Posted by Kronus on August 30, 1998 at 11:39:19:
Walter:
The life of a SEVEN: Administrative meetings for the beginning of school, soccer practice, soccer mini-seeding tournament, writing a new lesson plan for World History (prep course), fine tuning Auto Mechanics course, Ninth grade advisor, Academic Decathlon advisor, Boy Scouts, Football parent, hiking, fly fishing, plus all the other details of married with children happy existence. In addition to the foregoing I am researching and attempting to understand the mechanics of MBTI and the Enneagram. My silent (SEVEN)prayer: "Grant me the serenity that they not ask, grant me the strength to smile politely if they do and grant me the wisdom to just say, NO!
My question after reading your last post centers on the foundation information of iNtuition v. Sensing. Upon what is the N function based? Is iNtuition founded solely on internalized information? Surely there is, a some point in a person's life, a base of Sensory information upon which cause and effect relationships are drawn. I would posit that at some point in an iNtuitive child's life key information of a Sensory nature was received, processed and stored as reference units to the decision making function. The Sensory child either never relied upon these internalized processes or they were never developed to the degree that an iNtuitive child did. At some point iNtuitives began to rely on data of the world as it was "suppose" to operate and had less Need to rely upon Sensory information. That is to say that the internal process of the iNtuitive type is to rely on inference and induction rather than on observation and result. In the Sensory adult this manifests as someone who can listen to the
descrption of a situation and finds the need to ask all sorts of questions about looks, sounds, acts, smells; whereas the iNtuitive adult relys upon an internal process of calling up similar situations and developing a sceneario of "what if-then" possibilities. Both may come to the conclusion that the situation revloves around a Duck but the key difference is that the Sensor, unlike the iNtuitor will not also initially consider that we may be talking about a Meganser. Do you find this to be supported by your survey on the integration of MBTI with Enneagram that you looked at in April of '97? Or is this outside the realm of your observations with that instrument?
Let me relate an instance that occurred during a soccer game yesterday. We were playing two thirty minute mini games to determine if our team was placed correctly in a recreational league of equal talent and ability. At the half-time of the first game while huddled with a group of boys aged 10 and 11 years old, I drew a scematic of the field with various postions (wing, forward, mid-fielder) represented by circles and "X"s. I then indicated the expected paths that the players were suppose to take if they were playing the position represented by the circle or X. Approximately half of the players were intent on the clip board with the drawings and checking routinely with eye contact to assure me that they were listening, fully a third were engaged elsewhere, playing with the grass, drinking water, looking at each other. The remainder were talking. Those who were talking were talking to me, as I was explaining the purpose of the picture, making comments such as: "you draw good", "that's a pretty picture", "how did you learn to draw so good"! My observation was that that half that were Sensing the information at half-time went out and applied the information and allbeit not perfectly at least improved their performance. The third who weren't looking at the clip-board began to notice the difference and at least appeared to understand that they could apply something different to their individual performances (NOTE: it was remarkable to see their faces as things occurred to them that I predicted the other team would do if they did what I was demonstrating). Of this second group I expect their performance to improve more slowly but at a steady rate. Of the last group (20%)nothing seemed to change. This is particularly frustrating because this is a "low" achieving group to begin with and contains boys with physical limitations, attention deficits, and behavioral distinctions. Most coaches in my position would "write these kids off". They would make no provision for their continuing improvement and "bury" them on the field giving them the minimum, limited play time.
First of all, coaching is stressful and I fall back on the rules: every player plays. Winning is more fun than losing, but I can't ever rely on the coaches cliche: "I have to think of the team!" I will move players around to positions that won't hurt overall performance. for example: I would never play someone at goalkeeper who was unable to catch the ball, or had fear of the ball or who was not willing to be there. I do play a strategy which puts my strongest players on the attack in order to score and conversely my strongest players play last line of defense to prevent the other team from scoring. My question is that on a fifteen player roster I always have three players who fall into the last category of Nothing Changing. They can be Extroverts or Introverts there doesn't seem to be a dominant correlation (naturally the ones I notice seem to have E as their dominant functions but I can think of others who a more likely to be I). My net-net-net question is this: Am I ever going to be able to make a
breakthrough with these players? Sometimes in the past just when I saw them make the improvement they would do something else to counterbalance that improvement. Is there something else that I am neglecting between ENTP and ISFJ or between points 7,1,4,2,8,5-3,6,9?