1. Summarize Journal Articles
The article “Florence Nightingale: Her Personality Type” by Dossey (2010) examines the famous nurse Florence Nightingale according to her personality type. Using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), Dossey determines that Nightingale was an IITJ (introverted-intuitive-thinking-judging) personality. The author worked from a collection of Nightingale’s own written work and her letters, as well as her history.
Dossey breaks Nightingale’s personality down into these four factors, using her life and work as a template to explain those personality traits. For instance, Nightingale is determined to be introverted due to her desire to be alone in order to perform her work in peace and to cultivate a closer relationship with God. Her history of illness also required her to live as an invalid for some time, contributing further to this feeling of introversion. Intuition is also determined as a character trait through Nightingale’s emphasis on being able to demonstrate tremendous skill as a nurse and an innate understanding of her patients’ needs. Her ability to streamline and organize the nursing profession showed a tremendous command of intuition, using statistics organically to come up with solutions for nursing problems.
Nightingale is also shown to be an important thinker due to her depth of understanding of nursing and mysticism, and her judging personality is determined from her tendency to organize, plan and take notes. Dossey evaluates these characteristics and determines that all of these were essential in crafting the personality of one of nursing’s most indelible and influential figures. In many ways, this document creates an intriguing personality model that many in nonprofit and government work should aspire to have.
2. Comment on Assigned Video
In this assigned video, “Understanding the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator,” the narrator for Excellence in Learning (2014) breaks down the history and various attributes of this popular personality test metric. Denoting its origins as a way to help people find suitable work and determine between different types of personalities, the video uses simple graphics and straightforward narration to break down the importance of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and how it works.
One thing the video does really well is break down the different types of personality traits into basic functions. The division between ‘information gathering’ and ‘decision making’ is very clearly drawn, and the diagram establishing the different behaviors (sensing, intuition, thinking, and feeling) allows us to see the importance of these behaviors and how they are weight in the Indicator. The ordering of these functions into dominant, secondary, tertiary, and inferior, as well as introversion and extroversion, is also helpfully described. All together, this allows the Myers-Briggs personality test to offer those who take it the possibility of fitting into one of sixteen different personality types, which provides a rough sketch of their overall personality.
Overall, this video provides an excellent primer on the Myers-Briggs Test Indicator, what its results mean, and the ways in which those results are ordered. Excellence in Learning has created a simple, easy to understand presentation for grasping the basics of this test and how its results should be interpreted, which is a helpful resource for anyone attempting to take the test and better understand its material.
3. Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence, in short, is the ability to understand one’s emotions and those of others. The various components of emotional intelligence are self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills (Goleman, 1995). Self-awareness is the ability to always know how you feel and how that affects those around you; self-regulation involves the ability to handle those emotions. People who are self-motivated are able to consistently work to accomplish their goals, and set high standards on themselves, while empathy allows you to step outside of your perspective and understand the emotions and motivations of others. Social skills are the set of behaviors that allow people to communicate well with others and keep everyone organized toward a particular goal.
In a leadership role, emotional intelligence is incredibly important. These five components all play a vital part in giving leaders the ability to solve problems, inspire loyalty in their followers, and get productive and positive results (Barbuto Jr, Gottfredson, & Searle, 2014). Emotional intelligence is vital to managing others, as it allows you to recognize how you are doing as a leader, what others need in a leader, and consistently motivate and relate to your coworkers and subordinates (Goleman, Boyatzis, & McKee, 2013). All five of these skills are particularly important in government management work, but empathy and self-regulation are possibly the most vital. In the case of empathy, government leaders must be willing to put their own needs aside for the sake of others in public service, which requires an understanding of your colleagues and constituents – this is where empathy comes in. Furthermore, self-regulation is vital for managers in government, as it is important to manage your colleagues and coworkers without getting mad or antagonizing them, or upsetting your constituents. These factors and others are crucial to success in governmental management, making emotional intelligence a good goal to work toward.
References
Barbuto Jr, J. E., Gottfredson, R. K., & Searle, T. P. (2014). An examination of emotional
intelligence as an antecedent of servant leadership. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 21(3), 315-323.
Denhardt (2016). Managing human behavior in public and nonprofit organizations (4th ed.).
SAGE Publications.
Dossey, B.M. (2010). Florence Nightingale: Her personality type. Journal of Holistic Nursing
28(1): 57-67.
Excellence in Learning. (2014). Understanding the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Youtube.
Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJGI1sTJ_QE.
Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence. Bantam Books.
Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R., & McKee, A. (2013). Primal leadership: Unleashing the power of
emotional intelligence. Harvard Business Press.
