Myers-Briggs personality type of great architects?

[Dan Herrmann]

I have always been interested in Myers-Briggs.  Wayne Morrison and I were talking about MB and golf architects yesterday, and wondering if the ISTJ type (like Joe Friday in Dragnet - just the facts), or the ENFP type (more artistic and intuitive), or one of the other 14 types produced the best architecture.

(You can read up on MB at http://www.keirsey.com)

I'd bet that Crump was an INFJ type for example.
But most great ones were probably more likey INTP.


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And what does your type tell you about the courses you'll like?  I'm an ENFP, and my favorites are courses like Pacific Dunes and French Creek.  

I play occasionally with a very strong ISTJ type, and he really doesn't like French Creek at all - it's too 'whimsical' for him.

What do you think?

[Ulrich Mayring]

Great topic, I would say that ENTP must be the best golf architect. Flamboyant, fearless, innovative, but rational and solution-oriented in execution. Myself being INTP, I can appreciate that NT is probably what makes a course "great" in the GCA sense and the P (perceiving) is extremely helpful in detail work. We are always hearing the great architects saying how much time they devote to the small things, tweaking them again and again until they are 100% right. However, being extroverted definitely helps on the selling side, so I am going for ENTP.

Ulrich

[Carl Rogers]

The downside of the P (perceiver, if you go along with the MBTI), is that they might tend to over tinker and tinker and tinker .... and not finish anything.  

There is a downside to taking it all too literally.

The are four dominant personality types: NF,NT,SJ & SP.

[Tom_Doak]

INTJ, and it has worked well for me, anyway.  I wouldn't want to guess about anyone else, except that I am pretty sure Bill Coore would qualify as an introvert, and Pete Dye as an extrovert, so I don't believe one is better than the other.

[Tim Bert]

INTJ, and it has worked well for me, anyway.  I wouldn't want to guess about anyone else, except that I am pretty sure Bill Coore would qualify as an introvert, and Pete Dye as an extrovert, so I don't believe one is better than the other.

Well, I said I thought I had met two I's and two E's, so I guess I nailed this one.  I'm guessing a certain someone that gets some design credit with you is the E to your I.

E-I-E-I-O!!

[Tom_Doak]

Tim,

My crew is about half extroverts and half introverts.

I have noticed the extroverts tend to be the youngest in their family, and the introverts the oldest.

[Tommy Williamsen]

I am not surre that the "E" or the "i" are as important as the nt/nf combination.  Both NFs and NTs see possibilities.  Both have the ability to visualize architectural concepts in their heads.  Both are able to escape convention.  The NF may want to please the owner more than the NT and the NT may be a little more stubborn in letting go of his/her concepts.  The J will be better at detail work, not the P.  The J may tend to want to make decisions too quickly so that there can be an end to the project.but will do the necessary work of dotting "i's" and crossing Ts.  The P will generally want more information before making the final decision and afterward second guess himself. 
The design team needs a balance to make the work progress smoothly.
I am an INFP.  I want a secretary who is some sort of SJ so that the work is done on time.  I want staff that has one NT to keep me honest and ask probing questions and another NF who can understand me.
I think that CB must have been some sort of SJ.  They are traditionalist and his use of template holes would fit that MB type. 

[Peter Pallotta]

Dan - I am and have been interested in this kind of thinking/analysis of how people tend to live in the world and interact with the 'data' of the world for many years. But as I suggested on Bart's thread, I've come to a dead end (sort of, in a way), i.e. everyone I meet is such a mix of elements (me too), and besides, I'm less and less taken by what consensus opinion decides is an 'objective' assessment of people, places, and things; and more and more taken by the individual/subjective response, valuable for the simple reason that it IS individual and subjective. BUT - I do think that, when a person is leaning towards his/her extrovert side, he tends to look for validation of himself and his work OUTSIDE of himself (in this case, with the CLIENT); while if he/she is leaning towards his introvert side, he looks for validation to come from INSIDE himself (in this case, his own STANDARDS of what qualifies as great gca -- even if most others don't see what all the fuss is about.)

Peter

[Dan Herrmann]

Peter - since you brought up left brain/right brain, here's my old thread on Myers-Briggs...

I'm still an ENFP, a very strange type for a guy working as an information security officer for a multinational company. 

[Malcolm Mckinnon]

Dan,

I took the test almost 20 years ago and turned out to be an introverted architect type.

I'll try to find the results and report back.

What does it mean?? What if my results say FUBAR?

Malcolm

[Chris_Hufnagel]

I have taken the test about a half-dozen times over my professional career and my first experience with it in 2004 was probably one of the most powerful self-awareness exercises I have ever gone through.  I was lucky enough to participate in a week-long leadership development class in Colorado Springs.  I learned a lot about what how I processed information, what my preferences were, and where I got my energy from - it was equally enlightening because I learned about what made other people tick and why we often fail to understand each other.

I am an INTJ.

P.S. I was also smart enough to take my clubs along and get in an afternoon at the Broadmoor on the day I arrived!

[Dan Herrmann]

Malcom - what does it mean?  Books have been written on the subject, but to me, the key for GCA is the middle pair of letters (indicators). 

For example, my wife is "ST" and I'm "NF" - Subjective/Thinking vs Intuitive/Feeling.  ST is a person that uses numbers and hard facts and tends to see things as black or white (tends is the key word here).  NF is a person that uses their intuition and everything around a situation to help come up with a "colorful" solution. 

During a session, the leader gave the same artwork to two groups - the "facts" group and the "intuitive/feeling" types.  The first group came up with a large number of facts - the color of this, the size of that, etc.  The second group actually constructed a short story about the scene depicted.

Helps explain the vastly different ways two very qualified people can analyze a golf hole or, more importantly, design a golf hole.

It also affects the way we play. 

[Mike Sweeney]

I learned a lot about what how I processed information, what my preferences were, and where I got my energy from - it was equally enlightening because I learned about what made other people tick and why we often fail to understand each other.

I am an INTJ.

Chris,

Interesting that there are a few other INTJ's here, including Tom Doak as we are in the 2-4% range of the 16 possible quadrants. I do believe that it helped my marriage as my wife and I took the test separately but we use it to understand why the other one is screwed up!

Since we are on a golf architecture site and Tom's career is the one that is most relevant, this would seem to be a pretty good summary of what I have seen from afar having never met Tom:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INTJ

"INTJs apply (often ruthlessly) the criterion "Does it work?" to everything from their own research efforts to the prevailing social norms. This in turn produces an unusual independence of mind, freeing the INTJ from the constraints of authority, convention, or sentiment for its own sake ... INTJs are known as the "Systems Builders" of the types, perhaps in part because they possess the unusual trait of combining imagination and reliability. Whatever system an INTJ happens to be working on is for them the equivalent of a moral cause; both perfectionism and disregard for authority come into play. Personal relationships, particularly romantic ones, can be the INTJ's Achilles heel ... This happens in part because many INTJs do not readily grasp the social rituals ... Perhaps the most fundamental problem, however, is that INTJs really want people to make sense."

So is Tom Doak creative? Probably not, or at least I am not that creative. However, I am smart enough to bring in creative people around me which seems to be what Tom does. Now add in his ability to process the 10,000 great things that he has seen on other courses, and he and his team meld them together in their own unique way over the course of 18 holes to get some pretty good/great golf courses.

Myers Briggs was not around when CB Macdonald died, but it would be interesting to know if he was an iNTJ.

[Mac Plumart]

INTJ is my type. 

[Tom_Doak]

Chris,

Interesting that there are a few other INTJ's here, including Tom Doak as we are in the 2-4% range of the 16 possible quadrants. I do believe that it helped my marriage as my wife and I took the test separately but we use it to understand why the other one is screwed up!

Since we are on a golf architecture site and Tom's career is the one that is most relevant, this would seem to be a pretty good summary of what I have seen from afar having never met Tom:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INTJ

"INTJs apply (often ruthlessly) the criterion "Does it work?" to everything from their own research efforts to the prevailing social norms. This in turn produces an unusual independence of mind, freeing the INTJ from the constraints of authority, convention, or sentiment for its own sake ... INTJs are known as the "Systems Builders" of the types, perhaps in part because they possess the unusual trait of combining imagination and reliability. Whatever system an INTJ happens to be working on is for them the equivalent of a moral cause; both perfectionism and disregard for authority come into play. Personal relationships, particularly romantic ones, can be the INTJ's Achilles heel ... This happens in part because many INTJs do not readily grasp the social rituals ... Perhaps the most fundamental problem, however, is that INTJs really want people to make sense."

So is Tom Doak creative? Probably not, or at least I am not that creative. However, I am smart enough to bring in creative people around me which seems to be what Tom does. Now add in his ability to process the 10,000 great things that he has seen on other courses, and he and his team meld them together in their own unique way over the course of 18 holes to get some pretty good/great golf courses.

Mike:

That description of me is all too accurate in many respects.  I'm not that creative as most people would define it, but I'm not Seth Raynor either ... I have managed to come up with a lot of original golf holes over the years, and they weren't all somebody else's idea.  But it makes sense that my style of design evolved from studying the topo and finding things in it and whittling away, instead of building things up from a blank site, as many other designers do.  And it also makes sense that much of my "creativity" is just my willingness to do things that are considered unconventional by other designers, but that I've decided are perfectly okay.

As for associates, I prefer them to be creative in building greens and bunkers, because I've got the puzzle-solving skills covered.

[Mike Sweeney]

Tom,

Just curious, when you did The Rawls Course (blank slate, flat site) was your process different?

[Tom_Doak]

Tom,

Just curious, when you did The Rawls Course (blank slate, flat site) was your process different?

Mike:

Well, it would have to be, since the topo didn't suggest anything.

The basic plan for the earthmoving was done based on setting an elevation for the pond on #18 [though that hole was going to be #15 originally], and then running pipe at the minimum of 0.5% in various directions to drain the site and to set the lowest elevations at different places on site, that the golf holes could work down to.  Then, there was a surface drainage channel going across the site that we had to keep moving across the site in big storms; and north of that we used an electric sump to pick up the drainage water and pump it past the drainage channel to the pond, so we could go deeper up on that end by holes 3 and 6.

Once I had that framework in place, I started trying to come up with some golf holes to fit the created (but still gentle) topo.  A few of them were based on doodles or my associates' suggestions, most were based on holes we had seen somewhere before that would work on flat ground.  I have a file in the office of "holes that would work on flat ground" with about 200 ideas on it.  Luckily, I don't have to consult it that often.

A lot of the shaping (especially the shaping of the mounds outside the holes) was done with no regard to the golf holes at all ... we had one guy on the crew who we never told where the holes were, we just told him to make some cool shapes up there.  Someday I'd like to build a whole golf course that way, but somebody would probably whine that it was inefficient. 

[Ulrich Mayring]

INTP, which means if I were a golf architect, I'd be the fiddler-type. Compared to the goals-oriented INTJ I am more process-oriented. Maybe like Bill Coore?

Ulrich

[Mark Johnson]

I am an ENTJ and would make a horrible architect.  By nature, I want to chat and understand various opinions and can lose my own internal vision.



Generally, i've found that Is tend to be the best creative people I know.  They have an incredible ability to shut out outside influence and remain laser focused on what they see.

From an design perspective, I would think that Ps would fair better as well since they would be more than likely to let the land speak to them and not get fixed on original thoughts from an aerial view.

[Jason Topp]

I usually have come out INTJ on that test but have never found the knowledge useful.  It was about at the point I had that realization I dumped psychology and decided to become a lawyer.

[Dan Herrmann]

Jason.  You may find that learning your adversary's type could give you an advantage in court or in negotiations.