Personality Types for Library Organizations: Part 3- Sensing vs. Intuition

post by Dan Chaney, Humanities and Social Sciences Division

Sensing vs. Intuition

Sensing versus Intuition is a measure of how we take in information about the world around us.

Sensors absorb information via their five senses. That is, they take in what their senses reveal to them – sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste. They tend to trust whatever can be measured or documented and focus on what is real and concrete. Sensors trust their five senses to give them accurate information about their environment, and they trust what their previous experience has taught them.  They tend to be focused on the here and now. A sensor will look at a given situation and try to figure out exactly what is going on.

Intuitors, on the other hand, are folks who seek out meanings, relationships and possibilities based on gut hunches, rather than the facts themselves. You could say intuitors trust their “sixth sense” more than what their five senses tell them. Intuitors naturally read between the lines and look for meanings between those lines. Unlike sensors, intuitors trust their inspirations and hunches. Intuitors are adept at anticipating the future and generally try to make things different rather than maintaining the status quo. An intuitor will look at a situation and want to know what it means and what the consequences are.

In terms of their value to the organization, sensors and intuitors work well together. Sensors are the folks who are really good at reading the evidence on the surface of any situation, and they are pretty good at pointing to what is causing a problem. Intuitors are really good at getting below the surface and determining what is really influencing that situation. Intuitors are people who trust their gut hunches, so they sometimes lack the patience or habit to evaluate their sensory data. Intuitors need to be surrounded by sensors in organizations to give as complete a picture of a situation as possible. The flip side of the equation is that sensors working without intuitors to balance their information input will occasionally get it wrong.

Sensors and intuitors are easy to pick out of a crowd if you know what to look for. In meetings, sensors are taking notes because that is how they absorb information. Intuitors are the folks listening, and who might be perceived as being unengaged. That is not the case, they are engaged looking (listening) below the surface and drawing connections between the lines. A sensor and an intuitor will experience a situation and if you ask them to recount it, will often give very different interpretations. Have you ever talked to a friend after a presentation or meeting and when they said something about the meeting, it makes you say “Wow, what meeting were you at?” It’s probably because one of you is a sensor and the other is an intuitor.

I come in on the intuitor side of this dimension, which shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows me. I am really good at reading people and acting on my gut hunches, which more often than not are right. If you are, like me, an introverted intuitive, that is a fun combination in terms of personality type. Introverts generally are deep thinkers, and when you combine it with introversion, that means we can get to the bottom of what is really going on in most cases, meaning we are really good at coming up with solutions.

So, how do you align with others in the Sensor/Intuitor dimension?

	Sensing	Intuition
Librarians (N=1600)	41%	59%
Library Assistants (N=84)	65.48%	34.52%
University Faculty (N=2282)	36.06%	63.94%
University Students (N=4035)	55.39%	44.61%
Females (N=32731)	56.38%	43.62%
Males (N=23240)	54.77%	45.23%

Comments:

·         It should not be a surprise that librarians tend to be intuitors – the nature of research and reference work is one of following your gut hunches to find the correct or best answer.

·         Library staff tend to be the exact opposite of librarians in this dimension. That’s the strength of the organization, though. Remember, sensors are really good at seeing what is going on the surface and the intuitors are strong in making connections to what is really going on below the surface.

·         Faculty tend to be even more so intuitors than librarians. That does not surprise me.

·         Interesting juxtaposition between faculty and students. And that is largely because students in college have not necessarily learned critical thinking skills. We see this every day at the reference desk, when we help students with a research question and they expect there to be a “magic article” – one article that tells them exactly what the answer to the question is. Unfortunately, there are seldom magic articles in research.

·         Males and females are very similar in terms of sensing7/intuition.