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Understanding your design--your personality type--is a crucial part of life purpose discovery. And the Myers-Briggs Personality Type system is probably the most robust, well-research tool available for looking at design. Type Talk is an in-depth look at the MBTI Personality Type system written in an easy-to-read, practical style that helps you apply it in your life and in coaching situations. Personality type explains why people think and act the way they do--think of it as a shorthand language for describing human differences. Once you learn this system, if you know a client's type, you'll know a lot about what communication style will work best for them, the kinds of things they value want out of life and the coaching style that will probably work best for them. Personality type is one of my most-used coaching tools, because it brings insight to every human interaction, action and decision.

Typetalk offers in-depth profiles of all 16 MBTI types, chapters on the "function pair" subtypes (which are quite useful in explaining behavior), and a complete treatment of the four dichotomies (or preferences) that make up the MBTI:

• Introversion vs. Extraversion: whether you gain energy from being with people or alone
• Intuition vs Sensing: whether you tune in most to the big picture and what could be, or the details of what is going on around you right now
• Thinking or Feeling: "Thinkers" are task-oriented and make decisions by detaching themselves from the situation and focusing on principles, while "Feelers" are people-oriented, involved decision-makers who tune into how the decision will affect those around them
• Judging vs. Perceiving: the words here date from the 1920's and are a bit unfortunate, but Judgers like schedule, structure and order, and are most comfortable when the decision is made; while Perceivers take life as it comes and are most comfortable when the decision is still open.

• What's Your Type?
• The Eight Preferences
• The Four Temperaments
• The ABC's of Determining Someone's Type
• MBTI Type at Work
• Friends, Lovers and Myers-Briggs Type
• Parent-Child Type-Watching
• The 16 Profiles [several pages on each type]

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