Tis the Season - for Type Development!

The holiday season can be a time of stress and joy. It can be a time when we try to reconnect with others, mend fences and build bridges of hope. We may have an urge to start the New Year out right – revisit relationships, re-evaluate and re-charge our personal and professional lives. We send letters, words of encouragement and hope to others. Many people also use this time to evaluate the current year and set goals for the next year.

Depending on what your dominant or most natural function is, it’s a great time of year to develop your Judging mental functions of Thinking and Feeling .
I’m really not sure what is easiest. Developing Extrovert Feeling – acceptance, encouragement, affirmation and harmony or Extroverted Thinking – logical, precise, orderly reasoning.
There is a ton of information and learning materials in books and on the web for understanding the reasoning process, including models, tools and processes. You can take coursework on learning decision making skills such as root cause analysis, cost benefit and decision trees. You can learn and evaluate your skills internally before throwing yourself to the wolves.

Learning how to express encouragement, affirmation and creating harmony can be a little more difficult for some. Extroverting Feeling can be a risk in putting yourself out there for the world to see that may or may not be your comfort zone. How can you start slow and assess effectiveness? How can you practice elements of Extroverted Feeling? Who do you know that connects well with others – is great at creating and maintaining relationships, creates harmony in two paragraphs or less? Who can you observe and role model one techniques?

Consider these next weeks as an opportunity to test and develop one of these functions.

To develop Extroverted Feeling:
1. Send a Christmas e-card with you own thoughtful message.
2. Say Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays to people in your office, at the grocery store check or at the doctor’s office. Did you get a greeting back? Reflect on how you feel if the greeting is reciprocated.
3. Think about a relationship that you would like to improve through communication. What does your body language say when you are conversing with someone else? Are your facial expressions relaxed, are you leaning forward slightly, and nodding to reflect you are listening? What are you saying to affirm the listener?

To develop Extroverted Thinking:
1. Create a project plan for your holiday party. Include as much detail as possible with tasks and subtasks.
2. If you set goals for 2009, assess your status. Did the goals meet the SMART criteria? What did you accomplish? What did you not complete? Why?
3. Create a goal sheet for 2010 that includes separate goals for different components of your life – for example, personal, professional spiritual and physical. Define two goals for each component that meet the SMART criteria.

Good luck and Happy Holidays! See you in the New Year!