The false promise of personality coding in the workplace

Unmasking the myth: the ineffectiveness of personality tests

“Personality tests are astrology for the office.” — Annie Murphy Paul.

About twenty years ago, fresh into my career and much naiver, I found myself at a very interesting workshop. The workshop was part of some off-site activities meant to be a fun dive into the world of “team building” with personality tests activities as a feature of the event. The framework we used was Myers Briggs (MB), I am sure — though I have done so many of these types of “tests” over the years, sometimes its confusing. However, I vividly remember in that one activity workshop being labeled with a string of other alpha codes ISTJ. These classes are what MB calls the type indicator. A recent reference to their page confirms that this “type indicator” cast me as:

“Quiet, serious, earn success by being thorough and dependable. Practical, matter of fact, realistic, and responsible. Decide logically what should be done and work toward it steadily, regardless of distractions. Take pleasure in making everything orderly and organized — their work, their home, their life. Value traditions and loyalty.”