The planning committee is made up of a diverse group of people. Seeing to a few details this evening - ones that were important to me and not so important to others - I was feeling a bit cranky. I tried to remember that we were all different and that was a good thing to help get a more well rounded outcome (uh-huh). But I was still pretty pissy. The longer I thought, the more irritation I felt, and the more my feet started to hurt. But, it jogged a grad school memory about personality in a library management class.
Why? Was it just a nasty grad school flash back? Nah, I liked grad school for the most part. Must have been something else ...
Anyway, the precursor to a class discussion one week was taking a Myers Briggs personality indicator. I had taken one five years prior and was curious to see if my 'personality' had changed or shifted over this time frame as I had undergone a career change (it hadn't, I was just better adapted at knowing myself by this time). We walked into class the next week and were assigned groups. Unbeknownst to the class, we were placed in groups with other people just like us. The class was given a library management issue to debate and present results to the class after discussion was finished. One group got little or nothing accomplished because they were simply chatting to each other. Another group looked into the issue pretty deeply and didn't really make any decisions. My group? We started a list detailing how we would manage this issue and keep it from happening again by having some sort of guideline established. While it was easy to work in a group full of people like myself, we missed some of the big picture by focusing on the details.
What would have happened if each group had all types of personalities? Could we have accomplished more than our result list? Probably. It may have taken longer and there would undoubtedly have been a lot more discussion involved. One thing led to another and I began thinking on my drive home this evening. We, the planning committee, are all at the collective end of our rope. A bit snarky with it at that. But how successful would the planning have been if we all thought alike and wanted the same things? Could the result have been a poorly planned one-dimensional offering?
My brain is active and the body exhausted, thoughts are swirling haphazardly, so this led to another issue concerning blogs. I remember discussions on different blogs regarding the idea of people who 'get' blogs and those who 'don't get it.' Does that have anything to do with personality type? Is there one, or more, type of personality who are prone to blog? Does the ambiguous nature of the blog help those who are more introverted feel safe posting from home?
Just wondering.
Naturally, I had to search out more info on the MBTI. Here goes:
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