SYMLOG vs.
Leadership style and quadrant model
Deals with preferences and “personality types”. It is a descriptive, not a predictive model, that details behavioral preferences. It describes your preferences, but not the impact your behavior has on others because of your preferences. Available as a self-assessment only.
Adding a SYMLOG assessment to an understanding of your type could show you how effective your behavior really is, and point to areas you might want to modify in order to have more productive and satisfying interactions.
The MBTI personality instrument, which evolved from Jung's personality types, was developed among non-clinical populations to assess normal individual differences, unlike inventories of psychological adjustment (or maladjustment). It consists of four bipolar dimensions:
Distinguishes a preference for focusing attention on, and drawing energy from, the outer world of people and things versus the inner world of ideas and impressions.
Distinguishes a predisposition for gathering data directly through the senses as facts, details, and precedents (Sensing) versus indirectly as relationships, patterns, and possibilities (INtuition).
Distinguishes a preference for deciding via objective, impersonal logic (Thinking) versus subjective, person-centered values (Feeling).
Distinguishes an outward preference for having things planned and organized (Judging) versus a flexible style based more on staying open to options than deciding (Perceiving).
Many people believe trait instrumentation, such as the MBTI, provides leverage in predicting behavior in social groups. MBTI's four dimensions were found to be correlated with four of the Big Five robust personality dimensions.
Organizational consultants may use the MBTI to encourage a better fit between personalities and roles. Because the basic assumption under-girding the MBTI is that the types it identifies are immutable in nature, the consultant's mission has more to do with enhanced articulation of individual differences and organizational responsibilities than with behavior change.
Some research has indicated that the distribution of MBTI types is highly skewed in the working population. Sundstrom and associates found that nearly three-quarters of their sample of managers in business were Thinking-Judging types. Perhaps business settings are self-selecting in this regard, hiring Thinking-Judging types over other types (Thinking-Perceiving personalities and all Feeling types). Or, it may be that Feeling types, in general, are less inclined to seek managerial positions.
At a theoretical level, the MBTI dimensions may be heuristically described in terms of SYMLOG Field Theory. The second figure illustrates the domains in which the various MBTI dimensions may be mapped in the SYMLOG space, as described below.
Eric Sundstrom is the primary architect of the empirical work that forms the basis of this comparison. Sundstrom and associates conducted a number of studies of relationships between personality and interpersonal perceptions in organizational settings.
Although, the hypothetical mapping of the MBTI to the SYMLOG space shows a wide range of overlap, the individuals who made up the Sundstrom sample are constrained to a very small portion of the field.
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