What We're Reading Now

Play Your Way to a New Skill

21 August 2012

Allison read 129 pages of directions and assembled her 735-piece Marvel Super Heroes Quinjet Aerial Battle LEGO® set. She had fun and was proud of her whole Type development.

Tags: allison read, communication, creativity, lego lessons

We're pretty big fans of the Myers-Brigg Type Indicator (MBTI) at Allison Partners. In the past, I've blogged about how to make good career decisions using Type insights and earlier this month I wrote about how to take care of yourself using MBTI. I don't usually revisit a topic again this close together in my Tuesday blog posts, but I found myself wanting to tell this story in honor of all the students who are starting school in the coming weeks.

If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, then you know I enjoy hanging out with three fabulous kids (14, 12 and 10 years old) that I call the Barrett Boyz. Their parents generously share these amazing guys with me and I'm quite proud of my "Mama Two" and "Mama Bling" titles. Every summer the boys and I have a weekend together and their parents go on vacation. We have all sorts of fun including my annual LEGO project. I call the 10-year old Professor LEGO in honor of his genius-like LEGO skills and the fact that he coaches me every summer on an increasingly more difficult LEGO construction. I'm more than somewhat challenged in the LEGO department. There are lots of directions to read and hundreds of little pieces. It's also important to do everything in a step-by-step, prescribed order. Just writing those sentences makes me a little anxious and that's because in MBTI terminology I am an iNtuitor instead of a Sensor. I explained this concept in last summer's LEGO post so click here if you'd like to learn more.

my LEGO projects have a special place at my house

Working on a LEGO project every summer helps me develop much needed Sensing skills and has the added bonus of spending many hours with Professor LEGO. This kid is amazing. Last night I was at their house for pizza and baseball (the Braves lost but I still had a good time). Professor LEGO asked us to turn down the TV so he could go to sleep early because he wants to get back into a good sleep rhythm before school starts on Wednesday. The importance of sleep makes a lot of my blog posts too so you can imagine how impressed I am that the Professor already knows what most grown ups neglect.

If you're wondering whether or not this whole Professor LEGO coaching / MBTI whole Type development thing is true, just take six minutes to watch him coach me. I can't make this stuff up! By this point, I hope you're also wondering what all of this could mean for you. First, you need to play. Play is a great way to relieve stress, tap your creativity, and build new skills. Second, you need to find out what the kids in your life have to teach you. They know important stuff so you need to settle in for quality one-on-one time (or "time together" as we call it in my family) so that you can be present to the lessons. Third, while those of us who value MBTI as a leadership development tool will tell you the most important thing is to honor the needs of your Type, the next thing you'll want to do is develop your ability to do some of the things you don't prefer. This will help you to be better at many of the necessary, but less enjoyable, tasks in your life. I need Sensing skills to take care of a few administrative responsibilities and it's more fun to build those skills with LEGO than with spreadsheets. You'll also gain an appreciation for how to communicate with people who are different than you.

I hope I've inspired you to develop a few of your less preferred ways of doing things. If you need ideas about how to do this, take a look at the list in my blog post and then do the opposite of what you would normally prefer. If you're still looking for ideas, please come visit our bookshelf at Allison Partners. We're located at 1716-2 Allied Street in the McIntire Business Park, behind Circa and near C’ville Coffee. I'm certain we can find just the right book for you. In the meantime, Avengers! Assemble!

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