Managing by Dimensions

In order to explore managers' abilities and preferences, psychometric instruments are used in management development. These help us to understand why we find certain functions and skills easier and more to our taste than others. At Ashridge, we have used a wide range of psychometric instruments during the course of our development activities, and have collected data on over 8,000 managers during the last four years. This article explores how the Ashridge sample differs from the general population using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), and what this means for the future of leadership and management development. MBTI 'types' The MBTI is one of the most widely used personality instruments in the world today. It examines and measures our preferred style of dealing with the world and the people in it, and identifies our preferences on four dimensions. These four dimensions provide people with a way to explore differences between themselves and others, and the ways they like to live their lives. There are 16 possible personality 'types' stemming from the four dimensions, some of which occur more frequently in the general population than others. When comparing the results of the spread of types among the general population against those of the Ashridge population, some interesting differences occur. The Extroversion-Introversion dimension indicates where people prefer to focus their attention. These words have a different meaning here to those used in everyday conversation. They refer more to where you gain your energy, rather than to how gregarious you are. Extroverts gain their energy from the external world and the people around them, and prefer to deal with many things simultaneously rather than focus on one job at a time. Introverts gain their energy from the internal world of thoughts and ideas, and prefer to deal with a few things in depth rather than be bombarded by many things at once. Not surprisingly, the Ashridge sample consisted of over 60 per cent extroverts, although the norm for the whole population is just over 50 per cent. The Judging-Perceiving dimension indicates how people prefer to orient themselves to the external world. Those with a judging preference live in a planned and organised way, preferring structure and getting satisfaction from feeling that they have got things done. They try to avoid last-minute pressure by planning. Those with a perceiving preference, on the other hand, live in a flexible and spontaneous way, preferring to keep their options open. The Ashridge sample here showed a higher tendency for the judging preference to perceiving, but this is also true (but not to the same extent) for the general population.