If you want to learn more about the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, personality types, neuro-linguistic programming, and representational systems, I suggest you start with the following. (Full disclosure: I have no affiliation with any of these websites, companies, and authors.)
Personality Types
- TypeFocus Careers has a free personality survey.
- AdvisorTeam has several free and not-free personality surveys.
- I find What Type Am I?, by Renee Baron, an accessible introduction to and explanation of the Myers-Briggs personality types. It includes a personality survey.
- Please Understand Me II, by David Keirsey, describes the personality Temperaments Keirsey built on top of the Myers-Briggs personality types. It includes a personality survey.
- Teaching Around the 4Mat System, by Bernice McCarthy, explains one way to integrate personality types into education.
Representational Systems
*** Want a fun job on a great team? I need a tester! Interested? Let's talk: Michael dot J dot Hunter at microsoft dot com. Great testing and coding skills required.
So that is MBTI, and that is NLP.
Which still leaves the puzzling, mysterious A&P.
I know some about "A" and much less about "P";
Your doctor knows much more, that I guarantee!
"A" is for "anatomy", where you learn to see
How to tell your elbow from your hand and knee.
"P" describes your insides, your "physiology"
How it works and functions, why you smell and see.
If this introduction leaves you wanting more;
If these words, you feel, have opened a big door;
I urge you these topics to go and explore.
Only don't go too fast - your brain it might get sore!
*** Want a fun job on a great team? I need a tester! Interested? Let's talk: Michael dot J dot Hunter at microsoft dot com. Great testing and coding skills required.
Visual people learn with their eyes.
They peek and they look and their world clarifies.
"I see what you're saying!" they exclaim with a cry;
Use picture words back else you'll be in disguise.
Auditory people learn with their ears;
Tho some choose to read rather than hear.
"Sounds good to me" lets you into their mind peer;
Use hearing words back and your meaning is clear.
Kinesthetics are the third group you'll find;
They touch and they feel life into their minds.
"You hit a sore spot" says one of this kind;
Use sensing words back else they will feel blind.
*** Want a fun job on a great team? I need a tester! Interested? Let's talk: Michael dot J dot Hunter at microsoft dot com. Great testing and coding skills required.
NLP is a science (tho some say it's not)
Which claims to explain how people come to a thought.
Neuro Linguistic Programming can help you avoid being caught
In the communication perils with which life is fraught.
This science holds that people think, say, and learn
In characteristic ways, and that you can in turn
Identify their style and go on to discern
Words to use with them that won't make them burn.
Listen to people's words as they speak.
Watch their responses when you open your beak.
Do they talk about hearing? Or taking a peek?
Or maybe of feeling. Then your words you tweak.
*** Want a fun job on a great team? I need a tester! Interested? Let's talk: Michael dot J dot Hunter at microsoft dot com. Great testing and coding skills required.
"J" is for "Judging", though not the critical kind.
It simply describes the way we unwind.
Or don't, for we often put our play far behind
Our work which we want to be completed on time.
"P" stands for "Perceiving"; however I call it "Play"!
For us Ps care for naught but having fun all the day.
"Structure"'s a word we'd rather not say!
We don't mind it, you know, yet we keep it at bay.
Decisions! Decisions! We Js want them made now!
While delaying decisions is us Ps' solemn vow.
By working together we turn furrowed brows
Into great outcomes that make us yell "Wow!"
*** Want a fun job on a great team? I need a tester! Interested? Let's talk: Michael dot J dot Hunter at microsoft dot com. Great testing and coding skills required.
"T" is for "Thinking", so called because we
Decide with our brains, not our feelings.
We use our logic to decide and to see
Exactly how we want our world to be.
"F", on the other hand, logic deplores
At least when it means pushing people down to the floor.
While "Feeler"s do use logic, it leaves them quite sore
For emotions and values are what form their core.
Ts, it would behoove us to come down from our tower
And come to know those feelings from which we so cower.
Fs, use your logic, and you'll find the power
To talk with us Ts without getting sour.
*** Want a fun job on a great team? I need a tester! Interested? Let's talk: Michael dot J dot Hunter at microsoft dot com. Great testing and coding skills required.
"N" means "iNtuitive", and people like us
Think in abstractions, big pictures we suss.
Ideas and theories are where our minds thrust;
Ask us for details and our minds go bust.
"S" is the other side, and this I have too;
We "Senser"s sense everything; we live in a zoo
Of details and feelings and smellings and hues.
If we can't experience it we don't believe it's true!
We Ns would like Ss this one thing to learn:
Stop with the details - they are not our concern!
We Ss ask Ns to remember in turn
To give us those details for which we so yearn!
*** Want a fun job on a great team? I need a tester! Interested? Let's talk: Michael dot J dot Hunter at microsoft dot com. Great testing and coding skills required.
"I" stands for "Introvert". We need time alone;
Invite us to parties and we respond with a groan.
All of that talking! Soon our energy is spent
And back home we flee to recharge in our tent.
"E" is our counterpart, "Extravert"s they
Count everyone as best friend and love to say "Hey!"
Talking and talking is how they recharge,
At home and at work and in the garage.
Us Is need some time to decide what to say;
Es often feel that we take all day.
Es, on the other hand, talk in order to think;
Under all that noise we Is flounder and sink.
*** Want a fun job on a great team? I need a tester! Interested? Let's talk: Michael dot J dot Hunter at microsoft dot com. Great testing and coding skills required.
They developed four axes, with two letters each;
One on the left side, quite out of reach
To those on the right side, far across the breach
Of personality conflicts which cause many to screech.
The first set describe how you get energy;
Whether you like people, or they cause you to flee.
The second set explain how the world you see,
From high on a mountain, or low like a bee.
The third set discuss how you decide what to do:
Is it logic you use, or do emotions hold true?
The fourth set's your lifestyle: is work or play you?
And now on to details, four pas de deux.
*** Want a fun job on a great team? I need a tester! Interested? Let's talk: Michael dot J dot Hunter at microsoft dot com. Great testing and coding skills required.
I have another Tester Spotlight posted over on Tester Center! This time I talked with Bryan Lipscy, who tests all of the help in Windows XP, Windows Vista, and the not-yet-released Windows 7. Watch my interview with Bryan to learn why he is excited to be testing help!
Some years ago a lady named Briggs,
Her daughter Myers, and their guinea pig
Into personalities started to dig
And found explanations they believed were quite big.
They wrote up their findings and collapsed them into
A Type Indicator instrument meant to let you
Determine your type preference and those of your crew
To help you understand them, whatever they do.
Misses Myers and Briggs came up with four ways
To look at all people and how they behave,
Their view of the world, and what things they crave.
So that when you work with them, your mind won't be crazed.
*** Want a fun job on a great team? I need a tester! Interested? Let's talk: Michael dot J dot Hunter at microsoft dot com. Great testing and coding skills required.
MBTI describes how I interact with the world.
NLP explains why I write and do not make murals.
A & P claims to know why I am a boy not a girl.
And... What's that? I've set your brain a-whirl?
How to decipher this alphabet soup?
How to apply it to you and your group?
How to do this yet not make your brain troop
Home to its sofa, completely pooped?
I will explain this alphabet soup,
And how to apply it to all in your group.
When I finish your brain may spin in a loop!
Or it may be dancing and singing "Shoop Shoop".
*** Want a fun job on a great team? I need a tester! Interested? Let's talk: Michael dot J dot Hunter at microsoft dot com. Great testing and coding skills required.
The more I learn about the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), the more I understand about how my brain works and why I do the things I do. The more I apply MBTI and NLP to other people, the more effective my interactions with those other people become. Of all the understanding-people systems I have investigated, MBTI and NLP have proven most helpful.
(MBTI and NLP say InTj and Auditory Digital, respectively, describes how I see my world.)
I grew up on Dr. Seuss. My parents have The Cat In The Hat Comes Back memorized. I tape recorded Hop On Pop for my brother when he was young, and my entire family recently recorded stacks of Dr. Seuss books for his new son. Dr. Seuss is in my blood.
Small wonder, then, that when I recently sat down to write a presentation on personality types and representational systems I ended up with a set of Dr. Seuss-inspired verses rather than a set of bulleted slides. So now I have a book, which I'll serialize over my next bunch of posts. Give it a read and let me know whether I still need to write a presentation!
*** Want a fun job on a great team? I need a tester! Interested? Let's talk: Michael dot J dot Hunter at microsoft dot com. Great testing and coding skills required.
Maria writes:
This is my first time as a tester...let me tell you I'm happy with this, but is really difficult to deal with the feelings of the developers who takes the bugs as personal (well, they are responsible for it, but is not a hurt feeling thing, is it?).
If you have ever interacted with someone else, I imagine you have found yourself in a similar predicament. I know I have! I make some trivial comment, or ask some trivial question, and the person with whom I am talking blows up at me.
My comment or question evidently wasn't so trivial!
Virginia Satir's Interaction Model is one way to decode this ill-ended conversation. Start with what you saw and heard - or, in this case, what you said and did. How did your voice sound? What did your face do? What did the rest of your body do?
Next move on to the meaning the other person might have ascribed to what you said and did. Come up with as many different possible meanings as you can, then come up with three more.
Now consider what feelings your conversational counterpart might have had about each of these meanings you devised, and the feelings they might have had about those feelings.
Finally, match all of this up with the response you observed.
Ideally you would walk through this with the other person. If they are not talking to you, however, or you don't feel comfortable doing this with them, then you must work through it on your own. Even when you and your parley partner do go through it together, be aware that they may not - likely do not - know what they saw and heard from you, let alone the meaning and significance they attributed to it. Understanding a gone-awry interaction can be difficult at the best of times; if both you and the other party are new at examining communications, analyzing even a single utterance will likely take a while.
Once (you believe) you understand where the conversation went off the rails, move on to identifying changes you can make which seem likely to help future exchanges stay on track. Again, doing this with your colleague tends to be most useful; if that is not possible, however, you can still formulate hypotheses which you can then test in future meet-ups.
Eventually you'll be in that magical place where you know exactly how to talk with...this one person...about this one topic...when they are in this one mood....
The Satir Interaction Model is not a magic bullet that will make all of your conversations go exactly the way you want them to go all of the time. Over time, however, it can help many of your conversations go more the way you want them to go more of the time.
While none of this is easy, I find it to be worth the effort. Give it a go and see whether you find the same!
*** Want a fun job on a great team? I need a tester! Interested? Let's talk: Michael dot J dot Hunter at microsoft dot com. Great testing and coding skills required.
"Why did you miss that?"
I imagine you have heard that question more than once, regardless of whether you test, write code, manage a project, or run a company. Something unexpected happens and now the powers-that-be want to know how you could possibly not find so obvious a bug, or forget to handle so obvious a case, or neglect to account for so obvious a project risk, or fail to consider so obvious a business issue.
Most software today is so complex that finding every last defect is effectively impossible. Most software today is so complex that writing it completely correctly is effectively impossible. Most software projects today are so complex that identifying and mitigating every possible reason they might go awry is effectively impossible. And most software companies today are so complex that consistently keeping them on the right track is effectively impossible.
Even if doing these things was possible, you almost certainly wouldn't have time to handle the additional work which would result. I don't know of a software team that has sufficient resources to handle everything they *do* think about, let alone everything else they haven't considered! Triaging and prioritizing which test cases to execute, which code to write, which risks to manage, and which issues to worry over seems to be the rule of the day.
Which is all fine and dandy until one of those items you missed out, either intentionally or out of ignorance, comes back to haunt you. And the powers-that-be descend in droves to ask:
"Why did you miss that?"
I personally do not worry about missing tests, code, risks, or business twists. If I don't miss any, great! When I do miss one, I identify why I did:
- I go back through my Work Notebook, which I populated with everything I saw, heard, did, and thought about as I went about my job, and determine whether I did, in fact, miss the item, or whether I triaged it away, or whether I willfully disregarded it.
- I Five Whys my way from the problem to its root cause.
- I ask my colleagues how they account for similar matters.
- I attempt to understand why this case seems to require special handling.
- I look through my other projects and determine whether I missed similar problems there as well.
And then I modify my processes to help me not miss such scenarios in the future.
This is what I do when I miss a bug, or an edge case, or a project risk, or a business issue. What have you missed today? What are you going to do about it?
*** Want a fun job on a great team? I need a tester! Interested? Let's talk: Michael dot J dot Hunter at microsoft dot com. Great testing and coding skills required.
