Personality is made up of unseen characteristics and processes in our environment. Personality underpins our relatively stable behaviour patterns as we respond to ideas, objects, and others (Daft & Pirola-Merlo, 2009).
Others can see our personality by the way we act & speak, the way we present ourselves, our attitude towards others, and in the expression of our values.
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a personality test which attempts to measure how we differ in collecting and analysing data for problem-solving and decision-making.
Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers, during World War II extrapolated four continua from Jung's typological theories, in the belief that personality understanding would help war service women who were entering the workforce for the first time to identify their "most comfortable and effective" war-time role. By 1962, the initial questionnaire had become MBTI, normalised for the US population.
The four continua - roughly outlined - are:
- Where do you prefer to focus your attention – and get your energy
Extraversion (I like to talk to people) – Introversion (I like to read a book)
- How do you prefer to take in information?
Sensing (I like to learn the facts) – Intuition (I like to imagine possibilities)
- How do you make decisions?
Thinking (I like to decide logically) – Feeling (I like to consider people)
- How do you deal with the outer world?
Judging (I like to organize my schedule) – Perceiving (I like to adapt to changes)
The result is a four letter personality 'type'. For example: ENTJ or ISFP. There are 16 personalities.
Ideally you should go to a trained consultant to see what your MBTI type is. This is likely to cost around $200, and involve a test battery of around 200 questions.
However, if you are not sure if this should be one of your 360 degrees of tests, you can get a rough idea on the web. There are lots of tests available online that will give you a fast and dirty idea as to whether you are.
However, the most roughly reliable test I have found is this one, prepared by a colleague of mine many years ago. The downloadable pdf test form is here (which auto-sums for you). You can then look up your type and read the more in-depth information that my colleague collected here.
If this feels useful to you, get a professional test done to find out more detail.
Sam
References:
read more "Myers Briggs Type Indicator quizzes"
Many recruitment professionals appear to think that one psychological personality test will be enough for an employer to determine whether a person is the right fit for the organisation.
The tests themselves evaluate a number of different areas of our ability. there are tests that evaluate our capacity for academic intelligence, our mathematical intelligence, a spatial intelligence, our emotional intelligence; tests which evaluate our dexterity, our decision-making speed, our accuracy, our recognition; tests which attempt to categorise our personality, our thought processes, our characteristics and our patterns of behaviour.
When you consider that breadth of testing, it is easy to see why one single test will not cover all of those things.
To assume that one single test is complex or comprehensive enough to evaluate one individual, I think, is simplistic in the extreme.
Popular types of tests which are often used on their own by recruiters are:
- The Myers Briggs type indicator, which measures how individuals differ in gathering and evaluating information for solving problems and making decisions (McNeil, 2004; Prem, 2010).
- The Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument which illustrates for different styles of thought process that the individual prefers to use, the supposedly based on the mechanics of the brain (Herrmann International Asia, 2008).
- The big five personality dimensions, which many psychological tests are based on, are those of extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experience (Daft & Pirola-Merlo, 2009).
The interesting thing about most tests are that none of those tests have not been normalised for individual countries. They have been developed in the USA, for USA conditions, yet we adopt them in our own countries without realising that they probably lack validity for our context.
For example, For the US market, the big five personality dimensions are ranked in that order they are shown in above, and are supposed to be selected for in a candidate in that order. However, from evaluating students in New Zealand since 2009, the order appears to be openness to experience, emotional stability, conscientiousness and agreeableness as third equal, then lastly extroversion.
Context is king.
When I introduce my students to personality and psychological testing, I tell them that we are all 360° people. One test is not going to be enough to sum us up: we need 360 tests for each degree of who we are.
The more the merrier, in fact.
Sam
References:
- Daft, R. L. & Pirola-Merlo, A. (2009). The Leadership Experience (Asia-Pacific Edition 1). Cengage
- Herrmann International Asia (2008). Confidential Personal Profile Information. Author.
- McNeill, G. (2004). Myers-Briggs Personality Types Workbook. Career Services New Zealand (CNZ).
- Prem, K. (2010). Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator. http://www.aiaa.org/pdf/myaiaa/workshop/mbti.pdf
read more "Personality tests and the magic bullet"
