Myers Briggs

October 3, 2007

A nice little satire here courtesy of Mind Hacks. Now as many of you know I have a particular dislike for psychometric tests that focus on categorisation. I almost think a special place in Hell should be reserved for the creators and perpetrators of the worst of these, Myers Briggs tests; at least in so far as they make ay assumption of objectivity. It’s all a part of the mechanical, pseudo-predictive HR practice which has done so much to damage both the profession and their subjects. It has no real basis is science that I can see and I am not alone in this view. Methods based on orientations, which in effect allow a fluid approach to understanding the way in which people behave and recognize the criticality of context, I think can be useful in enabling conversation. Any use for recruitment or promotion however I think is very dubious. It’s another way (like excessive outcome based targets) of allowing managers to abrogate responsibility of exercising human judgement and taking responsibility for their decisions.

One response to “Myers Briggs”

  1. Colin Dyas says:

    I agree. However the weird thing about this, and it is weird, is that some people like to self-identify by their psychometric categorisation and actually feel enfranchised and empowered by being “spectrumised” They seem to take it as a rationale way to define how they are likely to behave and why? These are intelligent people too. In the same way that some people see ASBO’s as a badge of pride, perhpas they see their psychometric categorisation in the same way?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Posts

About the Cynefin Company

The Cynefin Company (formerly known as Cognitive Edge) was founded in 2005 by Dave Snowden. We believe in praxis and focus on building methods, tools and capability that apply the wisdom from Complex Adaptive Systems theory and other scientific disciplines in social systems. We are the world leader in developing management approaches (in society, government and industry) that empower organisations to absorb uncertainty, detect weak signals to enable sense-making in complex systems, act on the rich data, create resilience and, ultimately, thrive in a complex world.
ABOUT USSUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER

Cognitive Edge Ltd. & Cognitive Edge Pte. trading as The Cynefin Company and The Cynefin Centre.

© COPYRIGHT 2024

< Prev

Skype

Nice post from Nicholas Carr on the eBay confession that they made a bad investment ...

More posts

Next >

Disappointment ration 1111.1 (recurring) to 1

The one off Led Zeppelin reunion concert this November attracted 20m applications for 18k tickets. ...

More posts

linkedin facebook pinterest youtube rss twitter instagram facebook-blank rss-blank linkedin-blank pinterest youtube twitter instagram