Creativity and Perception in Management: Style
In this chapter it is about our preference of working an behaving in particular ways. To find this out you can either observe, ask others or fill out inventories to assess your style. Referred to here are: NEO personality traits, MBTI psychological types, KAI creativy style, LSI learning style and Belbin team roles, as they re widely used, studied and recognized. They are measures of preferences, and hence there is no good or bad answer.
Goldman (1993) subsumed the various personality traits under five traits. The “Big Five”: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional stability, Intellect or openness. These all seem to be based on a genetic tendency, meaning that we are born with them, at least falling back on our style when we are under pressure. The solution then is to recognize your style and work with it.
Tests for the “big five” are still being developed, but NEO-PI-R personality tests seem to be very sound.
MBTI Types
The Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a commonly used system. You can find lots of MBTI Tests online if you want to do one. The system includes four opposing preferences:
Extraversion (E) — Introversion (I)
Sensing (S) — Intuition (N)
Thinking (T) — Feeling (F)
Judging (J) — Perceiving (P)
These together form sixteen personality types. In relation to the “big five” you can see a relation between:
\- E-I (available in both)
\- T-F — agreeableness
\- P-J — conscientiousness
\- S-N — openness
Each style will likely adopt different styles of working, communication and problem solving, which needs to be recognized to get along. There is a lot of information about this in the tables from page 105ff. For deeper analysis these are a must read.
In terms of temperament STs are analytical and fact driven, leading to the fact that some two-thirds of accountants are of that type. The different approach by the different types, also leads to a cognitive bias, to things that that type more easily ignores. This is especially important in looking at your own problems.
Adaptors and Innovators
Kirton’s Adaption-Innovation Theory (KAI) refers to the preferred thinking style in relation to decision making and creativity. More adaptive people are into improving, doing things better, while innovative people are focussing on reframing problems, offering new solutions doing things differently. Adaptive people will do a more thorough search in relation to one idea, while innovators will probably formulate different possibilities. Adaptors might be the ones that also can recognize their errors though, in relation to Innovators, who may even be intolerant in relation to other ideas.
In terms of techniques for creativity, adaptors prefer structures and conventional ways, while innovators prefer less conventional techniques. (Based on innovators mostly being the first adopters, technology wise I am an innovator, damn ;))
Kirton emphasized though that this results in different styles, not different capacities, levels or abilities of creativity. Your style can also be adapted in relation to your environment, but will likely fall back to their natural style.
The KAI Inventory is short and new AI theory suggest that this style is also relative, meaning that your result will have a different meaning based on your current environment.
Learning style
There is also different research on learning styles by Kolb (1984, learning style inventory — LSI) or Honey and Mumford (1985, LSQ). Kolb described four types: divergers, assimilators, convergers and accommodators. You can also mix them with MBTI types, which was going to deep into it for my tast. Reflective divergers and assimilators think before they act, and active accomondators and convergers act before they think.
In general, there are two axis in Kolp’s model, that are preferences for learning, between reflections and action as well as contrete experience versus abstract conceptualization. A mix of these axis lead to the four types.
This chapter can lead to a lot of more reading if you are not careful ;)