Myers Briggs: MBTI for your team

Have you ever found yourself in a team of highly capable individuals, but collaboration still feels harder than it should? Or where small misunderstandings seem to slow progress, and hurdles in perspective can’t be happily resolved? This is where the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) can help. 

Teams are often challenged not by a lack of skill, but by differences in communication and working styles. At its core, MBTI helps people understand how they and others prefer to communicate, make decisions, and approach work.

Rather than simply guessing – or misinterpreting – why a colleague operates differently from you, MBTI offers a clear and simple framework to explain those differences. Do your team members gain energy from interaction or do they require room for reflection? Do they hone in on details or specialise in big-picture ideas? Do they look to data to make a decision, or follow a gut feeling? These seemingly small natural preferences differ between all of us, but in a workplace, they can have a big impact. Once these preferences are understood, we can better appreciate our colleagues' behaviour and working together becomes easier, more inclusive and more productive. 

But how does an MBTI affect the team as a whole? Teams exist at an individual and collective level, and the MBTI can support self-awareness on both. As individuals gain insights to their personal preferences for understanding, communicating and operating, the team as a whole can identify their collective strengths and stretches: they see the areas where they naturally and easily perform and they can identify the challenges they need to navigate. The MBTI helps leaders build balanced teams and workflows by valuing diverse approaches to problem-solving, decision-making, and planning. For teams, MBTI reinforces the idea that diversity of thought is a strength. No one type is “better” than another; each brings value. When teams embrace this mindset, they create an environment of trust, respect, and psychological safety.

The MBTI isn’t about putting people in boxes, it is about opening doors – to better communication, stronger collaboration, and meaningful growth as a team.

You can find out more about the best solutions to optimise your team here