MBTI | Anahat

I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo

“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”

– J.R.R.Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

COVID-19 is challenging the ways we work, the ways we live, and our confidence in and ability to deal with the future. This leads to a range of feelings – fear, confusion, irritation, despondency, as we engage with the uncertainty of the extent to which we are going to be impacted by the spread of the Corona virus.

Many of us have had to abruptly shift from working in our offices to working at home. Even those of us used to working from home have to deal with homes more crowded, less orderly, and busier than usual. We search for a new rhythm as we engage with internal and external disruption. Sometimes in a crisis, we tend to abandon ourselves just when we need our best selves.

The MBTI® framework identifies specific activities to help us deal with these changes and practice self-care. Here are a few tips that we can use to lean on the best side of our MBTI® personality types. Feel free to share this with all those you have administered the MBTI® Assessment to or those you think will be interested. Click here to download the resource.

“ I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel” – Maya Angelou

The picture of the new normal post the lockdown is slowly beginning to take shape. It has become clear that remote working is going to become more the norm than the exception till the COVID crisis begins to fade. The abrupt shift to remote working coupled with the business uncertainty has added to the stress and anxiety being experienced by employees.

Leaders are tasked with the responsibility of offering hope and creating an ambience where team members feel safe and enabled. Team members take their cues from their leaders. Leaders are required to be more mindful than ever about the impact of their default leadership behaviours. They can benefit immensely by increasing their repertoire of leadership styles.

The MBTI® framework offers practical tips that leaders can use to enhance the strengths of their natural styles while mitigating the blind spots. The last two letters of the leaders’ MBTI personality type – how they make decisions (Thinking or Feeling) and how they deal with the outside world (Judging or Perceiving) – provide powerful insights on the preferred leadership style.

Here is a resource that you can use to expand your range of leadership behaviours. Stay safe. Stay connected. Stay mindful.

"No road is long with good company." - Turkish Proverb

We are into the third week of the lockdown. The past two weeks have required us to adapt and flex our preferred ways and styles in multiple areas of our lives, perhaps most significantly in our relationships, at home and at work. It is natural for us to lean back on our default modes of engaging with our relationships, especially when we are anxious and feeling stressed.

The lockdown has created a paradoxical situation. It requires us to practice social distancing externally but interact more inside our homes, resulting in a set of challenges. Introverted Types may struggle to find their ‘me-time’ and Extraverted Types may feel challenged by not having the opportunity to engage with the breadth of their connections.

What can we do to ensure that the lockdown does not take a toll on our relationships and create emotional distancing?

The practice and the theory of the MBTI® framework encourages the use of the Platinum Rule: “Do unto others as they would be done unto.” It reminds us to attend to the needs of others that are different from our own. In doing so, we can transform any company we find ourselves in, into good company.

Here is a resource with practical tips that we can use to strengthen our relationships. Click here to download the resource.

Stay home. Stay safe. Stay connected.

It gives us great joy to share that on 24 February 2018, Anahat celebrated the milestone of completing 100 MBTI® certification programmes in India. Having certified over 2,000 practitioners in the India, Anahat shared this occasion with the MBTI® practitioners in Bangalore. We invited MBTI® practitioners to join us in our celebrations at Lemon Tree Premier, Bangalore. The celebration included a formal welcome, lamp lighting, and a workshop on expression of MBTI® types through rhythm, theatrical improvisation and experiential activities. The celebration concluded with conversations and dinner.

The evening began with Mahesh and Janaki, addressing the audience and reminiscing on their journey with MBTI®. The theme of their address was – gratitude. They spoke of the gratitude they felt for; their teachers, the employees of Anahat and the MBTI® practitioners who have been a part of this journey. Next, the Anahat team introduced themselves to all the practitioners. Mahesh also launched new products that are designed to help practitioners facilitate MBTI® debrief sessions. To know more about the new products, visit here.

The main event of the night was a workshop that brought out insights on how MBTI® preferences may express themselves. The facilitators for this workshop were Kirtana Kumar and Konarak Reddy from the Infinite Souls Farm in Bangalore. They are professionals with over 20 years of experience in designing and facilitating workshops using theatre and music as tools of personal development. They worked in partnership with Anahat to create a bespoke workshop that blended artistic expression with MBTI® Type preferences.

The workshop incorporated multiple activities to bring out Type differences. This included balancing a bamboo stick on our fingers, a speeded extempore exercise on random words, playing rhythms mapped to MBTI® preferences and an improv theatre exercise on different themes. The focus of the workshop was to have fun and in an experiential way, watch type preferences play out. In doing so, all members of the Anahat team joined and learnt alongside the practitioners.

Type differences manifested in many activities. The most notable differences came up in how Type quadrant groups IN, EN, ES and IS approached and enacted the improv skits. Two groups, IS and EN, chose the ‘railway station’ theme. The IS group enacted a real-life railway station experience and incorporated specific details like seat numbers, dates and train times in their skit. The EN group also used the ‘railway station’ as their theme, however they approached it as a series of events that showed the station as a metaphor for life. They had a narrator give meaning and commentary to the improv. Another EN group used ‘island’ as the theme and adapted the improv to include visual stimuli from the screen. They portrayed dynamics between people stranded on an island, striving to survive together.

The ES group chose to perform on the theme of ‘street’. They also incorporated details like time but, were action-oriented, had diverse events within the play and focussed on the fun element. The IN group chose the graveyard as their location. They portrayed inactivity of the graveyard, had no dialogues and let the audience derive meaning from the improv without offering direct cues.

Following the workshop, the guests shared their insights– how it made them see their Type in a new light and spoke about their association with Anahat over the years.

We had installed an MBTI® themed photobooth where everyone took photographs with their type heads and the event banner. All practitioners lined up for taking selfies at the photo booth and browsed through the new products, introduced by Mahesh earlier in the evening. The event concluded with a dinner and farewell.

As someone who joined the Anahat family a month ago, it was amazing to see the coming together of MBTI® practitioners unified by their relationship with Anahat and experiencing their Type through a fun-filled evening.