Temperament Discrimination -- the Improviser's Burden

The last thing I want to do is take sides in any "most persecuted temperament" struggle, but I think it's only fair to pipe up and tell you that Improvisers (sometimes known as "SPs") are routinely discriminated against in the type world.

A while back I witnessed an online training program through a company my husband was working with. It openly tried to make the CASE that few Artisans (as Improvisers used to be called) worked at the company, and certain management techniques were in the company PURELY for the purpose of corralling these undesirable sorts, but because *statistics* demonstrated this population was nearly non-existent, those management techniques were unnecessary.

In 1997, Scott Blanchard (ESFP son of Ken Blanchard) delivered a keynote at APT in Boston titled "An Artisan Among You." (I suspect if he didn't come right out and say that, people wouldn't have believed it. Sometimes Improvisers seem like the Loch Ness Monster. People have HEARD the myth, but sightings are rare. You wouldn't suppose that would be true in the type community, but it is.)

Dr. Linda Berens built on Scott's keynote with an article on the Interstrength website found here: article

Every training workshop I've done with Linda, at least one (sometimes more) person realizes they are a mis-typed Improviser. It's amazing to watch them get up and move across the room to sit with "their people" and the self-awareness that springs from that.

I just took a college student through my Temperament self-discovery process over the phone. She told me she didn't know if she'd ever met any Improvisers. I told her to take another look. On the next call, she laughed and said they were "everywhere." Even her brother appears to have the Improviser temperament. (I'm not sure why they're so invisible to everybody -- until I remember how much bias there is against them, and how much Keirsey portrays them as "blue-collar thrill-seekers." And the MBTI rarely catches them.)

Another example -- I was working with starting up a new volunteer organization for which an ISFP ended up in a leadership role. Another person asked me about him, and in the midst of my description of him, I casually said he had ISFP preferences. And this individual (who shall remain nameless) said to me, "ISFP? Are we sure that's the kind of person we want in a leadership role?" I was stunned into silence. I honestly did not know how to respond to such blatant bigotry.

I've been on several type-related electronic bulletin boards and Yahoo Groups where members insist they've "never met" an Improviser. One guy kept complaining about his Catalyst grandmother being "in the grip" all the time. And yet, it seemed as though he was describing a perfectly normal Improviser. Saying she was "in the grip" was the only way he could forgive her tactical intelligence and pragmatic behavior.

Probably the only reason I belong to a certain Temperament-related Yahoo Group (and recommend it to others) is because I feel Improvisers are represented and treated fairly there, UNLIKE nearly everywhere else where horror stories abound. I recall one Improviser saying once she used to get private emails from people on this list trying to talk her OUT of having Improviser preferences because she was "too nice" or "too smart" or any of a number of bigoted reasons why she "couldn't" be an Improviser. So she's got reasons to complain about bias.

I think in this situation, unless you are one, it's probably not fair to judge what it's like to be one -- any more than a man should assume he knows what it's like to be a woman who can't own property; or a white man should presume to identify with a person of color who is treated as a second-class citizen.

Now, don't get me started on how hard it is to be a Catalyst!