MBTI Step II Facets: Practical–Conceptual & the Importance of Ideas
Global Marketing
While delivering a training program recently, I was getting excited about the “miracle” of the theory behind personality type. I felt like I was in my wheelhouse expounding on the power of type and the implications of these ideas. As explained in the MBTI® Step II™ Manual, “[Conceptual people (like me)] are not content…just to make inferences. Inferences give birth to ideas, and ideas are what excite them” (p. 30). I was brought back to reality when a participant raised her hand with a slightly frustrated look on her face and simply said, “Why?”
I had to smile, because it hit me over the head how easily I can take an idea and run with it. My Conceptual style is probably the reason I feel bogged down when I have to make an idea real and practical in the here and now.
Practical people, on the other hand, need to know how the idea will be realized. While they can be creative, their creativity tends to be derived from what they already know. That knowledge gives them a sense of certainty they can then use to understand an idea—thus, the question “Why?” The participant in my program probably also wanted to ask “Who?” “What?” “When?” and “How?”
Want more? Here's a great article on the three types of creativity that exist - and their categories may surprise you. You also might find it interesting because this article interviews people of different creative manners - see if you can determine which might lean towards conceptual and which might lean towards practical...