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How Do I Use Myers-Briggs To Assess My Team?

Question: How do I use Myers-Briggs to Assess My Team?

Answer: You don't.

Seriously. That's my answer. Don't do it.

 Still reading?

(sigh)

Alright, if we're going to do this dance, let's get it over with.

Myers-Briggs is Junk Science

When a hypothesis is tested in a controlled experiment, proven, and those results are vetted by independent peers, you have yourself a little thing we like to call scientific evidence. Leave any of these on the table (eg. you make a hypothesis but don't run an experiment), all you have is opinion.

The missing piece in Myers-Briggs (or MBTI) is that last part: independent verification by peers. Scientists uninvolved in the hypothesis need to be able to reproduce the experiments and put their career on the line by saying, "Yeah, this other scientist I don't know anything about...they're 100% correct."

The only "verification" that Myers-Briggs has is via the Center for the Application of Psychological Type, created by (wait for it) Isabel Myers, and her mother, Catherine Briggs.

(Doing my best David Spade impersonation) It's called "Conflict of Interest". Look into it.

The Forer Effect

Humans are apt to succumb to a psychological effect dubbed "The Forer Effect" which is our tendency to rate vague, broadly generalized descriptions as highly accurate depictions of ourselves. It is a lucrative cognitive bias that keeps many a fortune teller and astrologer in business.

If you take seriously anything the Myers-Briggs spits out about your team, you are doing both yourself and them a monumental disservice.

What To Use Instead

Don't rely on unproven personality tests to categorize / pigeonhole your teammates. People require effort. Don't take the easy way out on this. Make an effort to learn about the ways humans fool themselves instead, so you are better equipped to recognize those biases and fallacies in the real world, and be prepared to tackle those problems appropriately.

Start with these two sites:
When you're done with those, sign-up for the mailing list below, and we'll go even deeper down the rabbit hole.

And P.S.: No need to harass all those Twitter folks with those magical four letters in their profiles - they won't remove them. That's the funny thing about our cognitive biases: they prevent us from recognizing them, but only people that can recognize them will admit it.

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