I was recently approached by a headhunter for a role that included applying psychometric testing to the staff. I turned it down on that point alone!

Dave - I would like to link this comment with your post "Whose finger on the button?" on 12 September, as well as the Springbuck rugby team (knowing that you are a rugby enthusiast!). The common factor is the Gattacaesque notion that a person's profile on some (usually pseudoscientific) measurement could determine their role or position in an organisation.

In the September 2007 edition of the South African Popular Mechanics, the work of a consultant on the "genetic brain profiles" of the South African rugby team is described. It is based on the old left brain right brain myth, which I believe found its origin in Victorian times with the ambidexterity ideal; revived in more modern times by the work of Sperry and Ornstein and the resulting ubiquitous whole-brain half-wittery. The brain profile instruments that I have seen tend to be quite similar to the Myers-Briggs.

I quote from the Popular Mechanics article: "Right brain players may be more suited to decision making positions, whereas positions requiring repetitive techniques may better suite left-brain dominant players." Also, "Players with a left-eye dominance are over sensitive to body language, and if you know that, you can throw them off their game by pulling faces or making gestures."

The mind boggles. One can only wonder about the effect of the All Black haka on these "sensitive" players! The Springbucks haven't been doing too badly at the world cup, so hopefully the coaches and players have been ignoring the brain profile nonsense.

The Springbok's at the last world cup were taken naked into the bush as part of the their preparation based on another potty set of management theories. They lost to the English then as I remember it, whereas this year it was a very satisfying 36-0. More idocy elsewhere: when Clive Woodward did the first session for the most unsuccessful Lions team in history it was all management speak. When Hensen made the innocent comment "I thought we were here to play rugby" he was almost thrown out of the squad, and then ignored thereafter.

Hi Dave,

People not familiar with his stories in/of critical psychology, may find the work of Craig Newnes (and others in his Department of Psychologies Therapies, of the Shopshire NHS Trust)a highly refreshing alternative to the guff that is Myers-Briggs

http://www.shropsych.org/craignewnes.htm

http://www.shropsych.org/criticalpsychology&psychiatry.htm

Best Wishes

Dave

Dave,

Are you familiar with the Enneagram? If yes, what's your position on it?

Aiden - I don't really see much difference between the Enneagram and Myers-Briggs. Both claim underlying and unchanging personality types (context free). The scientific claim for validation on Enneagrams is very weak - one PhD thesis, limited sample validated against similar tests.

You might as well go for astrology. I did that once with a team I ran. We used to run different psychometric tests every six months to create a conversation point. One year I issued a questionnaire in which the only relevant data was place and date of birth. We then got an astrologer to write up each individual and their relationships with others, then a consultant to translate the material into management speak. Everyone thought it was the most accurate test they had ever done ....

Interesting.

What do you mean then by the phrase, "methods based on orientations"? And what methods?

Well lets take one example. Belben (not the modern one with eight/nine or sixteen types, that has gone over to the dark side). Here we have seven orientations that need to exist in a team. They are not types (as in Jung to which MB has a loose link) or the Enneagram. So if I look at my score then I have a primary orientation to Shaper-Plant-Resource_Investigator. My secondary orientation is Complete_Finisher-Monitor_Evaluator. So in a team if there are people with Complete_Finisher-Monitor_Evaluator orientations I am free to take my primary orientations. However if there are none then my frustration will build and I will switch to secondary.

There are others like this. Critically they do not place people in boxes (types) or argue that these are fundamental or unchanging. IN fact they change over time according to context.

So, Dave, it sounds like you would side with the assertion that personality is a social construction, and that it is constructed in context, and not with the assertion that personality, behaviour and compulsions are largely formed and set in early childhood that exhibit certain types of responses, roles and behaviour in certain contexts?

Don't put words in my mouth Aiden!

Lots of aspects of the way we respond to things are laid down at various times of our lives and those can be triggered or modified in context (who we are with, what has happened before etc. etc.). Genetics play a part as well, so do the myth structures of the society in which we live.

Within the context of our behaviour in a work context, then I think the fluidity is if anything higher. Now the early childhood concept and types appeals to a certain type of manager who wants things neat and tidy and deterministic ( and a certain type of psychometric test creator and commercial exploiter).

I can reject the primitive crudities of Myers Briggs without having to fall into the incoherent relativism of the social constructionists!

You mistake me for being a MBTI fan sir.

I am however quite partial to the Enneagram, firstly because of the self-awareness it has helped me journey with, as well as it being a useful framework for understanding how people behave in certain contexts. But, it is just another framework, not the truth ...

I like a distinction between a model and the manner in which a person uses the model. You're right about the deterministic manager who finds it easier to engage in a reductionist application of personality profiling tools because he/she is unable to handle the complexity of dealing with a human being (in context).

I wonder what experiences you've had with the Enneagram that have convinced you of its non-orientation nature and application?

Most of these models work as a means of having a conversation or triggering a reflection. Its how I used them for years when I was a General Manager. I used a different set every six months for seven years (including the astrology one). The only ones I used consistently were Belbin and SDI dand we used those as they demonstrated shifts and changes to adjust to context in the team as a whole.

The Enneagram is a categorization model, hence my earlier comments, so if I don't like the theoretical base I would be dubious about its use, other than as the Gypsy's crystal ball (which also enables a conversation). None of that would derogate its use as an instrument for partial sense-making (as you describe it)

Thanks Dave for the link to the fun site, hilarious.
Regarding "means of having a conversation": if that's the issue, you could use Rohrschach inkblots instead?
And: I like alchemy, it's a phantastic system - I just don't believe in it.

Dave,

I'm sympathetic to your feelings about personality tests.

However, a priori it is not clear that personality types do NOT exist. If they DO exist, then the extent to which they are predictive of future performance is a valid concern for business. The question is, what should be the nature of business' concern for personality types? I think I'd prefer your take than the approach taken by many businesses, which seems to amount often to something equivalent to, "You're a Gemini, so you're both left- and right-brain," which is so layered with idiocy and inaccuracy as to be shocking. But I do think that types/preferences can serve as guidance, particularly on the team level, where managers and workers have a stronger awareness of how well or poorly someone actually fits an archetypal description. Fuzziness is inevitable -- and can be a strength of team-building.

I personally think that the personality tests are helpful in encouraging self-reflection, but that they should be carefully handled. You don't want people running their lives by Cosmo quizzes. But you do want to live the examined life -- with some good common sense, careful action and objective re-evaluation.

I took my first Myers Briggs test over a decade ago at a now failed dot com company. It was the beginning of the end of the organization. Dividing lines were drawn, battles were waged and the so called "feelers" lost to the "thinkers". Since then, I've seen a half dozen consultants come into company's where I've worked to administer this test and put a bunch of management speak around it. Each time all I could think was that something was grossly wrong. It might be that healthy organizations aren't good for business so MB and other categorization tests keep 'em teetering on the edge and needing the drug of a blame and defame tool to stagger along.

I say no way and enough is enough. Companies need a healthy path forward and the healthy path is often the toughest one to take. Just as with any great Rugby team, the work toward greatness is built on trusting one another and agreeing on the endgame. That trust starts with management willing to lead the effort. Does a company know who its employees are? Do those employees know themselves and their own greatness? Do they know and trust each other? Does everybody understand what the endgame is? Until questions like these are answered, standard bucketing tests will likely not help a company or its people succeed.

Hi Dave and Aiden,

I found your reflections interesting and challenging. Challenging in the sense that I was immediately defensive about the Enneagram having also found it a very useful map or framework in my work as a therapist. In noticing the defensiveness it shifted a bit and I find myself thinking of the distinction between cognitive and post-cognitive questions made by Zimmerman & another dude (1993). This disticntion has helped me in my struggle to justify my enjoyment of the Enneagram to my own critical mind - a mind that worries about the Enneagram being a naive 'pop-psychology' that 'boxes people.' I still struggle with the inner conversation, but find the Enneagram so useful in improving my work and personal relationships that I can't leave it dismissed.

If I remember correctly, cognitive questions are those that are trying to determine answers to the how and what of life e.g. How is personality formed? What theoretical backing and scientific research is there to back up this model? Scientific/academic discourses have dominated these questions and this has really formed my thinking in training as a psychologist. The focus in my work with these questions in mind is on finding 'effective and scientifically validated techniques' that will lead to desired outcomes (with little said about what those desired outcomes should be - science not saying much about 'subjective' things like values, morality and ethics). It also invites me to objectify clients and treat them as experimental projects.

Post-cognitive questions belong to the realm of wisdom and for lack of a better word 'spirit'. Religious discourse has dominated these questions, but not successfully (thank goodness). Post-cognitive questions ask: What is a worthwhile life to pursue? What does is mean to be human? What is the purpose of suffering and tragedy? etc.

I have found that the Enneagram provides a useful guiding map when it comes to the post-cognitive questions about ethics, morality and what makes a 'good' life. It does this by being quite clear about the patterns of behaviour and thinking that are damaging to our connection to others and our potential as human beings. It is in this sense highly value driven and not a neutral or descriptive system of traits and types (which was my experience of the MBTI).

It also invites me to see my own dillemas and struggles along with my clients' difficulties, which is very humanizing and creates connectedness around the difficulties of being human. I think Richard Rohr said, the truth will set you free, but it will first make you feel miserable.

For me the identifying of your style is merely the first step on a journey of identifying and then gradually changing habits of mind, heart, and action that you've identified and exposed as inimical to mutually respectful, nurturing, and loving relationships. I that sense the Enneagram is a map for 'breaking out of restrictive boxes' (wheather those boxes are socially constructed or gentically informed). This is where I find much resonance with narrative therapy that invites us to acknowledge a particular relationship with problematic stratgies, thinking, feelings etc. while being invited to move beyond them and to find we are far more than a personality style or a dominant story.

Hey Dave, I have to point out that Myers-Bryggs is by far one of the worst personality typing systems, you should try Socionics, it's a Russian Personality typology that look alike Myers-Briggs but is way more precise and really touches the core of your personality. Just want to highlight that the person who made this satire I can't call him/her an intelligent person, his insights on the personality types are totally superficial, biased, silly, not to mention infantile and laughable, due the degree of ignorance and lack of true knowledge this person should have on personality typology. If it were based in some humorous and inconvenient truth about each type, for sure it'd be funny, but since it's based on stupidity and ungrounded stereotypes, it's just funny for someone who sees his personal characteristics somehow praised on this childish travesty. many people read this kind of crap for reassuring their sense of self value and to inflame their egos.

And to Paul Ward. I know quite enough about astrological personality archetypes embodied in each zodiac sign and I'd rather say that Gemini, in theory, is a sign that CAN express qualities of both brain sides, you know it is possible, right? people can use the talents of the brain hemisphere that is not your dominant one. People can switch abilities from left brain to right brain and vice versa, everyone does that in different degrees of successfulness, you do that, I do that. And yes, there are people who are equally dominated by left and right brain. But Gemini is the sign that in theory can Switch from left to right brain abilities most successfully, the sign can get the highest exploitation rate of the non-dominant brain hemisphere. Gemini is the sign that can take maximum advantage of both brain hemispheres. Not that the claim that "Gemini is both and left brain" has infinite layers of idiocy and inaccuracy, but it's rather you who don't have much understanding of brain hemisphere dominance theory, neither you have knowledge of astrological archetypes, most probably you might have a really feeble a caricatural set of information on either of the subjets that is stuck in your head. I mean, I'm sure you're very well furnished with grotesque imagery and distorted conceptions on astrology and brain hemisphere dominance theory. If you relate both, you'll have to conclude that these teachings are not mistaken. Gemini is THE sign that can switch from right brain to left brain, what doesn't mean that everyone born in June or May is able to do that. Don't be silly, don't be ignorant. You have to understand zodiac signs as archetypes and functional principles, the sign of Gemini can do that, but it doesn't mean that everyone with any kind of influence of Gemini (regardless of the degree) can be totally efficient at doing this.

And for you who bash astrology and Personality typology, why don't stop also believing in much of the science too? You may claim there is no logical explanation for both systems. Ever questioned yourselves about how were they developed? Have all of you studied their development in depth? Ever questioned yourselves:"how vould something so verisimilar could be ever thought and developed"? There might exist a really wild and not yet known explanation for this, both if it is rational and if it is not, both if it is true and if it is not. If there was no factual verification for these systems, they could never be even thought of. There are many physics theories based on pure leap of faith. For example, Much of Niels Bohr theory of atomic structure was based on something called "postulate", in philosophy and mathematics also called axiom. Postulates in math and philosophy can be accepted as rational assertions, but in natural sciences they have a total character of dogmas. So one cannot say that Niels Bohr and almost the whole body of natural sciences' speculations are strikingly different from the intellectual wanderings of Saint Agustine of Hippo. Science managed well to awake its own Gods, to cast forth its own prophecies, to own its own books of undeniable revelations, to create a system of total devotion to its patriarchs, to spread its own creed, to institute its own theocratic authority, to create its own inquisition, to arise its own herd among the weak brains and minds, to proclaim its own jihad for expanding the faith, erected its own cathedrals and mosques, to sell its own relics, to commercialized its own declarations of indulgence, to sacrifice its own "bulls and scape goats" to "Marduk" and it already managed really well to burn at the stake some dissident martyrs. A reformation movement may soon overtake many parts of the world, and if you are smart enough to notice, it's already happening.

There are logically proven facts that our science dismiss for political reasons, and other proven facts that our "Wissenschaft" accepts as ultimate truth, because of politics. There are unproven theories that your Systematic Wisdom, Gentlemen, dismiss too, and also UNPROVEN facts that your science accepts as unconditional verity, readily, steadily and go, both also because of politics. So don't say science will save you, my friends, because you managed well to enchain our philosophy. A enslaved prophet will never be able to set us free from our serfdom in Egypt.