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Assessment & Evaluation

Me, Myself and MBTI

Tegan Jones

I know a lot about myself. Having lived my whole life as me, I consider myself an expert on the subject. I know I’m quite opinionated, and I often intimidate others with the strength of my convictions. I know I can be idealistic to a fault, often neglecting critical details in favor of the big picture. I know some people see me as arrogant. Yet, I didn’t know these traits classify me as an ENTP.

I also didn’t know what an ENTP (Extroverted Intuitive Thinking Perceiving) was until I took the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). After answering a series of paired questions, I spoke to a professional interpreter who used my results to offer insights into the way I act.

At first, I was intrigued by this intellectual exercise but saw little value in having a stranger tell me I have a penchant for procrastination. (This was something I already knew.)
As the interpretative session continued, however, I began to see the system’s value. As Daniel P. Ahern, Leadership Performance Systems director of business development, talked to me about my type, I realized I wasn’t just learning about my personality preferences but about how my actions and reactions affect my professional performance, as well.

This knowledge, he said, could help me enhance my virtues and mitigate my vices to become a better worker and leader.

To demonstrate his point, Ahern described a hypothetical situation in which I would lead a meeting some of my introverted colleagues would attend. In this scenario, he explained, my high energy and big-picture mentality could make my co-workers feel intimidated and overwhelmed. By asking more questions and providing more data than I personally found necessary, I could create a more comfortable and productive working environment for everyone involved, he said.

This, I learned, is the ultimate benefit of determining someone’s type.

“Where type gets used most effectively inside an organization is when someone asks, ‘What’s the makeup of our team? What do the team members need relative to how they prefer to function?’” Ahern explained.

Looking at the MBTI in this light helped me understand how this tool is different from the others you can find online. Other type indicators and temperament sorters described me accurately but failed to offer any valuable insights that could help me with my career.
Ahern said people enjoy these tests because they’re intuitive, but he also said they shouldn’t be used for business purposes because they lack the scientific backing that validates the MBTI.

“In the 1998 revision of the MBTI, a mathematical process called Item Response Theory was used to validate the forced choice items,” he said. “It’s the only psychological personality tool in the world that has items that have been validated through that powerful statistical formula, so we know it’s measuring what it says it’s measuring.”

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