Is Myers-Briggs up to the Job? Murad Ahmed
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February 11, 2016 10:26 am Is Myers-Briggs up to the job? Murad Ahmed Share Author alerts Print Clip Comments While the personality test devised in the 1960s remains popular, can it still claim to be relevant? ©Spencer Wilson On the first day of his new job at the management consultants McKinsey & Company, Alick Varma, then 22, was asked to take a test. The questionnaire quizzed him on aspects of his personality, asking, for instance, whether he would “rather be considered a practical person or an ingenious person?” and whether he considered himself “a ‘good mixer’ or rather quiet and reserved?” Varma, who joined McKinsey as a business analyst in October 2007, was taking the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) — a personality test that has become a rite of passage for millions of white- collar workers. Since the 1960s, when the test began to be rolled out across corporate America, more than 50 million people around the world are estimated to have taken it. Myers-Briggs has a particularly strong influence at McKinsey, according to current and former staffers (when contacted for this article, McKinsey said it does not comment on its “internal processes”.) Included in the basic biographical information supplied on the company’s staff profile pages are addresses, educational background — and MBTI personality types. When a team begins a new project, associates often start by discussing their respective personality traits — are you an “E” (extrovert) or an “I” (introvert)? ©Spencer Wilson As Varma settled into his new job at the company, working long hours alongside other ambitious overachievers, he found the insights provided by the test helpful. “It’s 11 o’clock on a Monday night and you’re frustrated with each other and asking, ‘Why are you not seeing it my way?’” he says. “Now, you’ve got this thing you can lean back on and understand that the way colleagues see the world is different to how you see the world.” Not everyone is so enamoured. One former McKinsey executive says he was unimpressed with its findings. Unable to speak of this heresy, he chose to use his colleagues’ faith in MBTI to his advantage. Despite being labelled an “E”, the associate told his workmates he was an “I”. It was the perfect excuse to avoid after-work dinners, plug his headphones in at the office or leave for the gym at a reasonable hour. “I could always just say, Hey guys, sorry, I’m an ‘I’,” he recalls, laughing. “That’s a totally reasonable excuse at McKinsey.” ©Spencer Wilson Whether you believe in its findings or not, Myers-Briggs has become a powerful brand. Some users even post their personality types on online dating profiles to hone their search for a good match. An international network of Myers-Briggs “meet ups” exists, built on the premise that you’re likely to get on with those of a similar personality type. A spokesperson for General Motors says it has been using Myers-Briggs on employees for 30 years, while a spokesperson for Procter & Gamble says that thousands of its staff “have benefited, and are still benefiting” from taking the test. Financial Times journalists, too, have taken the MBTI in recent training courses. But while proponents argue that Myers-Briggs is an indispensable tool for modern businesses, critics say it is imperfect, outdated and, sometimes, dangerously misleading. Professor John Rust, director of the University of Cambridge’s Psychometrics Centre, says: “It’s a bit like ‘Gangnam Style’. It went viral in the hysterical sense of the word and everyone started using it.” Myers-Briggs is not the invention of white coats in laboratories or tweed jackets at universities. Its origins can be traced to 1917, when Katharine Cook Briggs, a housewife and writer from Washington DC, and her husband Lyman hosted a Christmas dinner with their daughter Isabel and her fiancé, Clarence “Chief” Myers. Katharine liked Chief but according to The Cult of Personality (2004), a book about the personality-testing industry by Annie Murphy Paul, found him difficult to read. ©Spencer Wilson “Tightly knit as they were, the Briggs family shared certain qualities: they were imaginative and intuitive, big-picture thinkers,” writes Paul. “Chief was different. An aspiring lawyer, he tended to be practical and logical, focused on details.” To better understand her future son-in-law, Katharine started reading books on the emerging field of psychology. In 1923 she came across an English translation of Psychologische Typen by Carl Jung, the founder of analytical psychology and contemporary of Sigmund Freud. Jung posited that people make sense of the world through psychological Critics have pointed “frames”. For instance, while some make intuitive leaps, others out that Carl Jung’s concentrate on their immediate senses and what they can see, hear or original theories, which touch. “‘This is it!’ Katharine exclaimed to Isabel,” according to Paul’s provided the basis for account. “[Jung’s] system explained it all: Lyman, Katharine, Isabel and the MyersBriggs Type Chief were introverts; the two men were thinkers, while the women were Indicator, were just that feelers; and of course the Briggses were intuitives, while Chief was a — theories senser.” Katharine was so taken with Jung’s theories that she wrote to him, declaring his book her “Bible”, and in 1926 the New Republic magazine published “Meet Yourself: How to Use the Personality Paint Box”, an article she had written using Jung’s categories to provide a way for readers to reflect on their own — and others’ — traits. Katharine’s enthusiasm inspired her daughter. In 1942, Isabel wrote to her mother about a Reader’s Digest article she had read on the rise of “people sorting” questionnaires in the workplace. Lockheed Aircraft was using such a test to locate “potential troublemakers”. Another US company used a similar test to select “henpecked husbands”, arguing that a man under the thumb at home would also be easily subjugated at work. Katharine wrote back encouraging Isabel to create her own pencil-and-paper test based broadly on Jungian principles. In 1943, in honour of her mother’s contribution, Isabel named it the Briggs-Myers Type Indicator. ©Spencer Wilson At first the test struggled for recognition. The role of eugenics in Nazi ideology made discussion of personality types controversial. Academics balked, seeing Jung as a mystic and Isabel’s questionnaire the result of untested armchair philosophy. She ignored the sceptics and sought commercial backers. The test she devised classifies people along four axes: introversion against extroversion; sensing against intuitive; thinking against feeling; and judging against perceiving. It supposes every person has a dominant preference within each pair, neatly allocating all humanity into one of 16 precise personality types. In 1962 Educational Testing Service (ETS) — publishers of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), the standardised exam taken by most US teenagers heading for university — published Isabel’s test, having persuaded her to change its name to Myers-Briggs in recognition of her leading role in its creation. However, a number of ETS’s own psychologists, according to Paul’s account, “derided [the test] as unscientific rubbish”, and sales were not pushed hard by the company. Then in 1975, the California-based publishing company Consulting Psychologists Press — now called CPP — picked up distribution rights to the test and heavily marketed it to American businesses. Isabel died at the age of 82 in May 1980, just as sales were taking off. By 1983, 750,000 people were taking the MBTI annually. In 1993, three million took it. To this day, Myers-Briggs is CPP’s biggest earner. The privately held company, founded by two psychologists in 1956 to publish psychometric tests and career guidance tools, does not reveal financial details but reports suggest revenues related to the test are about $20m each year. ©Spencer Wilson In 2011, when I was working in a previous job as a reporter, I was asked to take the MBTI as part of a corporate leadership programme. After my results were collated, I was told that my type was Extrovert, Intuitive, Thinking and Judging — or ENTJ. I’m “likely to conceptualise and theorise easily; adept at translating possibilities into plans”, and am “usually seen by others as direct, challenging, decisive, objective and stimulating”. You may notice that these statements are overwhelmingly positive. This is how the test is designed. Of the 16 possible variations, no type is better than the other and each has unique strengths. A serial killer might be shown to be methodological, a self-starter and able to put plans into action. The main thing I learnt from the test was that I was a clear “extrovert”. According to Myers-Briggs, extroverts are “solar-powered”, constantly gaining energy from people and information around them. My wife, I realised, was more of an “introvert”, someone who apparently tops up her energy from regular periods of quiet reflection and solitude. This revelation helped resolve a regular marital conflict. My wife couldn’t understand why I always wanted to be the last to leave a party, while I was baffled by her desire to leave early. The Myers-Briggs results prompted a discussion. These days, she is happy to hang around a little later, knowing I’m aware of her urge to leave a tad earlier. According to Jeffrey Hayes, the chief executive of CPP, this kind of experience is at the heart of the test’s popularity. “The reason it endures is that people find its insights very valuable,” he says. “It helps them lead more productive and fulfilling lives.” ©Spencer Wilson Adam Grant, a psychology professor at Wharton, University of Pennsylvania and the bestselling author of Give and Take (2013), disagrees.