MYERS-BRIGGS TEAM DEVELOPMENT
MYERS-BRIGGS FOR LEADERSHIP TEAMS
Athena provides customized Myers-Briggs workshops and team-development engagements for senior leadership teams in Toronto and across Canada. Led by Myers-Briggs Master Practitioner Dawn Frail, the work goes beyond identifying personality type to help leaders understand how their differences affect communication, decision-making and the way they work together.
Understanding personality differences can give a leadership team a new way to understand patterns that may have been frustrating them for years. The value is not simply knowing everyone’s four-letter type. It is learning how those differences show up when the team is trying to communicate, solve problems, make decisions and lead the organization.
BEYOND THE FOUR-LETTER TYPE
THE ASSESSMENT IS THE STARTING POINT, NOT THE INTERVENTION
Myers-Briggs gives a leadership team a common language for understanding differences. But completing an assessment and learning everyone’s type does not, by itself, change how a team works.
The real value comes from applying those insights to what is happening around the leadership table. Why does one leader want more information before deciding while another is ready to move? Why do some people think out loud while others need time to process? Why does one person’s desire for closure feel like unnecessary pressure to someone else?
Athena uses Myers-Briggs as a lens for understanding these differences and then helps the team apply what it learns to the situations that matter in its day-to-day work.
COMMUNICATE
Understand how personality differences shape communication and interaction.
MAKE DECISIONS
Recognize why capable leaders approach the same decision differently.
SOLVE PROBLEMS
Use different ways of gathering information and evaluating options.
WORK TOGETHER
Apply those insights to meetings, relationships and everyday teamwork.
A CUSTOMIZED TEAM EXPERIENCE
BUILT AROUND YOUR LEADERSHIP TEAM
No two leadership teams bring the same personalities, history or challenges to the table. Athena’s Myers-Briggs engagements are designed around the team rather than delivered as a standard workshop.
Before the team meets, Dawn works with the team leader or sponsor to understand the team, its circumstances and what they hope will be different as a result of the work. That context shapes how the Myers-Briggs results are interpreted and how the team session is designed
UNDERSTAND
A conversation with the team leader or sponsor establishes the context, objectives and issues that matter most to the team.
ASSESS
Team members complete the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. The results provide a framework for understanding individual preferences and patterns across the team.
APPLY
A customized facilitated session helps the team explore its differences and apply the insights to communication, decision-making, problem-solving and working relationships.
REINFORCE
A post-engagement conversation with the team leader identifies key observations, implications and opportunities to reinforce the learning after the session.
WHEN MORE DEPTH IS NEEDED
GO BEYOND THE FOUR-LETTER TYPE
Two leaders can share the same four-letter Myers-Briggs type and still behave quite differently. When a team needs greater depth, MBTI Step II can provide a more nuanced picture of those individual differences.
Step II explores variations within each of the four preference pairs, helping explain why people who appear similar on the surface may communicate, make decisions or approach their work differently.
It is not necessary for every engagement. Athena can determine whether the additional depth of Step II would add meaningful value for your team.
DEPTH OF EXPERTISE
24 YEARS OF MYERS-BRIGGS EXPERIENCE
Dawn Frail is a Myers-Briggs Master Practitioner with 24 years of experience using personality type with leaders and teams. Her work goes beyond explaining the MBTI model to helping experienced leaders understand how personality differences are affecting the way they work together.
That depth of experience matters when the conversation moves beyond “What is my type?” to the more important question: “What does this mean for how we lead together?”
24 YEARS
of Myers-Briggs experience
MASTER PRACTITIONER
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
MASTER’S DEGREE
in Leadership
START WITH THE NEED, NOT THE TOOL
IS MYERS-BRIGGS RIGHT FOR YOUR TEAM?
Myers-Briggs can be particularly useful when a capable leadership team needs a better way to understand and work with differences among its members.
It may be a good fit when leaders are repeatedly misunderstanding one another, approaching decisions from very different perspectives, struggling to communicate across styles or simply want to strengthen how they work together.
Myers-Briggs is not the right tool for every team problem. If the underlying issue lies elsewhere, a different approach may be more useful. Athena begins by understanding what is happening before recommending the intervention.
WHERE ATHENA WORKS
MYERS-BRIGGS FOR TEAMS ACROSS CANADA
Athena works with leadership teams in Toronto and with organizations across Canada. Myers-Briggs team engagements can be delivered in person or virtually, depending on the team, location and objectives.
For organizations with leaders working across locations, the engagement can also be designed to help a distributed leadership team develop a shared understanding of how its members work together.
START THE CONVERSATION
MAKE MYERS-BRIGGS USEFUL AFTER THE WORKSHOP ENDS
Understanding personality type is valuable. The greater return comes when leaders use that understanding to communicate, make decisions and work together differently.
If you’re considering Myers-Briggs for your leadership team, let’s talk about what you’re trying to accomplish and whether MBTI is the right tool for the job.