Free MBTI icebreaker exercise
Short, impactful exercise for MBTI® group sessions
Icebreaker exercise presents the MBTI framework’s benefits in a way people can see and experience for themselves.
This MBTI numbers exercise illustrates the relevance and usefulness of a framework. It’s also a useful tool to counter the ‘MBTI puts everyone in a box’ argument, as the framework it demonstrates is about understanding where things are in relation to one another.
Free to download and use, this nifty MBTI exercise was conceived and presented by Thomas Lorenz and Angelika Hӧcker in their book 30 Minuten Wert-voll leben. We first highlighted it in our blog (complete with video demonstration), and we are very grateful to the authors for allowing us to share it with practitioners.
The insights don’t stop with the exercise, though. As part of the session you could also take note of how people react to the exercise. For example, Extraverts will probably talk about the puzzle aloud while taking part; Ns might well become frustrated; Js will want to complete the exercise (even when you ask everyone to stop).
You may also find that NT Types become competitive, while ENP Types might try bending the rules, or, (judging from our experience) simply not listen properly when you give out the instructions!
All in all, it’s a fascinating, simple and fun way to get people thinking about the MBTI framework.
Feel free to apply your own template and edit the slides to fit your own presentation; but, if you choose to use it in one of your sessions, please reference to OPP and the authors.