This recent article from the BBC brings up some of the questions and objections people raise when taking MBTI and other personality assessments. To summarise:

• Is the test reliable?
• What is it based on?
• Can it help me with my career?

We’ll have a look with these main points one by one here:

Reliability

MBTI is completed by self-report. This means you are given a set of statements (usually in pairs) and are asked to rate your preference to one or the other on a scale of five.

Of course, there are some obvious objections to this, namely:

• You are asked to rank a situation now in which you may behave differently in the future
• Other circumstances are not taken into account
• How well do you really know yourself when doing the assessment? Are you taking a set of behaviours into account or just your most recent one?

Validity (What is it based on?)

As the BBC article notes, MBTI is based on a theory from Carl Jung. That theory was developed by Isabel Myers and Katherine Briggs, and has been honed into the MBTI assessment we know today (this assessment keeps evolving but the basic premise remains the same).

But is it valid?

Validity is a difficult concept to prove in psychology. This is because you could point to any number of events or ‘reasons’ to justify your findings. Unlike our talent assessment (which is objective), MBTI uses only self-reporting Q&A as we saw above, and this is always going to raise questions about validity.

The premise is that each human is born with one of 16 personality types that change little after we reach adulthood. These types have distinct characteristics. For example, Erin Brockovich could be considered to be an ‘ENTJ’ – have a look at the movie clip below.

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Can MBTI™ help me with my career?

It’s for the reasons given above that we do not recommend use of the instrument for career pathing (instead, have a look at the Highlands Ability Battery which is objective and scientifically validated).

In spite of this, MBTI can help enormously with your career in the following ways:

1. It gives you self-awareness into the set of preferences you may have, gives you clues as to your possible strengths at work and pointers as to your possible ‘shadow’ or negative aspects!

2. With practice and skill, you will be able to identify other peoples’ types based on sensory cues and clues. This is a great way of developing your EQ.

3. Your MBTI combination can give you clues about the kind of environment you are most likely to thrive in, the type of people you will get on with best and the best way to approach tasks and projects.

Sounds good? Then have a look at this!

If you feel you could benefit from discovering your personality type then have a look at our one day programme Personality Factor.

Packed with examples, video case studies, and hands-on activities, it is by far the best way (in our opinion) to learn your type and the skills in identifying the types of others.

The programme details again are here or feel free to contact us via our contact form here.

Related posts:

1. Should I choose DISC or MBTI in Thailand?
2. Maximising MBTI in Thailand
3. Introduction to your Personality Type using MBTI