I’ve just finished taking this test at work. This was the third time I’ve taken it (2nd time was with previous employer and first time was on my own). The company specifically stated that they weren’t out to psychoanalyze anybody, and all of the results papers were ours to keep.
So what is the value of personality profiling? All three times I got nearly the exact same result. I’m an ISFP, which I pretty much already knew before I took this test the very first time.
Has anybody taken this & actually learned something from it? What does an employer have to gain? They paid some Myers-Briggs expert to spend a week in our building pulling everybody off the production line into (IMHO) unproductive meetings. What’s the company’s Return On Investment?
Is it right to label somebody an introvert because of the way they answered a handfull of yes/no questions?
We also had this testing at work. What was useful (other than the satisfying curiosity aspect) were the booklets they gave us about communicating with different personality types and about group dynamics. For example:
ENFPs (which is what I am) tend to crack a lot of jokes in meetings which can be good because it breaks tension, but can also be really irritating to people who are trying to be serious. I had never really thought about that aspect of being funny before.
It gave a lot of other hints about communicating one-on-one with other people too which have made me a lot more conscious of how I interact with people. Of the 3 people I work most closely with at work three are extroverts and one is an introvert. I make a lot more effort to encourage the introvert to express his opinions more and am more conscious of the fact that I really shouldn’t interrupt him.
My manager has almost the polar opposite personality as me so we’ve learned that I’m not the best one to present ideas to her because we just don’t think the same way at all.
None of this is exactly rocket science, but anything that makes you think more about how you communicate and gives you strategies for improving is worthwhile. I guess the company feels that enhanced communication improves productivity and morale.
I dunno about the “rightness” or “wrongness” of labelling someone based on their answers to a bunch of yes-no questions.
What I do know is that in the one company I worked for that used the test there was an improvement in communication between my boss and I, because we were on opposite sides of the scale in everything; knowing that, we were both able to change things to work better together.
This is anecdotal evidence, of course, YMMV, and one of my favorite things to do with this test is to screw with it to get the answers I want that day. When it’s not a serious test, that is.
I’ve never been “officially” tested, but I did a self-assessment in a career-planning book. The results were a bit ambiguous in most of the categories, but there was one thing that was very clear–I am an “I.”
All of a sudden, a lot of things made a whole lot more sense to me. I didn’t feel guilty any more about my loner-like ways. My relationships with my friends and my husband got better once I realized that they were fundamentally different from me in the way they dealt with people. Frankly, I’ve just been happier since I found out that I was’t anti-social or something, but that I was just an introvert.
So, it had value to me because I gained a lot of important self-understanding.
I think the value in Myers Briggs at work is in learning how differently the people you work with take in information, make decisions, value input etc. As mentioned above.
So your learning can be “I have to let go of how I see the important points and see the important points for X and put it in X’s terms, in order for X to see the advantages”
When it’s done properly it also points out that we can get different results on different days, and that this is how humans tend to behave. Some Is become Es, depending on how the day goes.
It’s certainly more insightful than astronomy, although based on the jungian system which I find as unscientific as “Your Stars This Week”
Of course a partial understanding of any system is dangerous, and that’s all most participants get. However, businesses like to put money into training, and MB is not as bad as many other spurious activities marketed by the unscrupulous.
It reminds me of horoscopes… If a “Leo” asks you to read her horoscope from a magazine and you read out the sections for “Libra”, she will still say “wow, yes, that’s true” (because “astrologers” write all 12 in such a way they can apply to everyone).
If you read out the description of an “ESFP” when someone’s test shows that they are “INFP”, they and third parties still recognize the person concerned in the description.
Fine, if it makes people think about communicating better, but creepy if people are using it as a basis for making life-changing decisions.
I didn’t say that being an introvert was a bad thing, I’m quite proud of my reserved nature. So it seems the exercise is useful insomuch as a mirror in your home is useful. Sake a step back and look at yourself. But as far as this:
I though that too, while we were all chit-chatting in the informal discussion about what the testing means. But the next day, I find myself trying to remember who was a what. Oh here’s Andy. He was the ISFJ, so I should be receptive and open to- no wait that was Jane who was the ISFJ. Maybe Andy was the ENTJ? We’d all have to wear name tags for this to be really useful:
Hello! My Name is Attrayant - ISFP
What I got out of it was the feeling that everybody is not necessarily the same as me, sort of a golden rule with a twist. Treat people as you feel they want to be treated (not as you would like to be treated).
Boy are you in trouble if The Bad Astronomer sees that.
My sister’s company uses it and she says it’s been very helpful to her as a manager in running meetings, for example, to make sure she gets input from the introverts. Also, it’s been very helpful to her at review time so that she knows which people can take the unvarnished truth and which ones need to be stroked a bit first.
I am the ultimate skeptic… however, I have taken the test before and will be taking it at an upcoming workshop at my employer. I am well aware of the Forer effect and am hardly one to be swayed in any particular direction.
I found the MBTI to be extremely useful in helping understand the dynamics among work colleagues. For example, I’ve always tended to rely on concrete data when making decisions and am extremely sensitive to timelines, whereas others may be more abstract in the decision making process or be totally oblivious to a pending deadline. The test basically confirmed what I already knew, but it gave me insight to others’ varied perceptions (and of course my own)… which I probably never considered previously and now better understand.
While unlikely that everyone on the planet fits into 16 neat little boxes, you will definitely gain insight into the work styles of your colleagues. There is some underlying logic that seems to make some sense, as opposed to a horoscope which is completely random. If used as a tool and integrated into the bigger picture, it can be very helpful.
In truth, I’d have more confidence in it if it didn’t always sound like a fortune teller trying to get you to believe.
Just once, couldn’t it say, “Your personality type is XXXX. You’re screwed. No one except a psychopath is going to like you. Kill yourself now and save us the trouble.”
Instead it’s all “Your strengths are this…You like this…People who share this personality type won 15 Nobel Prizes and got laid a lot.”
Give me a break.
And…for the record…over the last 20 years (I first took it in high school)
ENFJ here - I’ve taken the test more than once as well - for the record, the one on line is different than the “Official” one administered by a psychologist or psychometric annalist.
The test is useful, in certain circumstances. When used as a career guidance tool for young people, I think it’s quite valuable. Originally posted by Redboss
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This isn’t actually accurate. The test is actually meant to reveal a persons true nature, not just how they’re feeling at a particular time of the day. I am an Extrovert in a HUGE way, but if I’m sick, or have a migraine headache, I want to be left alone. This doesn’t mean that my nature has changed to that of an introvert, it just means that I’m sick or have a migraine.
Originally posted by Jonathan Chance
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Well, I would think that it means that when you took the test, you answered the questions based on how you were feeling right at that particular time, rather than how you generally feel. My guess would be that you are particularly close on your introversion/extroversion scores. I would assume that the NTP assessment was accurate.
Al.
Well, I’ve taken these tests in a few different places and they’ve all been very similar… in fact, as far as I can recall, they’ve all been the same.
I am an INTP.
Some quotes from that page on INTPs:
From what I seem to know of myself this certainly seems appropriate. I was thinking about starting an MPSIMS thread where posters tried to predict what other posters were… like a secret thread where I would predict a poster’s type then email them the quiz link and the thread link where they would then see if I was right. then they would pick a poster, make a prediction, etc., but I’m not certain that could successfully be pulled off.
At any rate, I am always interested in these things if for no other reason that they are fun to play with. If anyone feels they have a grasp of what I am like on the boards (and I am not all that different in person, except that I flirt IRL and not really so here) then I would appreciate demonstrating how either almost any of those “temperments” would apply to me, or how, in fact, I really am an INTP.
For the record, though I agree that horoscopes are meaningless, the signs people have are not applicable to everyone. Though a Pisces certainly matches my personality type to some degree, there are many descriptions of other signs which would simply be incorrect. So, yeah, i think if Pisces were defined as a personality type instead of a birth sign it might be more fun, and-- in fact – more like these temperment tests.
Armchair psychoanalysis, the stuff of drunken babbling
Hemlock- i must disagree. I had serious doubts about MB having any validity- I thought is was something along the lines of horoscopes. So, being a subscriber to CISCOP, I tried their test- and asked people if the WRONG profile fit the person. If the profile was rather close- all agreed it fit that person (maybe reading the profile for a ESTP (me) for a ESTJ (also tested once as)). BUT- if it was quite opposite- say an INFJ- then the people said it did not fit. I tried this several times, with two different groups, and the results were similar.
Note that several of the classes- Introverts vs Extroverts, say, are recognized by mainstream shrinks.
Thus, it has some validity. How much, I don’t know.
