Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

Has anyone ever taken the Myers-Briggs test? Do you believe the results were accurate? Were you able to use what you learned from the test to better yourself? -Community Mailbox

Personality tests are helpful to tailor training to different groups of people. Also people of different personality types gravitate towards specific jobs. Training Service Technicians is completely different from training sales associates. That said, tests are not a definitive evaluation of a person.

The question was valid. -Topper

Yes...I used to use it extensively.

I actually conducted a 4 hour training program called "Selling with Style" and participants would take the test and than once they had identified their personality type, they tried to project the prospects type and then we had suggestions for interaction.

Certain personalities werre more suited to selling, but the test did not attempt to predict how one might do...only to give them some understanding of personalities.....

The test is very accurate and is used nationwide in career counseling....... -TSpare

I have use the Myers-Briggs Personality Type assessment and as all assessments you can find value if you are someone who will look for value in self reflection. I do find it complicated with all the letters.

I use assessments with Profiles International with my clients for hiring and evaluating staff. They have many types of assessments that explain the results in lay business terms. You don't have to translate from code or animals as other assessment do.

When hiring for my clients I do not hire without using assessments, they help me understand future behaviors which is hard to determine from a resume or interview.

If you want to see a sample let me know and I will send it to you.

Rene -Sales Manager Now

We have conducted surveys of coaches, trainers, consultants and counselors who report overall dissatisfaction with the profiling industry at large. The test becomes a tool that does not do much more than confirm what the professional already knows about their client.

This in fact, compelled us to develop an Identity Them Profile which should be on-line soon.

Our research revealed that traditional testing lacks reliability and efficacy:

1 Their criteria consists of answers based on subjectively observable self-reporting, which university studies show is highly unreliable.

2 While designed to reveal personality, the test taker must first know their personality to answer the questions, rendering these tests the quintessence of what is meant by a tautology.

3 Test facilitators readily admit that test results are time sensitive. Research has revealed that if someone took the Myers/Briggs test in December, they would have a measurable variance if taken again in June. Also, the June results would again vary with the following December.

4 The Myers/Briggs test is based on the inventions of Carl Jung, the famous Swiss doctor who revolutionized the field of psychology. He was very upset by their test because the definitions of extroversion and introversion were distorted to serve the sales training industry. Today, few know what they really mean. Jung also explained that this brand of archetype identification focused on tendencies that change and are not reliable indicators over time. The inventor was ignored.

5 Test manipulation cannot be stopped even with inserting questions designed to catch falsification. With a little intelligence and common sense, a test taker knows how to answer correctly when applying for a sales job.

6 Finally, the test has no predictive utility-value which is the point of taking the test in the first place.

The exception to this overall feeling of unreliability deals with those tests that focus on skills that are objectively observable. This leaves Myers/Briggs and many others in the highly questionable arena. -John Voris

Most people do not truly understand the introvert/extrovert constructs.

I'll add that Jung was once asked if a person could truly understand his/her nature without understanding archetypes. He answered no.

Sales is NOT a branch of psychology. I study both...and of course they intersect. But they are different studies. -Gary A Boye

May I say, for me your posts express a wonderfully holistic cognitive mind. One that delves into multidimensional sources from the practical to the theoretical and beyond. Few can move from the structured to the abstract with such linguistic agility and transcending command.

Having said that, I agree both sales and psychology intersect but do so in the dialectic: according to Hegel, the answer is found in apparent contradictions.

Jung also referenced the need to separate what is human behavior in general (Archetypal) from the behavior of one called Gary Boye or John Voris (the Individual) for example.

The sales training industry excludes many of the discussions brought here. Could these omissions suggest why sales training does not generate the most desirable results? -John Voris