Australia, South Korea, Denmark, Finland, India, Dubai, South Africa, and Brazil. She specializes in leadership development and helping people in organizations deal more effectively with organizational change by working with leaders and employees to assess the impacts of change initiatives and develop successful change training programs. Nancy provides a wide range of training in applications of the MBTI® tool for HR professionals: MBTI® Step I and Step II applications, leadership development, team building, coaching, and cross-cultural applications. She is co-author of the MBTI® Certification Program and has led those programs for the American Management Association and for CPP distributors around the world. Barger’s publications include MBTI® Practitioner’s Field Guide, with L. K. Kirby, 2011 Type and Culture, with L.K. Kirby and Elizabeth Kendall, 2007 Introduction to Type® and Change, with L.K. Kirby, 2004
