Be A Better Leader

Personality Type and Difference in Ministry

Graham Osborne

• Publisher: SPCK Publishing
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780281075836
• eBook ISBN: 9780281075843
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Personality in Psychology

The purpose of this book is to enable Christian leaders to understand their psychological type, using the MBTI (Myers-Briggs) personality indicator, and to use this information to generate new insights into their own experience and performance.

It will enable leaders to develop better strategies to maximise their strengths and to work with their recognised weaknesses. A significant amount of stress is experienced by Christian leaders. This book will help them to focus on those aspects of their work that are energising and life-giving.

Part One of the book introduces the theories of psychological type and how these apply to Christian leaders.

Part Two include detailed profile descriptions of each of the 16 MBTI personality types and explores the 'comfort zone' for that type and difficulties experienced by that type 'outside of the comfort zone.'

Each type description is written with the role of the Christian leader in mind and covers aspects of their role, eg their experiences of worship, prayer, pastoral responsibilities, administration and working with other.

Part 1

INTRODUCING
PSYCHOLOGICAL
TYPE THEORY

Psychological type theory

It would seem sensible to start with what psychological type is all about. If you would rather pass over the different theories and go straight to the type profiles, please feel free to go on to Part Two of this book, pausing at p. 31 if you would like to discover, or check, your own type.

The British Psychological Society defines ‘psychology’ as ‘the science of mind and behaviour’. Psychology is a very wide field and my focus in this book is on personality psychology, so how does one define ‘personality’? The definitions listed here are from both the academic world and generally available dictionaries.

• Gordon Allport, who focused his studies on psychologically healthy individuals: ‘Personality is the dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine his characteristic behavior and thought.’1
• Robert Stephen Weinberg and Daniel Gould in Foundations of Sport and Exercise Psychology: ‘the characteristics or blend of characteristics that make a person unique’.2
• Oxford Dictionaries online: ‘The combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individual’s distinctive character’.
• The Collins English Dictionary: ‘the sum total of all the behavioural and mental characteristics by means of which an individual is recognized as being unique’.
• Merriam-Webster online dictionary: ‘the set of emotional qualities, ways of behaving, etc., that makes a person different from other people’.
• American Psychological Association: ‘Personality refers to individual differences in characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving. The study of personality focuses on two broad areas: One is understanding individual differences in particular personality characteristics, such as sociability or irritability. The other is understanding how the various parts of a person come together as a whole.’3

This aspect of ‘how the various parts of a person come together as a whole’ is key to what this book is about – understanding how we ‘come together as a whole’ in order to lead most effectively out of who we really are. If we are to be as effective as possible as Christian leaders, we need to understand our own personalities and the strengths and weaknesses inherent in them in exercising our chosen vocation.

Before we go any further, there is a caveat – Leslie Francis, the priest, theologian and psychologist who wrote the Foreword to this book, draws a distinction in personality psychology between personality and character. The former he understands to be ‘value neutral’, lying ‘at the heart of who we are … [describing] basic individual differences at a level of being over which we may have very little personal control’;4 the latter he understands to be ‘heavily value laden’ with a ‘good’ character exhibiting virtues and a ‘bad’ character vices.

Human beings have been striving for self-understanding for some considerable time. The inscription on the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi reads ‘Know Thyself’, a saying attributed to, among others, Socrates. It could be argued that an understanding of personality is fundamental to the development of self. An improved knowledge of ourselves and others, in terms of motivation, strengths and weaknesses, and preferred thinking and working styles, can also lead to an understanding of our preferred style for communicating with others, for learning, for managing ourselves and others and working as part of a team. The more we understand about our own personality, and the personality of others, the better our understanding of how others respond to us, how they perceive us and how they react to our own personality and style of working.

Personality theories

A range of personality theories has developed over the centuries. The earliest personality type theory was ar...

Table of contents

• CoverImage
• Title Page
• Imprint
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part 1: Introducing psychological type theory
• Part 2: 16 types of Christian leader
• Taking it further
• Notes
• Further reading