the Mirror Mirror team game indeed uses the “two-dimensional” fairytale characters to form a project team. The goal of the exercise was less to focus on mapping characteristics to jobs than to find the strengths in each character.

After the first round, the dwarves should have a bit more ‘flesh’, as people have mapped dwarves onto people they know.

We know that both exercises are easy to misunderstand and misuse. We need to be careful during the session that both exercises are used in a positive way.

As both my post and your comment show, participants in a session don’t always receive the message that the session organiser intends

I was not at this year’s tutorial, but in the four years I’ve been attending AYE (including the tutorial the first year), all of the hosts have made it abundantly clear that type is merely preference. As Jerry Weinberg says, and others quote, “Type is not destiny.” You’re quite right in your comments above, but I’m surprised that you came away thinking the hosts thought differently.

As for displaying your MBTI type on your name tag, that bothered me at first, too. But after my first day four years ago, I found it very helpful for trying to put some flesh onto the model. Not only does it allow me to consider peoples’ behavior in light of their type, but it demonstrates the wide variety of behavior that a single type may exhibit. Truly this is a demonstration of the principle you mention, that type is merely a preference.

Ironically, I had a similar qualm about your Snow White game. While I enjoyed the exercise, I found it unsettling to be asked to assign dwarves to job roles based on a few bullet points about their personality. This seemed quite similar, to me, to the practice of assigning jobs based on MBTI type. I certainly advise against this practice and feel confident that the AYE hosts do also. I’ve had conversations with some of them about this.

Please pardon the length of this comment. I hope that our paths cross again soon.