Personality type as a guide to understanding yourself and valuing different ways of operating and living.

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Welcome to Episode 15 of the Create Your Story Podcast on Valuing Difference Through Type

I’m joined by Sue Blair – Personality Type Coach & Educator, Author, Speaker and Resource Creator.

We chat about Sue’s 20 plus year passion for personality and psychological type and how she works with educators, parents, careers advisors, young people and type practitioners to communicate type concepts clearly and simply as a guide for living and decision-making. Sue has ESTJ preferences – so is extraverted and sensing in preference. With a focus on introversion and intuiting in our chats and guest profiles so far in the podcast, you’ll notice the difference in style chatting with Sue! We explore extraversion and introversion, sensing and intuiting and valuing differences in people and ourselves through type.

You can listen above or via your favourite podcast app. And/or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.

Show Notes

In this episode, we chat about:

• Parenting children who have very different personality types
• How type can help educators, parents and young people
• Offering choices for different personalities in educational contexts
• Lenses of type: Cognitive Processes, Temperament and Interaction Styles.
• ‘Simplexity’ as Sue’s signature style in type work
• Common misconceptions about introverts and extraverts
• Being extraverted in preference including in covid times
• Differences between Sensing and Intuiting preferences.
• How type helps you be comfortable in yourself and value difference
• Reframing Imposter Syndrome and self-doubt

Transcript of podcast

Introduction

Welcome to Episode 15 of the Create Your Story Podcast and it’s the 19th of April as I record this.

II’m excited to have Sue Blair, Personality Type Coach and Educator, Speaker, Author and Resource Creator join us for the podcast today. More on Sue and our conversation in a moment.

But first, I want to share a personal update and an exciting new program open for enrolment now. I’ve been busy shaping up The Writing Road Trip community writing program I’m leading with my writing partner Beth Cregan. We kick off on 2 May for 6 months of writing together and enrolment is open now if you want to join in. There’s an early bird 10% off now before Thursday 21 April, 9am AEST so if you’re listening before then, take advantage of that. The Writing Road Trip focuses on accountability, community and support to help you write what’s in your heart with the companionship of others. We’ve shaped up a program based on what worked to help us write our books and we know it will help you with your writing practice. Plus we’ll have a ton of fun along the way. You can find out more here:

Now onto today’s fabulous conversation with Sue Blair. Sue has been working with psychological type for 20 years. She is an international presenter and keynote speaker, as well as a qualified MBTI practitioner and adult educator. She is the author of The Personality Puzzle coaching cards, now used worldwide by coaches and counsellors. She has taught thousands of teachers, parents, students and businesses about the importance of self-awareness and communication. Sue is the recipient of the APTi 2015 Gordon Lawrence Award. This award recognises an outstanding achievement to the field of education.

Sue and I met as fellow psychological type practitioners through the Australian Association for Psychological Type. New Zealand based, Sue is a valuable and sought-after contributor to international conferences and forums on psychological type. I’ve had the pleasure of attending several workshops and conference presentations led by Sue. They are always immense fun and incredibly practical. Sue’s teaching and sharing about personality work is characterised by strong roots in educational work, use of images and graphics such as through her Personality Puzzle coaching cards and stunningly clear descriptions about personality types. And with more than 20 years’ experience in the field, all her work is enriched by deep knowledge and experience.

Sue has ESTJ preferences so is Extraverted and a Sensing in preference and with many Introverts and Intuitives, like me on the show so far, I was keen to explore different preferences in conversations with guests. We focus on this and on personality preferences generally and how they play out in practice to value difference in all kinds of ways in this episode.

I hope it inspires you to explore more about how personality insights can help you with self-leadership and self-knowledge.

So let’s head into the interview with Sue.

Transcript of interview with Sue Blair

Terri Connellan: Hello Sue and welcome to the Create Your Story podcast.

Sue Blair: Hi Terri, thanks so much for having me. It’s great to be here.

Terri Connellan: Thank you for your connection. And I can’t wait to explore more about you and about psychological type today. So we’ve connected in many ways around personality and psychological type as part of AusAPT the Australian Association for Psychological Type and the global type community. And it’s great to be able to share those conversations. So can you provide a brief overview about your background, how you got to be where you are and the work that you do now.

Sue Blair: Yes, absolutely. So, way back a while ago, I was born in London. I am the youngest of five. And, we’ll come onto this later, but I am the only extrovert in the whole family. I have a twin sister who is my absolute opposite in type. My preferences are ESTJ. My lovely twin sister is INFP. I started out business wise in the travel industry and really enjoyed it. That’s something that came very easily to me. I worked in business travel. It seemed to suit all of my requirements, meet my needs, got into management and into sales and was a sales manager for quite a while before I then stopped to have children.

So I met and married my lovely husband, John, who has ENTP preferences. We actually met commuting on the underground. Clearly being an ENTP, he wasn’t following any of the rules that you don’t speak to anybody on the underground and somehow or other, we got to be married and 33 years later, we still are. So, always an interesting experience to marry someone who’s totally your opposite, but a good learning opportunity, I think.

So we moved to New Zealand 25 years ago. I moved with an 18 month old and then had my son James here. So we have two children Louisa, who has ISTJ preferences and James who is ENTP. So not a huge amount of diversity in the family, but my goodness, parenting those two incredibly different children was what really got me into psychological type.

I found out about it through doing a parenting course when I was in New Zealand and it completely resonated with me and I kind of got well, would obsessed be the right word? I’m not entirely sure, but I just thought this is the most helpful thing that I have ever discovered about parenting. And it’s so clear to me that I had these two children who were different and if I parented them the same, then things were going to go downhill rather quickly.

So Louisa, unsurprisingly was somewhat more like me, although that difference between extroversion and introversion was very clear from the outset. And then parenting James, I just had to learn a whole new set of skills.

And so getting them through the school system was also very, very different. Louisa was born for school. She accelerated herself. She was just like a pig in mud really. She was happy other than socially, sometimes she found it difficult. And James was just a square peg in a round hole. And we just had to get him through, those 13 years until he exited and is now doing very well, thankfully.

But it was that experience, that personal experience that really introduced me to type, and I can remember going to a workshop, a Myers-Briggs workshop and listening to a really lovely woman presenting on time and just sitting there going, I want to do what she’s doing. And eventually I did get to do that, but not necessarily in the corporate world. Yes. I have gone back to the corporate world and done a lot of work with teams and that’s a place that I feel very happy. But I really did want to use type to help parents, to help young people, to help teachers, to help educators. Because it was really difficult. It was a real challenge to get an ENTP through school, my ENTP through school.

 And so really I’d like to alleviate some of the headaches and just help people understand that people are going to learn differently. And that means that you can make that journey a lot easier. So I now work with teachers, with educators. I’ve done a lot of work with teenagers, helping them understand themselves, and more recently working a lot with careers advisers in schools, because I really do believe that we’ve got a lot of young people who are making choices that are not as well informed as they could be.

So the work that I’ve been doing has been in educating the careers advisors within the school or university environment to say include this. But this is not the only thing that you need to know, but please include something on personality types so that the young people who you are working with get an understanding of themselves and why either a job environment might suit them or not, or why a particular career option that they’re looking at might suit them or not. Bearing in mind that we’re not matching a career with a type. You know, we’re not saying that people of this type can only do this sort of career. The world is your oyster in many, many ways.

But it is absolutely necessary to see the essence of somebody. And just say, let’s just discuss this and maybe look at some other options. So it opens up the conversation as soon as a young person feels that they’ve got that self-awareness piece in mind.

Terri Connellan: That’s fascinating. And it’s always amazing to hear how people’s life experiences have taken them down a path and into their passions. And your work really focuses in educational contexts obviously from the expriences that you’ve been through, working with teachers, working with students, working with teenagers and career advisors. So can you tell our listeners a little bit more about this work and the value of type in these contexts, cause I’m sure there’s just so much value for people in educational contexts.

Sue Blair: Absolutely. I really love working with educators and I’ve worked with them at all sorts of different levels going from early childhood through primary, through to high school and in almost every setting, as soon as we start talking about personality type, they just look at me aghast and they just start saying, why did we not learn this at our teacher’s education college? What was missing? This is an enormous piece of the puzzle that was missing. And I think they’re absolutely right.

It really is the case that you have to know the people who you are speaking to, or at least understand difference. So what we are not saying, you know, obviously in a high school context, it gets even more difficult at the younger years, it’s a little bit easier. But we are not saying that you have to teach to everyone’s personality type a hundred percent of the time, but you have to offer choices within the classroom that is going to appeal to all students at some point in time.

And it is definitely the case that they often learn most, in some cases, from doing something that doesn’t fit their natural style. But unless they’ve got that knowledge that some of the time their needs are going to be met, then they can find the learning environment very difficult indeed. So it’s a question of offering choices.

What does that mean to both the educators and to the students, but also a lot of the time, we’re looking at team-building within schools because teachers work in clusters and more and more now we have the modern learning environment. And that means that teachers are working very closely together. So I do work closely with my local primary school, where both my children went to school and they now have a modern learning environment where they’ve got three teachers who have 90 children for the year.

And that means that it’s far harder for them to know how the child is progressing all of the time. They can manage 30 children and they get to know them throughout the year. Really getting the same level of connection with 90 children is not that possible. And also to be able to connect well, and work well with the other teachers who are working in that same situation. So how they get on, what their personalities are, how they can really leverage each other’s strengths and understand that you don’t have to be good at everything. You can have some gaps, you can have some holes, but if they work in a team where they’ve got multiple preferences, then you can really work together, everybody working to their strengths and everybody having a trust in each other that they can ask for help.

So I spent quite a lot of my time doing that as well. So it’s not just, how do you teach a child who’s different to me, but how do we get on as adults and also, how do we manage? One of the things that I find working in corporate life is that there are plenty of people who are given training on managing your staff, but nobody or very rarely are you given some training on how to manage up. How do you actually manage your boss? Because your boss is one of the most important peoples in your life. The person who is managing you, you need that connection to go well. So how does that look? And how can I make some changes? What sort of perspective shifts can I make in order to make that relationship work?

And that’s the same in schools or in corporate or in families. Everywhere you go, your personality is your permanent companion and you carry it with you wherever you go. So. Yeah, being able to cut and paste to different situations is really important.

Terri Connellan: Yes. And I’ve had the great opportunity of attending workshops with you and had so much value from those workshops, particularly where you’ve emphasized the three lenses of type, the idea of cognitive processes, temperament and interaction styles and also the fantastic visual resources that you use.

All of the things that you mentioned, it’s about understanding ourselves, but it’s how we work with others, how we work with our children and how we work with children as teachers, how we manage up and absolutely that understanding your boss, understanding how your team works. All of those are just such critical life skills. I agree. And why did we not learn this? is absolutely a question I’ve asked myself too. So, and you also said early on, it’s like a piece of the puzzle missing. Is that why you called your cards Personality Puzzle?

Sue Blair: I guess it was in a way, other than there’s a beautiful alliteration having Personality Puzzles. But you know what? I was sort of thinking about names and I was like, puzzling it through and I was thinking, okay, this seems like a good way to go because it is. Every family unit is different. Every working unit is different. And I’ve been doing this work, for 20 years plus, and I’m not bored with it yet because there’s always a different puzzle. There’s always something else that you haven’t sort of considered so yeah, probably.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. And I had a chat with Joe Arrigo, who I know you also know, recently. He talked about in coaching, he sees personality as a puzzle, he said not to be solved, but a puzzle to sort of put the pieces together.

Sue Blair: Absolutely. And you mentioned there those three lenses, which I think are invaluable. So having the cognitive processes, temperament and interaction styles, I consider them as being a bit like spinning plates. You know, when I’m doing some coaching with someone. I’m like, have I have, I twizzled that plate? Have I gone through all three? And you’re just gathering the information and then coaching in relation to what you’re hearing, but definitely using those three elements of type, those three perspectives, I find incredibly helpful.

Terri Connellan: They’re so valuable. So how would you describe your signature style in your personality type work?

Sue Blair: I often use a word that I kind of made up, which is ‘simplexity’. And I rather like it because it really, I think puts across the fact that we have to make things simple.

You know, if we’re going to get to speak to people who are not type practitioners, then we have to make it as simple as possible. But I certainly want to honor the complexity of the model. You know, we are all very complex people. We are all this dynamic and incredible mixture of physics, chemistry, and biology. We are complex human beings. The human brain is the most complex thing on the planet, so many people say.

But trying to make it simple, I think as an ESTJ, my type preferences are pretty unusual in the type community. When I go to type conferences, probably 10 or 20% of people have a sensing preference and I love hanging out with you intuiting guys. I think you’re fabulous. I love the way that you think about things and you explore and you’re so curious about everything. But my goodness, you can make things complicated from time to time.

So I think my role within the type community is one that can just get through some of that, make things more simple, use a process to help people understand that involves grounded descriptions, communication style that is perhaps more direct. And getting to the point quickly. Because we haven’t got time. We are all time poor. So the more we can make the most of the time then, hopefully I provide resources that allow people to do that.

Terri Connellan: Oh, you absolutely do. And I mentioned your Personality Puzzle and Type Trilogy cards as we’ve talked and they’re fantastic resources because they’re very visual and they do make the complex clearer. And, when I’m coaching, if I’m working with a client, I grab those cards. I have them around me as resources to prompt me, which I find really helpful. And yeah, they’re great. And your LinkedIn posts that you’ve done recently are just fabulous. You look like you’re really enjoying that social media work.

Sue Blair: Well, the first time in my life, I can actually say that I am enjoying social media and I have to thank Joe Arrigo for that who got me onto it. Because I was just wondering, what do you do with this? How do you communicate with the world about something that you find that so important without kind of being too salesy. And he really got me into this frame of mind that you just share what you know, and I’ve just been really happy doing that. I’m not trying to sell anybody, anything. I might mention a few things that I’m involved with, but you know, after 20 years of trying to put across this message on type, I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve.

And I’ve just thoroughly enjoyed on a weekly basis, putting some information out there that has been something that I’ve learnt along the way. And I’ve been to what I have been to dozens of type conferences by now, which are all fantastic. I enjoy it. If I come away with three or four things that I’ve learnt, that I can describe a bit differently then it’s just a wonderful experience.

And just being with a whole group of type enthusiasts is fantastic. So I’ve just thoroughly enjoyed sharing that and getting the comments back. It’s been a joy and a pleasure, I have to say.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, it’s been really well-received. And Sue you have preferences for extroversion. Can you explain what this means in practice and how it plays out in your life?

Sue Blair: Absolutely. I think it certainly was striking. As I mentioned to you before I come from a largish family, there’s five children and my two parents and I am the only extrovert in the family. I’m in my fifties now. But it was just a few years ago that my mum said to me, you know, that must have been quite difficult for you. Yeah, it really was. I went out a lot. I had a fairly quiet sort of cerebral household that I came back to. And I’d walk through the door and go, Ooh, I’m home. And there was this sort of collective rolling of eyes. Yeah, you came through the door and the rest of us knew about it. So that’s been interesting and also, raising a highly introverted child, my daughter, Louisa has been a really interesting experience too. And as I mentioned again, before my twin sister has preferences for introversion.

So, how it plays out in my life is, it didn’t take me long to realise that I needed that need met hugely. I think it allows me to understand that that is not something that I can let go of, that I do need to communicate with other people. I do need connection with other people and I’ve needed it all my life. You know, this is something that has never changed.

Even though I’m working from home a lot, sometimes I’m working by myself, I do organize my day so that I can get that need met in any way that I can. Often it is just going for walks. It’s just connecting up with people. If I look over my week, I’ve got meetings, I’ve got people I’m seeing, I’ve got things I’m doing. And you know, there’s wonderful occasions where I’m doing workshops, which is fantastic. I get my tank filled on a regular basis. But I understand it. I think I’ve also got a bit of a handle on when I’m too much. I do sort of have this understanding that, there are times when I need to sort of stop now and just quieten down a bit.

When I go to see my sister, it’s quite funny, an INFP and her partner is an INTP and they have a lovely quiet life together in a very small village in England. And I stayed with them for a week. And I think I knew more people in the village at the end of the week than they’d known living there for three years. But they’re also very appreciative of my need and they love me arriving, but I’m pretty sure when I go, it’s, ‘okay well, we got through that little sort of hurricane that just came through our house.’

Terri Connellan: So it must have been difficult as a person with extroverted preferences over the past two years with COVID impacts. So how was that for you and how did type insights help you navigate these times?

Sue Blair: Oh I think I have never been more thankful for understanding type. So my situation was possibly somewhat extreme in many ways. So I visited my elderly parents who both live on the small island of Alderney in the Channel Islands, which is an English island, but just off the coast of France. And I was visiting my parents who are in their nineties. This was in March of 2020, and basically I got stuck there. So they needed some assistance at the time. And we got to the point where covid was shutting everything down. And in New Zealand, either you got back by the 31st of March, or you had no idea how long you’d be away for. The whole place was sort of shutting.

And it wasn’t possible for me to leave. My parents needed me at that point in time. And so I said, I can’t go, I’ll have to stay here. Anyway, I was on the island for five months. So this was tricky in many ways. I didn’t have my usual routine. I didn’t have structured.

In fact, out of any of the needs that you could possibly think of that an ESTJ might need, absolutely all of them were taken away. So I couldn’t work at pace. I couldn’t be productive doing my own work. I was looking after my parents and I have to say, I do adore my parents, the pace was glacial. It was so slow.

Terri Connellan: And it’s not a big island, is it?

Sue Blair: It’s a very, very small island and I walked every single inch of it. I paced around the island every afternoon, while they were resting. And yeah, it was a difficult time. Not only that, but I had no idea what my future was, as far as, when I’d be able to leave or would I be there for months? Would I be there for years? This was the time we had no vaccines. We had no idea how, how long this was going to be going on for. So nothing was available that gave me any sort of security.

It was an extremely difficult time, but again, understanding type, I got my needs met. I got involved with the type community who were fabulous as support people. I went walking on the island everyday and found a lovely lady who I’m still friendly with today. We used to go walking literally for hours at two o’clock every afternoon. So I could do everything that I needed to do at my parents’ place. And then I had this lovely person to go walking with for two hours every day. And we did, we just walked for miles and miles and miles. And so we were definitely therapy for each other.

So that was great, but I knew what was difficult. I knew what I needed to do to try and cope with it. Most certainly my experience wasn’t the worst experience in the covid scenario. We were all well and covid didn’t hit the island very badly at all. And so, we were fine. We were safe. So that was one of the things. One of my core needs was met, but challenging in many ways. Yeah. And even recently in 2021, just last year, my city Auckland was locked down for a hundred days. And again, sometimes you feel you’ve pivoted so much you’re pirouetting around the place.

But by then I was back at home. So that was a little bit easier. So I got to have more of my normal things around me. Yeah. But definitely I think covid pulled the strings on extroversion far more than perhaps the introverts. Again, my twin sister was gleeful.

Terri Connellan: Yes. We’re both introverts in our house and we’ve been quite happily ensconced.

Sue Blair: She was completely content. It was almost like her whole life had been validated. Stay in. Thank you! Work by yourself. Again, tick! So everything she needed was provided and everything I needed sort of wasn’t.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, it must’ve been super challenging. So what would you say as some of the common misconceptions about extroversion and introversion?

Sue Blair: I think the key one is this idea that extroverts are always sociable and introverts are always shy. Obviously, we each need to have a little bit of our other preference. There are times when I certainly enjoy my sociability. I really enjoy connecting with other people. It’s something that I sort of like about myself, but I need time by myself. Yeah. I really do, but not as much. I think there is a time and energy component to both of those preferences.

Those with a preference for introversion again, then they’re not always shy. I know introverts who say to me that they don’t have a shy bone in their body. And I believe them. I really do, but they need an exit strategy for when things become a little bit overwhelming. And they can get overwhelmed by a social event, way more quickly than I can.

So I think for extroverts, we don’t need to conserve our energy in the same way that introverts do. We get our energy from being out and about. It is exhausting for somebody with a preference for extroversion to spend all day by themselves. In the same way that it is exhausting for somebody with a preference for introversion to be out connecting all day. You know, you need a break after that. We need a break after having time by ourselves. So that time and energy component I think is really, really important. And I think it is the most misunderstood thing about extroverts and introverts. You know, we are not all one and none of the other. We are a lovely company.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. And you explained that beautifully in your recent LinkedIn post, which I’ll link to in the show notes about solar versus battery energy. That was a a beautiful analogy.

Sue Blair: Yeah. Extroverts are solar powered. We literally do just get our energy back from being out there in the world and that battery power, that resource, that inner resource that you go into, that introspection that you get your energy back from is very different. And understanding that, appreciating that with the people we live with, people we’re raising, people we work with, in all contexts.

Terri Connellan: Just as in the renewable energy, well, we need both of those aspects of energy. We need both those in our community, a great analogy. You have preferences for sensing also as opposed to intuiting. And this is probably one of the aspects of type that are perhaps harder to understand, I think, than some of the others. So can you explain these preferences, sensing and intuiting, for gathering information in different ways?

Sue Blair: Sure. I think if you have a sensing preference that your mind is far more converging than it is diverging. You think of an idea and you zero in on it. If you think about going into zoom and you’re looking on zoom and then you zoom in further and you zoom in further and you zoom in further and you go, aha. That’s where I need to go. The sensing brain does that naturally, whereas the intuiting brain is very much more divergent. It just has this natural outward curiosity to it.

So the sensing brain looks at the real, looks at the tangible, looks at what is, and, and really has a joy of that. And the intuitive brain looks at the possible, looks at the patterns looks at what could be. And I’m often talking to people about creativity because some people seem to think that those within intuiting preference have sort of got a monopoly on creativity and that isn’t the case at all.

Those were the sensing preference can really have a huge amount of creativity within them, but they use reality as a spring board to go to these different places. But let’s gather the information first and then we can just launch ourselves off, into all sorts of different spaces, but ground me first. And those with an intuitive preference, the imagination is the tool that they use by which they can craft their reality and know what to do next.

So it’s sort of going outwards, for those who have a sensing preference from base upwards and outwards. And it’s the opposite way for those, with an intuitive preference. You just see that sort of big picture and then you just wriggle around in your mind to get to, okay, so what does that mean right now? Diverge, converge.

Terri Connellan: Yes, I can certainly relate to that with my partner Keith who is ISTJ. So he has sensing preferences and I have intuiting and the times I notice that is when he’ll ask me a question and then I will tell him all these different things that relate to it. And he’ll say, no, I just asked this question. I just went through, but it’s yeah, it’s that meandering that to me is obvious, like, it’s that relates to that. Whereas he goes, no, I just want this fact.

Sue Blair: Yeah. And also I think the surprising thing for those of us who have a sensing preference is how many different interpretations you can make from one single sentence. You know, it’s just, I didn’t mean that, what I meant was. And that it can be misinterpreted so that you can get 10 different things out of one simple sentence.

Terri Connellan: So there’s probably a lot of argument for intuitives working with sensing coaches, isn’t there and the opposite way around?

Sue Blair: I think so. Yes. I think often about the sort of coach I would go to. There would be no point in me going to a coach who had my preferences. I’d probably enjoy it, we’d probably have a marvelous time. Why go to another ESTJ or ISTJ? I can ESTJ somebody out of the park. I need to have another perspective.

And perhaps that’s why a lot of people who have my opposite preferences, cause I think there’s some statistics around that the people with intuiting and feeling preferences and sensing and feeling preferences are the most likely people to require or to go towards having coaching. Maybe an ESTJ perspective can be really helpful as indeed I find intuiting preference is really helpful in coaching. Let’s go and talk to somebody that had just has a different view. Because I don’t want to hear the same thing again. I want to see what I’m missing. And though I can do it by myself, under stress, we do tend to exaggerate our natural preference and so we can kind of block out and have blind spots to some of those areas that aren’t as easily available to us. So yes, I would agree with you on that.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. Interesting point. You mentioned creativity. And one thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of creatives and writers that I work with, they’re often intuitive in preference, and when I talk about sensing and intuiting, they often find it hard to understand that they’re not sensing in preference because I guess perhaps as writers, they see themselves working with the five senses and noticing what’s around them. What would you say to that? It was just an interesting conundrum.

Sue Blair: Yes, I think it is. And I think when you’re looking at type, you have to really differentiate between what is being human and what is type? Where is the line there? And there are a lot of people who I speak to say, well, I, you know, I use sensing and I love going for walks in nature. And I love enjoying all of the beauty of the things around me. I say, yeah, but that’s being human. That’s not type. You know, when you have some information that you need, when you have got a problem to solve, where do you go to? And that’s where your type difference comes in. So I think there’s definitely that distinction to draw. What is human and what is psychological.

And I think if those with an intuiting preference didn’t use sensing, well they’d be bumping into things all the time? You’ve got all of your senses and you’re going to use them. Those with an intuiting preference absolutely do that. Those with a sensing preference still do have an imagination. We are very skilled with our imagination. We just use it at different times and in different ways.

Terri Connellan: So yeah, it’s about what your preference is, what you go to perhaps first or naturally.

Sue Blair: Yes, absolutely. Although, I was talking to a friend of mine who has INTP preferences and she says, I am so in my head that I do bump into things from time to time. She was just saying, I don’t just bump into something that is a surprisingly, there. She said I bump into my kitchen table, which hasn’t moved for years. I’ve just got myself inside my head thinking something through. And I literally don’t notice. I’m not aware of what’s going on, that does happen also.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. And I often say that to clients who are similar types to me, like that introverted, intuitive, dominant, I have to actually make myself leave this room because you know, I’ve got to have all my resources, my imagination, my whole world’s in this room and I actually have to lever myself to go out and go for a walk on the beach. And when I do, it’s the best thing in the world because I get that balance that I need.

Sue Blair: Absolutely. And I really think that knowing type, you can be intentional about using these other preferences. And I think that’s really important because you do need to recognize your blind spots and just go, what am I missing here? That’s an important conversation to have for everybody to know what your strengths are.

And sometimes your superpower is to understand your flaws and not be frightened of them. I can’t do that. Yeah. But that doesn’t worry me. I’m okay. I will either get some support in this area or I would kind of intentionally force my brain to just ask a few questions that I wouldn’t normally ask. Think outside the box. What am I missing here? Is there an elephant in the room? Is there something I haven’t noticed? And sort of direct your attention in a different way, which is a lot easier to do when you’re not stressed.

Terri Connellan: That’s for sure. Yeah. And I’d love your writing and insights on the inferior function, which is in part what we’re talking about here, that real opposite of our dominant preference. So can you explain a little bit about the inferior function and why people might choose to work with it as a form of self-awareness and growth?

Sue Blair: Yeah, actually it’s a good segue having had that conversation just now, really, because I think in my view, the inferior function would be better if we reframed it and retitled it. I think it isn’t actually inferior. I call it the balancing function. We all need to have a balance. Some of the images that I put across when I’m doing workshops is that I have the image of a horse that’s got out of control. You know, when your dominant function runs away with you, you literally can’t put brakes on it.

But neither are we going to trot perfectly round a dressage arena and get out sort of extended trots working smoothly. Life isn’t like that, you know, we’re not going to do things perfectly. So we are going to have to rumble with things and we will just maintain as much control as we possibly can. So I think that’s what the inferior function allows us to do. It just reigns us in from making some stupid mistakes from just letting the whole thing, get out of control. And try and engage with it rather than ignore it completely, which is going to send us off in the wrong direction.

So the presentation that I’ll be doing for BAPT is called Type in Tandem. And that’s really thinking about what is it like to ride a tandem bicycle? You know, you’ve got somebody on the front and you’ve got somebody at the back. If you think about that as your dominant/ inferior function. If the only person that’s working is the person who’s at the front, who’s got the steering wheel and is driving everything, but is not getting any power from the back, then it’s just hard work.

You need to have that person on the back. You need to have like this psychotherapist, that’s tapping you on the shoulder. That’s going, excuse me. Have you thought about this? Let me help you with. And that combination of types can be really great. So with my preferences, for example, and as ESTJ, my dominant function, extroverted thinking, it needs introverted feeling to say, is this important? Does this really matter? Is the energy that you’re putting into this activity worthy? Is it something that is going to produce good results? Not as it necessarily going to give you happiness? But it’s what you are doing going to make you happier than you were? Are you working towards something that’s meaningful and important to you.

And I do really find that in certainly in my later years, I’ve been able to tap into that. Similarly, as I’ve mentioned, my lovely sister has INFP preferences. She works the other way around. She actually is an artist, she does beautiful work. She does work that is meaningful to her and her values are strong. But if you just sit with strong values and do nothing with them, then that’s not a life well led either. So she needs to take those inner values and those inner core resources that she absolutely has in spades and just say, okay, so now what am I going to do with this? What am I going to put out to the world?

Because that doesn’t need to stay within me. I need to put something out into the world so that I have this legacy that I believe in and is strong within me. And you can use extraverted thinking to do that. You know, how am I going to organize my life so that the introverted feeling that is key for me has an external expression that is helpful to others

So the inferior function can just be incredible. It can be incredibly powerful and it can also be very, very difficult if you have no access to it whatsoever. We need to have those functions, whatever is your dominant and inferior function, they do need to be working in cahoots. They need to understand each other and tap in and say, hello? What advice can you give me on this one?

Terri Connellan: Yeah. I love that article that you wrote for BAPT (Invoking the Inferior Function) a little while ago, and again, I’ll link to it in the show notes, on the inferior function. And for each function, you’ve got a lovely question just as you’ve shown us in those examples of, if you’re really strong on this function, how to bring in the opposites through just asking a question. Certainly for my type, that question was like, oh, you know, just takes you back, because it’s completely where you need to be focusing, but it’s not in your consciousness.

Sue Blair: Absolutely. And I think we can all, have even a list of questions available to us before we’re decision-making certainly. I mean, your dominant function is the one that I really fail to get. You know, that future thinking. Looking back in my past, I would take my life one term at a time when I had children one year at a time was the maximum I’d look out. To actually go to the top of the mountain and look any further was, is really difficult for me. And for anybody who’s saying, well, what’s your five or 10 year plan. It’s like, I have absolutely no idea, but it’s probably a good idea to look five and 10 years ahead.

What you’re doing now could be really relevant to what you might need to be doing in five or 10 years time, but it just simply doesn’t occur to me to go and do that. So I need to be dragged, kicking and screaming into your head, Terri, tell me a few things.

Terri Connellan: Must be great having a twin who’s your exact opposite in terms the types.

Sue Blair: Yes, it’s got better and better as we’ve got older. As you can imagine through our younger and teenage years, there was some tricky patches, but I think we’ve forgiven each other. I think she had to forgive me for a whole lot more than I had to forgive her to be honest, but we’ve absolutely worked it out. But I would highly recommend anybody who understands type and who knows their type preferences to find somebody who is their complete opposite and just build a connection so that you can just link in with each other and say, I’m thinking like this. Can you help me out with that?

Terri Connellan: That’s a great idea.

Sue Blair: Link up with someone who’s your opposite, so you’ll have to find an ESFP, Terri.

Terri Connellan: So the last couple of questions are questions that I ask each guest on the podcast because it’s the Create Your Story Podcast, interested in how you have created your story over your lifetime. It’s a big question, but interested to see what pops up.

Sue Blair: If I look back over my life, I can really see my type preferences being in action from the early years, as you can imagine. I think what understanding type has really given me as an adult is it has absolutely allowed me to make sure that I’m doing work that uses my strengths. And that there are some things that I can’t do. So if you’re waiting at a bus stop and several buses come along, there’s been several buses in my life that with my type knowledge, I’ve gone, that one’s not for me. I can do this, but this one I can’t. And then my bus comes along and I go now that one I can do. Yeah. That one’s for me. And to not be anxious or worried about it.

So I’ve found that increasingly helpful as I’ve gone through the years, being able to adjust and use the skills that I have in a way that I know is going to enable me to give my best to the world. We were saying earlier about my role in type is to take the complication out of things, make things simple and communicate it as clearly and concisely as I possibly can so that people get it first time. They’re not just struggling and having things ramble around in their minds, giving them something that’s concrete. And so I feel like I’m able to do that. Even with the Personality Puzzles. I had a prototype of the Personality Puzzles, when I first went on my certification program. So before I’d even been certified to use type, I realized that I needed a tool, a resource to help me talk to people about it so that they could understand it clearly. And I could get that, that information back.

So I think it that has definitely assisted me. And I think it will assist me still going forward. So creating my story, I think it also enables you to be happy with the story that you’ve got. I’m happy with the fact that there are some things that I can’t do. I really admire people who have different talents to me. I think it’s allowed me to not be so swift to step back and watch and enjoy people, having other talents, without feeling envious of them or wishing that I had them those sorts of feelings and, and just being a lot more comfortable in myself. It’s just helped enormously.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. What I’m hearing from you with that, that type has been such a huge part of your story as it’s evolved. And it sounds like it’s been a real tool for wisdom.

Sue Blair: I hope so. It definitely has given me other perspectives. One of the things that I really like when I’m writing, I’ve done as, you know, several resources and I write type descriptions, and they’re not easy to write, especially when you’ve only got an A five piece of card in which to put as much information as you possibly can about a particular type.

And my modus operandi for doing that was to literally sink myself into each of the 16 types while I was writing about INTJ or ESFP or whichever one, and it would be quite a task in any given morning that I knew I would be doing some writing, and I just go, which one do I want to be today?

And then just immersing myself in this ENTP brain of like, well, okay, let me be this for a day or two days and just thoroughly enjoying it, being able to glean so much from not only the other types of descriptions that you’re reading, but just to create something that is different and valuable that people are going to get in just by reading those type descriptions. It’s a very therapeutic way of doing it and an interesting dive into being someone else for a while. I guess actors do that a lot with their characters. I can’t claim to have any acting skills whatsoever, I imagine it’s a similar process that you cloak yourself in someone else for awhile, and then you can shed it. It’s fascinating. I’ve really enjoyed it.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, it must’ve been amazing working through all 16 types. I’ve had a taste of it with doing workshops, with Dario Nardi with his priming, where you put yourself into exactly what it’s like. I worked particularly on INTP and just putting myself in the shoes and working with an INTP as a a partner in that exercise made me realize how different life is and how running so many processes in your mind as an INTP typically does all the time. It was incredibly cognitively busy.

Sue Blair: One of the sensing activities that I do in workshops is they literally have different colored acetates, blues greens, yellows, and I just get people to hold them up to their eyes and just say okay, looking through the red acetate looks like this. Now change to yellow or change to blue or change to green. And it’s as different as that.

People just see their world with totally different filters and unless you know about it, then you can’t be aware of it. But once you know about it, you will never not know it. And that’s the beauty of understanding type. You will never go through life, not knowing this information. And I think it is, It’s a gift really. It’s gold in people’s lives.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. And I think that’s why so many of us who work in type have chosen to do that. Just as you’ve explained, once you learn the value of it for yourself, but also working with others, it is really gold. And as you were talking there, it sounded like type was like a framework for choices, for discernment too, which I think is really powerful.

Sue Blair: Yeah, absolutely.

Terri Connellan: Awesome. So in Wholehearted, my book, I have 15 Wholehearted Self-leadership skills and practices for women. And to add to that body of knowledge, I’m interested in your top wholehearted self-leadership practices, especially for women.

Sue Blair: It’s an interesting one. Isn’t it? And I think one of the things over the years that I have come to really want to reframe in people’s minds is this imposter syndrome. People are talking about imposter syndrome a lot at the moment, and I’m not too sure that it’s helpful. I think that both men and women do get it, but I think women may have it more obviously, or more often. I haven’t got any research for that, but in my knowledge of, in the work that I’ve been doing. And I kind of like to reframe it because I think that it is absolutely necessary to have a reasonable and realistic doubt about some of the challenges that you might take on.

Now that doesn’t necessarily mean you have a syndrome, you are not an imposter. You just have some reasonable doubt and it certainly doesn’t mean that you’re not going to take on the challenge. So instead of saying, well, I’ve got imposter syndrome and I’m terribly worried about it and I might not do it. Why am I here? It’s like, okay, I’ve got some reasonable doubt, but I’m going to do it anyway. And I think that’s a far better way to look at it because we all have some doubts along the way.

And I remember going to a conference for careers advisors. And they said that the research there is that before women apply for a promotion or a new job, it is very likely, more likely than with men, for them to think, well, I haven’t got some of the things that this job description is requiring. So I won’t apply until I have consolidated and done an extra course or done another two years or built up my skills so that I can apply for the job. And men tend not to do that. They tend to tick 50% or 60% of the boxes. And say, I’ll just give it a go.

And I think we need to do that as women a bit more often, and to stop consolidating and thinking, yes, I need to do this, this, this, this, this, and this before I can do that, that, that, that, and just, yeah, it could be a challenge. You may have some reasonable and rational doubts, but do it anyway. I know that there is that book, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, but it’s experience the doubt that’s reasonable and rational and do it anyway.

Terri Connellan: That’s a great top tip. A coach that I trained with a little while ago, he stressed the importance of not waiting until you’re free of fear or free of doubt, but to move ahead with those, because he said, they’ll always be there with you. And if you wait until you’re free of doubt or fear, you’ll never move.

Sue Blair: And get support. I love the work of Brené Brown and she talks about vulnerability. And it’s okay to have that vulnerability it absolutely is. We need to shift this idea that we may have in our heads about leadership that means that we don’t need to be vulnerable. You know, we’re going to make mistakes and failure we learn from and grow from. We don’t want to make huge mistakes. but we don’t want the fear of it to stop us doing something. And so, saying to yourself, this is a reasonable and realistic doubt. Okay, let me just go ahead and just give it my best shot.

Terri Connellan: Mm. I love that. That’s a great thing to remember. So we’re just about at the end of our time together. So thanks so much for joining me today, Sue. It’s been great to learn more about you and to chat more about type and through all different aspects of how type can be such a powerful framework for us in guiding our lives.

So where can people find out more about you and your work online?

Sue Blair: Oh, thank you. So I’ve got a couple of websites, one of them for my resources, which is PersonalityPuzzles.com. And then for the coaching work and the presentation work that I do. It’s sueblair.co.nz. Or in fact, personalitydynamics.co.nz. Either one will get you there.

Terri Connellan: Awesome. Well, thanks so much for joining me today. It’s been wonderful.

Sue Blair: You’re very welcome, Terri. Thanks so much for having me.

About Sue Blair

Sue has been working with psychological type for 20 years. She is an international presenter and keynote speaker, as well as a qualified MBTI practitioner and adult educator. She is the author of The Personality Puzzle coaching cards, now used worldwide by coaches and counsellors. She has taught thousands of teachers, parents, students and businesses about the importance of self-awareness and communication. Sue is the recipient of the APTi 2015 Gordon Lawrence Award. This award recognises an outstanding achievement to the field of education

You can connect with Sue:

Website: SueBlair.co.nz or PersonalityPuzzles.co.nz

Personality Puzzles: https://www.personalitypuzzles.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sue-blair/

Terri’s links to explore:

My books:

Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition

Wholehearted Companion Workbook

Free resources:

Chapter 1 of Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition

https://www.quietwriting.net/wholehearted-chapter-1

Other free resources: https://www.quietwriting.com/free-resources/

My coaching & writing programs:

Work with me

The Writing Road Trip six month membership program – enrolling now for a 2 May start

The Writing Road Trip email list – community writing program with Beth Cregan

Connect on social media

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/writingquietly/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/writingquietly

Twitter: https://twitter.com/writingquietly

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/terri-connellan/

Further reading

How I fulfilled my vision to become a Personality Type Coach

Personality Stories Coaching

Cognitive Science Writing Tips from Anne Janzer’s The Writer’s Process

Extraverted Intuition – Imagining the Possibilities