Family Team-Building

By Megan Lacourrege

Team-building can be important in the workplace, but, in a family, it can be just as valuable. There are a couple of free resources my family has used to grow in our relationships with each other.

One is the “Five Love Languages,” which was created by author Gary Chapman. He identified five different ways to show love to others: acts of service, physical touch, words of affirmation, quality time and gift-giving. Chapman created a quiz, which is available for free online, to identify which “love language” is the primary way that you prefer love to be shown to you.

The other resource is the Myers-Briggs personality test. This test, also available for free online, identifies an individual’s preferences in four different categories:

• Are you introverted (I) or extroverted (E)?
• Do you tend to look for answers outside yourself using your senses (S) or inside yourself using your intuition (N)?
• Do prefer to make decisions based on what you’re thinking (T) or how you’re feeling (F)?
• Are you a type A personality who takes self-motivated action to accomplish goals (J) or a type B personality who is content being along for the ride (P)?

Comparing results can show the areas where family members see eye-to-eye and where they may butt heads. Understanding those commonalities and differences can be a step to heal relational tensions.

While neither of these quizzes are meant to be an end in and of themselves, they can be very helpful for both gaining self-knowledge and improving family dynamics.

And, for the short amount of time it takes to do these quizzes, it may be very well worth it!