Mistaken Identity
I’ve spent the last 20 years traveling the world, teaching audiences how to adapt their communication style to others based on personality differences. I’ve gotten pretty good at spotting the different types in action, even when they come from different cultures.
What’s the most frequent case of mistaken identity? Where someone thinks they are one type when in fact they are something totally different?
ENTJ tops the list.
Why the Best-Fit Type Confusion?
There are lots of hypotheses for why this is, but for the most part I take it as a simple reflection of the bias that exists in most contexts where personality type is introduced. Organizations have gotten better about this, but there is still an expectation that leaders come across as high energy, strategic, logical, closure oriented. These attributes are, of course, things that anyone can do but are elements frequently attributed to the ENTJ.
And so, when people go through a leadership course and they take a traditional questionnaire-based approach to personality, it’s quite common for them to steer their answers towards these preferred norms and end up with a different type than their actual best-fit type.
But wait a second, who am <I> to say they’ve landed on the wrong type? Aren’t the results of their questionnaire like the results of a blood test?
In other words, if they came through the questionnaire as an ENTJ, isn’t that the final answer?
Not. Even. Close.
Best Kept Secret: Your Best-Fit Type
And yet, this seems to be the best-kept secret in the whole field of personality type. There are tens of millions of people wandering the earth thinking they’re one type when that was just the answer thrown back to them by some questionnaire.
The hard truth is that before we built our own system, we found that anywhere from 30-50% of people would “switch” their type from the results of a questionnaire once we properly explained the different aspects of personality and they had a chance to consider different options.
30-50% is a lot. And, it wasn’t just people switching on one aspect… it could be 2 or 3 of the 4 preferences. Which begs the question, what is the value of the questionnaire if it comes out with the “wrong” answer so frequently?
Well, to answer this question, here are some key points to consider:
#1: The Questionnaire is Just the First Step
The questionnaire approach, such as the MBTI®, were never intended to stand alone. The way these programs are “supposed” to be done is to have who explain the different aspects of personality to the participant and then allow them to make an informed selection. That’s “supposed” to happen even before the participant receives the results of their questionnaire. However, the reason I put the work “supposed” in quotes is because of how infrequently it actually happens that way. In our experience, the vast majority of people going through a questionnaire process are simply handed their results and told “this is what you are” with no other opportunity for clarification. And, this is why we have so many people walking around thinking they’re an ENTJ despite the fact that a significant percentage of them they would have ended up with a different type had the process been followed correctly.
#2: Narrow it Down to 2 Options
The goal of the facilitator or coach is to go through each of the different aspects of personality type and allow the participant to find themselves on the correct side. Usually this leaves one aspect out of the 4 as the “least clear” preference. That’s how it should work most of the time. From there, the participant should read the two descriptions they are choosing between. I know, it seems very different than getting the “results” from a “test.” Why allow the participant to be the one reviewing, subjectively and through their own perception? But, this is what our whole industry believes is the best way for people to find what we call their best-fit type. We completely agree with this principle.
#3: It's Up to Sabrina to Decide her Best-Fit Type
If someone, let’s say Sabrina, is going the process of determining her type, it is going to come down to the moment when she reads multiple type descriptions and decides which one she thinks is the best description of her natural personality. However, it’s common for Sabrina to get mixed messages and be a little confused if her own determination is different than the results of her questionnaire. Which one is “right?” The answer is that the questionnaire results can be set aside in favor of what Sabrina has chosen for herself.
From Blind Questionnaire to the TypeCoach Verifier
At this point, you may be wondering why people use the questionnaire at all if the “real” part of the verification process is when the participant has the aspects of personality type explained, they pick among those choices, and then read (at least) two descriptions to decide their best-fit. That’s the question we asked ourselves before we built our own system which dispenses with the questionnaire approach altogether.
What we did instead, and it is still a core component of what we do with all clients, is to replicate the verification conversation someone would have with a trained coach. That “conversation” is now delivered through videos and animation that explain the different aspect of personality type and which then allow the participant to make an informed selection based on how they see themselves. Before the exit the process, they are required to read at least 2 descriptions – and if they need more they can read as many as they like – before picking the best-fit type for themselves.
Landing on Your Best-Fit Type
While we find that about 90% of people will stay with the results of our process after a further opportunity to learn and clarify their type, we actively encourage people to keep an open mind about their own type. The 10% who later revise their type to a different best-fit type typically tell us that they were thinking of themselves in a specific work context. And, it is very rare for people to adjust more than one aspect through our program.
If you’re among the large number of people who have only ever been through a questionnaire, we strongly encourage you to make sure you’ve correctly found your true best-fit type by following the suggestions above.
If you are a practitioner who has perhaps skipped over some of these steps above, we equally strongly encourage you to make sure that people have the opportunity to confirm their best-fit type.
The Association of Psychological Type International (APTi) has published ethical guidelines consistent with the points made in this article.
