Companies with engaged employees have 2.5x higher revenues than companies with low engagement, and understanding Jung’s theories could help those who are struggling with the latter. Engagement occurs when the employees of a company feel they are supported by those in leadership positions and believe they effectively contribute to the growth of a company. Team building is used by companies as a way of increasing motivation, trust, communication and collaboration. Incorporating Jung’s theory of psychological type will help companies understand their employees, and the way they interact with co-workers.

The Individual Personalities That Make Up A Team

Jung developed his theory of psychological types to examine how people interacted with one another and defined eight distinctive types. These types gave us insight into how a person perceived information and the decisions they made.  He theorized people perceive information via our senses or intuition, and we make decisions based on objective logic or subjective feelings. Jung believed that the dominant functions were affected by two types of characters, which are the introvert and the extrovert. Expanding on that, those who use the MBTI, Myers-Briggs type indicator, will notice that they added judging and perceiving as preferences, increasing the personality types from Jung’s original eight to sixteen.

Company Projects And Activities

Companies frequently utilize the MBTI to help the company and the employee understand the way they perceive and process information. Using it, along with Jung’s theory, will help identify the personality traits of an employee, and assist with creating a team which better fits the project or activity at hand. People gravitate towards people who are like them, or people they are familiar with, so the goal is to create a group consisting of different personality types.

Benefits Of Each Type For The Team

A team with many personalities may find themselves negotiating more, and allows a company to have a team which can bring different ideas and perspectives to the table when needing to solve issues. For example, those employees who are considered extroverts tend to want to discuss and bring ideas out into the open, while those who are considered judging will help keep the project on time. Outside of work projects, there can be group activities for building trust and understanding. Programs which present activities meant to focus on time together while working toward a goal, are known to be more successful in instilling trust and cooperation. Work projects and group activities allows employees to move beyond their personality type and gain insight into others.

Using Jung’s ideas to help employees understand themselves and where they fit into their job will lead employees and teams to be happier and more productive.

~Jane Sandwood
Freelance Writer

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