hidden threats and opportunities in personality tests
Meyers-Briggs, Emergenetics, Strengths Finder, Working Genius.
These are all interesting and useful tools. However, they all carry a risk. A hidden threat.
Team members tend to do one of two unhelpful things with these assessments:
discredit them altogether (as junk science, redundant, or irrelevant)
give them way too much credit (as a scientific picture of fixed identity)
As a manager of people, you can get a lot out of these assessments as prompts for growth, for risk-taking, for improved communication.
To get those benefits you have to deliver framing ahead of time and coaching along the way.
When I’ve seen them work best, a team weaves the wording of the assessment into their shared language. The phrases and categories from the tests become shorthand that improves the team’s “decision hygiene” and clarifies where each person can improve. “What would someone with high emotional intelligence do in this situation?” “How could a ‘connector’ make this project better?”
The tendency is to look at the results of one of these assessments and say, “Oh, I’m a _____ person.” That is pithy and convenient. Unfortunately, it’s also limiting.
That’s because a second tendency is to foreclose actions and communication that diverge from the fixed identity one adopts from the test. You feel entitled to ignore memos and have pictures drawn for you because you’re “a visual person”; you let yourself communicate erratically to others on a project because you’re a “conceptual thinker”.
To avoid this common pitfall, the question that should guide you and your people through these assessments is, “How can I make an even greater contribution to this team and mission?”rather than “How can others more thoroughly accommodate me?”
I have found it helpful to think of the results of these tests as indications of preferences and tendencies rather than pictures of identity. I may be drawn to certain kinds of tasks and certain styles of communication. That’s great to know if I turn that knowledge into a double mandate - to achieve excellence in the area I’m drawn to and to grow in the areas I’d otherwise avoid.
It’s especially important for a leader to model this. Leaders often demonstrate an implicit belief they can “get away with” certain kinds of poor performance or crummy behavior. Like anyone else, they can fall into the trap of blaming this on assessments: “I’m not a details guy.”
The truth is, leaders aren’t actually getting away with it when they do this. What they’re really doing is embedding hypocrisy within their culture. The leader is saying, effectively, “we say we’re about growth or excellence or integrity. In fact, we’re about attaining enough power that we can ignore certain skills and expectations others can’t.”
This can be especially harmful on a diverse team. Members from backgrounds or with identities different from the leader’s can assume (often correctly) that this kind of move is only available to someone with the leader’s background or identity. This chills productive risk-taking from that team member.
It’s so much clearer, nobler, and more inspiring for a leader to tout a growth mindset, model it, and highlight the results of it.
Identity precedes growth. It can also preclude it. So one of a leader’s core responsibilities is proving out a story about what kind of people work here. You want a shared story of self that is likeliest to motivate your team to do things that make them better and achieve your mission. More likely than not, a story that includes continuous learning and developing new skills will accelerate that.
Personality or work-style assessments can complement that story. Or they can cannibalize it. Your framing and coaching determine which of these happens on your team. So instead of using these tests as mirrors that show people who they are, use them as lenses that focus attention on what they can try.
