It is commonly agreed that personality instruments can be implemented well, and they can be implemented poorly. My question is, is it actually possible to measure what personality instruments claim to measure?
The predominant way of thinking of humans is that thought comes before action, based on Descartes (I think therefore I am). So we see ourselves as being minds (or souls) inhabiting and having supremacy over our bodies.
Personality profiles and tarot cards alike offer the promise of articulating and measuring this inner essence that is your mind or your soul.
Psychological approaches such as profiles also offer the additional promise of the potential to measure this inner essence, and by implication, to manage it in the service of the organisation. After all, what can be measured, can be managed. For example, I have been told not once, but twice after completing Myers-Briggs questionnaires during recruitment processes for consulting companies (I got both jobs, by the way) that the test was just to "make sure I wasn’t an axe murderer". Two completely different people administering this instrument both came up with the same line – I guess this implies that there must be a specific Myers-Briggs profile that fits an axe murderer.
From the organisation’s perspective, if we can measure this inner essence, then we might be able to align it with organisational objectives, to provide a common language that will facilitate the use of personalities in service of the organisation’s objectives.
From the individual’s point of view, there is the possibility that by understanding this essence, or hidden structure of your personality, you will be able to improve it to have a better career or achieve other results that you have planned.
I contend that the self does not consist of an inner essence that is living in a body seeking to express itself in the world.
I think, following GH Mead, that a sense of self is constituted through the experience of myriad interactions with others over extended periods of time. This includes interaction with family members in infancy, teachers and friends during school years, and work experiences in early and later adulthood. Through these interactions, you learn what is acceptable and not acceptable in the social circles in which you move.
If you take this view of the self as created through social processes in which power differentials enable and constrain the actions of individuals, and those actions make up the social world inhabited by humans, then this has implications for your use of personality instruments.
From this social view of the self, it makes no sense to try and measure the essence of the person as there is no such essence to be found, let alone measured.
It is possible to claim that instruments do not aim to measure the essence of an individual. Perhaps instead they could be seen as measuring particular tendencies to act that become habitual through the social acculturation process mentioned earlier.
I’m not sure though that’s what the creators of the instruments claim to measure (this is perhaps a generalisation). Jungian instruments such as Myers-Briggs and Team Management Profile are based on Jung’s theories which are most certainly not social in the way I describe.
There is no argument from me that certain patterns of action become habitual through ideology formed by the continual tension between the values (which are generalised ideals) and specific situations in which conflict between values must be negotiated. For example, conflict between serving customers well and serving as many customers as possible. Or, being at work on time and making sure your 5 year old is settled at school before leaving for work.
One argument is that the profiles allow certain conversations to take place about what is going on around you. Tom Gibbons, in his comment on this post points to how he uses such instruments to do this.
I am questioning the use of these instruments from two directions.
The first is that they do tend to be used to discuss abstractions such as the essence or general tendencies of a person, rather than what people are directly experiencing in the moment, right now, as they attempt to work together.
That is a question of implementation. Tom gives examples of how he overcomes such implementation issues.
The other question I have is whether there is any inner essence that can actually be measured by such instruments. I think the self is developed owww.changingorganisations.com/2009/09/do-you-need-personality-questionnaires-culture-surveys-or-team-instruments/ver long periods of time in which many interactions teach you what is acceptable and what is not. The individually based instruments are administered free of context (seemingly objectively) and then respondents have to make sense of them in their own real worlds, i.e. go through a subjective process of making them relevant.
The instruments aim to measure and essence which does not exist and cannot be measured. This is the main question I have about such instruments – it seems to me that they are trying to do the impossible – measure and make concrete something that does not exist. It’s a project doomed to failure.
However, such instruments seem to be objective and more valid through being administered by computer and the use of large databases of normative data comparing you with many other respondents.
So my concerns, which may sound harsh, although they are not meant to, are not only around the way the instruments are implemented, but also about whether it is actually possible to measure the things they aim to measure.
What do you think?
Hopefully some others will join in this discussion as well!
So what do I think?
I think your question is based on an assumption so I will respond based on that assumption and then respond based on another assumption of my own.
First, your assumption as stated above:
‘Psychological approaches such as profiles also offer the additional promise of the potential to measure this inner essence, and by implication, to manage it in the service of the organization’.
My response to this would very much align with what your position seems to be. I do not think these instruments can measure such essence, since it does not exist. I would also say that if people are using such instruments based on this assumption they will certainly end up with problems.
The problem I have, however, is that you then seem to make a leap to question the use of these types of instruments completely, without acknowledging that the question could be answered based on different assumptions. It then becomes not a question for exploration, but a position cloaked as a question. And this is not a matter of discussing differences in the implementation of these instruments.
You have used Descartes famous quote and I agree that this has had a huge influence on current Western thinking. If we look to Antonio Damasio’s work and in particular his book Looking For Spinoza http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/search?keywords=Looking%20For%20Spinoza&pageSize=10&pticket=eqvkhn55jyj4qkndkbzo4l55H5uxpQgoXNKNmVObhu2j3sHQLrQ= he points out that the body precedes the brain in making sense of our experience and then together both create our realities, including our sense of self as an emergent process.
If we look to the work of Robert Aziz, specifically ‘The Syndetic Paradigm’ http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/search?keywords=The%20Syndetic%20paradigm&pageSize=10&pticket=eqvkhn55jyj4qkndkbzo4l55H5uxpQgoXNKNmVObhu2j3sHQLrQ= the last chapter is titled The Empty Mandala and for Jungians not much more need be said. Aziz posits that the Freudian concepts of Id, Ego, Superego and Jung’s concept of the Self should be seriously questioned and that they should not be looked upon as things, but emergent processes.
These are just 2 examples of other sources that could support a different assumption on which to answer your question.
This assumption would be that these instruments measure broad categories of repetitive patterns of widely recognizable behavior and their use is intended to provide a language to enhance the sense making people engage in regarding their present experience.
If I answer your question from this assumption then I do think they can measure these patterns and their use has all types of positive potential.
You talk of your experiences with the MBTI and what you describe is an unethical and inappropriate use that particular tool. The TMP, which my company promotes and uses was certainly not developed to discover someone’s inner essence. It was developed to help people at work interact better together to enhance performance at work.
I think it is very important to be careful in answering questions from a particular assumption and then taking that answer to a much broader base. After all, was it not this very thing that made it so risky for Descartes and others of his time to say what they actually said.
Based on your assumption, I would not use personality instruments, based on mine I would.
Comment by Tom Gibbons — September 25, 2009 @ 10:45 am
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Hi Stephen, unfortunately both the depth and potential of instruments such as the MBTI (and I refuse to use other than the MBTI EIR – Expanded Interpretative Report form Q by preference), and the TMS, are damaged by lousy debriefing, and even inaccuracies at times. TMS definitely relates more to the “what I do/have become” as it is based on “how I am at work”, thus my “influenced self”. All OK, but very different to the MBTI “how I am” – as far as possible before, or if, many of the social influences were not a factor. The talent of the practitioner is to tease out the social influences where they may show from either close results, measured and cross referenced to norms, and asking the right questions. The MBTI is more a thinking style result IMO, influenced by neurological pathways (and yes, new ones are created, however just like I am right-handed, brunette, and short, I won’t ever be a left-handed 6ft blonde – I will merely wear heels and dye my hair, and live with the writing-thing…) A really dedicated practitioner can guide and coach from the instrument/s, but not just using one only I feel. And never should the MBTI be a major indicator of employee-suitability. That’s cooking with the wrong ingredients!
Comment by Karen Dempster — September 25, 2009 @ 5:51 pm
I’m with you on this one, Stephen. In my case, despite the MBTIers’ claim that one’s MB score is fundamental, I flipped from testing as an extreme “I” to an extreme “E.” Go figger.
jay
Comment by Jay Cross — September 25, 2009 @ 5:53 pm
Use it wisely and take what is good – it is not a bad thing to assess – it may not go down well with many conservatives – but I feel we should not snigger at something that we don’t know ourselves.
Comment by revive ramesh — September 25, 2009 @ 7:26 pm
It’s great to see these comments and for me the ones from Karen Dempster, Jay Cross and revive ramesh illustrate 3 common perspectives on these types of instruments, all of which can potentially be problematic.
It is important for me to really emphasize here the word ‘potentially’ used above. I have visited each of the web sites from the 3 people noted and it certainly seems that you would do really good work either using or not using personality profiles and I doubt you would be commenting on this post if that were not the case. So the ‘potential’ is not directed at you, but it is certainly evident in my experiences with these instruments.
Karen makes the point that it is the talent of the practitioner that can bring the most out of these instruments. No doubt this is important, especially if use of these instruments is based on the assumption that they are measuring the inner essence that Stephen mentions above. The phrases “what I do/have become”, “how I am at work”, “influenced self”, in describing what the MBTI and TMP measure give the impression that they are indeed trying to measure a hidden essence that is a thing which can be discovered. If you are working with these types of instruments from this ideology then I would absolutely agree that you better be very, very good at understanding them. The problem I see here is exactly that which Stephen is pointing to. I don’t think these instruments can measure such an essence, if there even is such a thing, and therefore it is extremely difficult, I would say impossible to understand these instruments well enough to be good at debriefing them in that context. In my experience good practitioners of these instruments, don’t need the instruments at all, but have chosen to use them for reasons that support the contexts they work in. Poor practitioners need the instruments as a crutch.
Jay seems to discount the data provided by these assessments. Typically the primary reason for discounting data is that you think it is not measuring what it is assumed to be measuring. It is unlikely that someone would respond by saying ‘Go figger’ to data that said last year our company made a million dollars and this year we lost a million dollars. This data would be measuring something that you assumed was accurate. To discount preference instruments because the data has changed would mean you would assume it should be measuring something stable and mostly unchanging, the same assumption Steven makes and is implied in Karen’s phrases. To me, ‘Go figger’ is a critical question when the data from these instruments change over time.
Two weeks ago I was working with the TMP and the leader of the management team had done the TMP about 18 months ago and had one quite low net score so I encouraged her to complete the questionnaire again. Her new data had changed considerably from her present responses, indicating a earlier preference for introversion to now one of extroversion. In different words I asked her to ‘Go figger’ and she was able to tell her group a valuable story about the need she saw during some very difficult financial times to seek out more information, encourage more collaboration and require more input. This change in her preference data helped enable this story to be told and it was an important story for her group to hear.
Revive ramesh seems to take a middle path, ‘take what is good’. While this is very good advice it can also be very hard to figure out ‘what is good’ with preference instruments. It also assumes that there must be something good in them to find.
What I have found that is good about these instruments is not so much what they say but what they do; if you let them do it. And what they do is provide data that can enable or stimulate different conversations between people. When we accredit people to use the TMP in the Americas we say over and over, just get the information into people’s hands, do a little bit of explaining and get out of the way. It seems to be very hard for people to do that. They think there should be something more, something magical to find and they should be the magician. The magic is not in the instrument, it is in the interaction……… always.
The good part for me about Stephen’s blog post is that so often preference instruments get used, or not used without any consideration of the key assumptions made about what they are and why we use them or not. I think this post is helping us to look at these assumptions a little more critically and clearly.
Comment by Tom Gibbons — September 26, 2009 @ 4:21 am
One last thing. Karen, I do not see how this…
just like I am right-handed, brunette, and short, I won’t ever be a left-handed 6ft blonde – I will merely wear heels and dye my hair, and live with the writing-thing…)…
relates to preference. To me this is genetics and preference is socially constucted. If by chance you mean preference is determined by genetics then every preference instrument ever created would be invalid since the instrument could not explain the differences experienced by someone like Jay.
Comment by Tom Gibbons — September 26, 2009 @ 5:56 am
Hi Stephen,
As always, a stimulating discussion. To me, though, the question as to whether or not these personality instruments have any scientific validity is largely academic – no pun intended! Organizations are relational worlds. And it’s what happens between people that determines organizational outcomes. So the question for me is not ‘Are they right?’ but rather ‘Are they useful?’ And, in particular, are they useful in stimulating new conversations between people and/or in helping to explain/unblock existing patterns of interaction.
Many years ago, in a totally different context, I designed an assessment process to enable us to provide an initial ranking of proposed investments, as part of an organization-wide zero-base budgeting exercise. At the time, I suggested that it would have been just as useful to have compiled the initial ranking by drawing the jobs out of a hat.
My point was that, whatever the initial listing might be, the critical part of the process would be the conversations that this provoked. And this is exactly what happened. New ‘alliances’ were formed in support of work that had initially failed to make the cut; and previously taken-for-granted assumptions were exposed by the process and openly challenged. This would not have happened without the provocation provided by the ranking process. Existing patterns of thinking and behaviour would have persisted, and existing power relations would have been maintained.
For me, then, the various profiles that are the subject of this post offer similar possibilities. Used well, they can trigger conversations that throw up new insights, open up new avenues of interaction and, as Tom suggests, expose characteristic patterns of behaviour that can then be explored more fully. It only becomes a problem if these are either taken too seriously – as a scientific ‘truth’ – or if they are dismissed altogether.
Cheers,
Chris
_____
P.S. As a post script, I would briefly mention two further points. First, I’ve completed a wide range of these instruments over the years; and most of them seem to point to a broadly consistent set of characteristics/ preferences/ tendencies. Secondly, as mentioned by others, it is considered unethical to use the MBTI as part of a recruitment process.
Comment by Chris Rodgers — September 26, 2009 @ 8:56 am
Two points: (1) Recent research in biology seems moving in the direction of accepting the existence of something like ‘personality, cognitive style, or temperament’ for a surprising number of species, including as in this citation, spiders and Octopuses. (”The Animal Self,” NYT Jan 22, 2006).
(2) I have personally used the Gallup ‘StrengthFinder’ test of 34 potential strengths to coach job seekers since 2002 and have found it quite helpful (and remarkably accurate) for describing something like ‘cognitive’ and ‘emotional’ style.
Comment by Steve Hallmark — September 28, 2009 @ 9:03 am
MBTI is a Type indicator – it ‘indicates’ preferences like right hand over left. I think there are some preferences you are born with eg right or left handedness and equally you can change a preference especially if you are in the middle of the scale.
As a practitioner I am careful to explain that and that all parts of the scale are accessible by the individual. It was NEVER intended to put people in boxes and it IS unethical to be used in recruitment.
I think a number of people have been poorly debriefed as mentioned earlier. It is merely a tool to provide more information to people to understand themselves a bit better. Over the years I have seen many examples of its ability to improve relationships at work. There are lots of tools equally as good and they all have their place.
As a big fan of Jay Cross and his work I am disappointed to see his experience has left him so ‘jaundiced’, what a shame.
Comment by Sandy — September 28, 2009 @ 3:09 pm
Hi Stephen.
Interesting posts,and thanks to David Gurteen for brokering the link. Coincidentally enough I based my MSc dissertation on Sales Management Selection using the Symbolic Interactionist model of Mead mentioned by Stephen in his original blog. I could probably take issue with the original way of framing the issue that ‘Personality profiles and tarot cards alike offer the promise of articulating and measuring this inner essence that is your mind or your soul.’ However rather than take a philosophical perspective can I recommend a research paper on Project Epsom: How valid is your questionnaire ? Conducted by Saville Consulting it compared a range of the better-known personality questionnaires to determine which among them are more valid measures of job performance.
.
Ambivert extraordinaire Jay Cross (no relation ) might find an explanation for the differences in score on the MBTI. – as I recall there was limited validity for two of the MBTI scales. Some of the other findings are not surprising either and make for enlightening reading. For one popular test they concluded there are no studies that specify what it predicts ….the test suffers from questionable reliability and unknown validity.’ They found another designed in the last century as difficult to relate to job performance. According to the manual on this if an individual scores goes ‘beyond the 84th percentile they go onto the Dark side,an area of extreme strength identrified as being particularly problematic. ‘ Yet they discovered that when 180 participants of the project re-completed this questionnaire one week later only 8 % kept exactly the same ‘Dark Side profiles’.
The team also returned to the classic experiment by Stanger called the Barnum effect.-In the case of psychometrics it might be said that every crowd has a silver lining. As Peter Saville architect of the research concluded ‘possession of faith validity does not mean a questionnaire measures job performance well.’ He also referred to the Crabtree Bludgeon where ‘no set of mutually inconsistent observations can exist for which some human intellect cannot conceive a coherent explanation,however complicated.’
Part of the problem with psychometrics is the rigid loyalty users develop to a particular test. Also many tests were not originally designed to be used in work settings. As they say some have clinical origins and bring ‘obscure, irrelevant and badly written items to the measurement of individual performance and personality at work.’ So it’s no surprise they have their disciples and their sceptics.
My own experience I have to say is influenced by close association with Pete Saville over 25 years when as a client I was one of the first to validate the use of the OPQ in sales selection and take it with considerable success to places as diverse as Africa , Eastern Europe, Pakistan and India. Most recently I should also confess I have contributed to Saville & Hopton’s book Talent in profiling elite performers. I have also been conducting research on high performers in Sport and Business combining The Saville Wave with ethnographically based observations My preliminary view is that there is immense value from some psychometric tests (and yes I am biased here) in identifying talent and predicting performance but at the same time ‘the sociology of success’ mediates the role of personality factors. Rob Cross, again no relation in his work on social networks suggests that energisers have significantly better chances of being high flyers and the research is shedding light on this area too.
The research can be found on Saville Consulting website http://www.savilleconsulting.com/howvalidisyourquestionnaire/
Well worth a read. As for using psychometrics in business or consultancy settings To me their use is not an academic issue. Anyone who has made selection errors and faced the consequences knows the extent of personal and organisational costs. To me it’s horses for courses and some tests like horses should be set out to graze where they can cause no harm or provide fun for their users.
Richard Cross
Comment by Richard Cross — September 29, 2009 @ 11:09 pm
I’m with Dave on this one. Psychometric tests reduce the infinite uniqueness of human individuality to a crude number-crunching exercise. It’s all very well saying “don’t take it too seriously” but if that’s the judgement, then why have these things at all? I have watched them failing people before my own eyes. For example: colleagues using their MBTI score to explain/excuse their behaviour, or even allowing their score to lead them to believe that their potential is somehow limited – “I’m an ISTJ so I’d be no good at that”. A crying shame, since the scores/interpretations are almost certainly false. Given that there is no such thing as a ‘personality type’ let alone 16 of them. And I can’t see how anyone could honestly answer a question about preferences ‘yes’ or ‘no’, because the answer would be context-dependent; therefore the only honest answer to these is ‘depends’. Would you really want a label put on you based on such flimsy psychology? Not for me thanks!
Comment by Carole — October 15, 2009 @ 9:20 pm
Hey Sephen, loved the post. Too bad I’m about a year late to the conversation.. anyway.
My childhood experiences lead me to believe the MBTI measures innate characteristics that are not necessarily formed by the environment.
Obviously environmental plays a factor, but I think there is a heavy hand of nurture involved. Is there brain research that shows differences in synaptic connections between people?
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