As you think about development, it is typical to consider that an increase in skill represents a significant learning. Certainly learning skills is a part of developing new capabilities and is an "adding" to what you may have already learned. Another more complex perspective on development is a change in mindset. Rather than an adding to--which is expanding the horizontal skill range--a change in mindset which accommodates the current state of affairs and incorporates what is required to deal effectively in a complex and somewhat more ambiguous situation is a movement vertically in awareness and capability.
From a type perspective, this proposition works like this: an INFP who learns the skills to critically analyze has certainly added to his or her skill tool box and we can even say has accessed some aspects of "Thinking". For the INFP to develop his or her conscious awareness of how the dominant function, Introverted Feeling, accesses and uses Thinking, and further, how the range of perception (Sensing/Intuiting) and judgement (Thinking/Feeling) function within his or her own type, is a mindset transformation. The movement from adding a skill to become more inclusive of seeing oneself operating within a system of psychological energies is profound.
An aspect often ignored by writings of development--especially type development--is the role of psychological agility in growth. To be psychologically--and by extension type--agile means that you are able to both assess the demands of the current situation and adjust your perspective and behavior to satisfactorily respond to the situation, AND you learn from the situation and your response to it for future circumstances. To be agile, you have to know your capabilities, to learn from experience, and apply what is required to be effective.
One of the barriers to type development includes looking at your type in an atomistic fashion. If you only understand your type as E,N,F,P or I,S,T,J as if the letters were disjointed and disconnected, then you are likely to miss the richness of understanding how these psychological functions operate in different psychological worlds of extraversion and introversion. Another barrier is to assume that your perceptions or your judgments are somehow complete. If you behave as though you know what there is to know, you will miss other essential data points. If you believe your analysis is complete or decision well-founded, then you are unlikely to consider alternative explanations or principles. In both instances, your opportunity to see another perspective, and perhaps find a better answer to current challenges, is foreclosed. By definition, development means learning in a fluid way where the layers of processes and dynamics become clearer so that actions become more complete and satisfactory.
In a recent activity where everyone agreed to share their type and to engage in type sharing, I had each member of the team share with other members of the team the type each team member experienced. In other words, everyone received type feedback--"I experience you as an ENTP for these reasons in your behavior." The goal was to get on the table all of the perspectives of how people experience each other, what they see in each other, and how they respond to each other from the lens of type. This was literally a mind blowing experience. The ISTJ who was experienced as ESFJ (always attentive to the specific, pragmatic details and needs of team members) and the ENFP who was seen as ISTP (quiet, picking on specific issues and principles) opened conversations about their assumptions and how these affect perspectives and behaviors. As these patterns were discussed, each team member explored their natural type, their nurtured type, and now their type brand. This is so say, they became more fully aware of their type energies and type perspectives.
