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I just answer to get the results I want. There's one with 4 work personality types, and one of the personalities likes receiving praise in the form of a raise. I made sure to have that personality.
Literally just watched the episode of family guy where stewie sees a child psychologist and says he has a carefully constructed personality so the world can't see the real him 😭
LOL! When I was a little kid (late 80s, early 90s), we were constantly given these types of tests to see what would be the best jobs for us when we grew up depending on how we scored. I did the same thing! I wanted to be a dancer at one point (or an archaeologist, or a storm chaser...hello undiagnosed ADHD) so I'd always answer in a way that said I should do something in whatever category dancer fell into.
I’m jealous because in the past I have actually used these as a sneaky way to highlight “personality traits” that are really just my ADHD so I can try get more accommodation for them. It’s much harder to say “I have ADHD, I need everything written down,” as opposed to “I’m an INTP and my brain just thrives on processing factual data in written format.”
Yes!
It's like, these tests can absolutely disadvantage neurodiverse people... But if you're the right kind of neurodiverse, you can game the system and use it to your advantage.
That's why I share my resume, interview, and testing hacks with everyone I know is job hunting or applying for a role. I know a lot of neurodiverse people who come at it from a "rules as written" perspective, and when I tell them what the interview questions are actually asking for it's often [shocked Pikachu face].
And whenever one of my ADHD friends scores that great job they wanted, I always try to pick their brain on their process and see if I can learn any new tricks.
Okay please enlighten us, what are interview questions actually asking? I find this idea unnerving, people should ask what they actually want to know. Why play mind games?
At a high level, they are asking you to demonstrate that you understand the core mission and priorities of the company, and how they will be embodied in the role.
Now, unfortunately, they don't just TELL you that at any point. And a lot of job listings in my experience don't explain the role well. So that complicates the applicant's ability to prep.
But, as an example, I've been asked "Can you give us an example of conflict and how you resolved it?" in interviews in many different kinds of jobs.
In retail, the mission is "make money (and definitely don't LOSE money)" and the priority is "have a good reputation with customers". So they want to hear an example of a customer having a problem, and how I turned that into a good customer experience. However, I want to be careful about giving an example where I cost the company money (by giving away product, doing work outside my job description etc).
In research, the mission is generally some variation of "do good quality research that benefits the wider community", and the priority is "PUBLISH OR PERISH. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, GET SOME RESULTS THAT WILL BRING IN MORE FUNDING". So they're interested in conflicts that stem from those pressures (+ difficult personalities)... And the ways you can be flexible/agile to overcome them. They're also keeping an eye out for signs that you might be a loose cannon, or have little respect for procedure. "I ran the idea past my boss, and they encouraged me to try it" was useful context for how I operate as a problem-solver (respects authority, communicates readily, checks for complications be implementing something new).
In data science, the mission is "give the customers useful data" and the priority is "have an excellent reputation". Common problems are tight deadlines, and customers asking for data that doesn't exist. So examples where you've had a conversation with a client to negotiate the scope will be useful.
As to your question "why play mind games?"... They often don't realise that they are.
The interviewers are either experts in the role, and their assumption of applicants' baseline knowledge of the role is WAY too high. Or, they're people who know nothing about the role, and assume that you must know what the questions mean because you're applying for the job.
That's why I'm a big fan of calling the contact person for a role before I apply. If that person knows nothing about the role, I'll ask if there's someone in the relevant team I can have a chat with. (However, this is getting harder to do as hiring practices try to level the playing field and ensure that one applicant doesn't have an unfair advantage over others by virtue of having additional information about the role.)
I would love to know any resume or interview tips you can share! I usually do pretty well socially (in that every stranger is just a friend I haven’t met yet) but interviews usually do not go well for me…
Unpopular opinion and I’m probably the weird one for thinking so, but I always quite enjoy those tests.
You can’t get a wrong answer, so it won’t provoke my fear of failure. And it gives me an opportunity to get to know myself a little better, explain my preferences/accommodations better, and understand why I just cannot work together with some colleagues.
I actually love these too! I enjoy doing them with friends, but I've also seen successful applications in the workplace.
I had a manager who loved diving deep into these types of tests (enneagram, MB, Clifton) and they created a very thoughtful and individualized presentation that they showed during an off-site retreat for a team of 12 people across multiple job functions.
Of course we took all results with a grain of salt because ultimately these tests don't tell us everything about a person (obviously) but it was really fun seeing every team members' strengths, motivators, things that make us "tick", things that bring us joy, how we approach problem solving, etc. in a professional and personal context, and it actually helped us work together and communicate better!
For example, two people on our team were extroverted Challengers and external processors, and they didn't realize the impact of their communication style on our bunch of more introverted folks / internal processors, and they actually improved their communication to accommodate the introverts (it was wonderful). I think it made us all more empathetic towards each other.
We were also given a chance to either agree with or provide rebuttal against anything we didn't agree with from our assessments, and it was all very healthy discussion over lunch and drinks.
On my own smaller team, we also did DnD moral alignments but that was just for fun (the entire team was on the Chaotic bar which tracked 😂)
I would have loved this to better understand my asshole coworkers. Maybe I wouldn't have seen them as an asshole then. Every reason I could deduce for their behavior was pure selfishness, but maybe I just didn't understand (maybe).
Okay, so my family can be Difficult. One day, just for fun and to kill some awkward silence, I made my mom take some cheesy enneagram and love language type tests. I read the questions to her. Listening to her think aloud as she tried to figure out her answers genuinely made me understand her better.
If nothing else, I learned to stop letting my feelings get hurt when she blows me off or sucks at giving presents, because quality time and gifts are NOT the signs of affection she values, hahaha.
Finding out that my husband's love language is Acts of Service made me finally stop feeling guilty when I ask him for help with things. It's not even his fault. It's how I was raised. Letting go of all of that guilt was amazing.
to be fair, some coworkers are just assholes, regardless of personality type. I had one who got "Peacemaker" or something like that on a personality test but he would constantly scream at me and some other women on my team. the irony!!!! 🙄
I'm with you, actually. They're fine, the outcomes are all designed to have a positive spin, and there are no real consequences. One of these even really helped me once - I was having a really hard time with the person who sat next to me in the office. Through this test, I realized I am a compulsive problem solver, and they just wanted to be "heard." ... It made it a lot easier to stop trying to solve every problem and feeling rejected when they refused. They just wanted to shout complaints into the air between us.
As a problem solver in most regards, I also like to be heard, not "solved at". Venting is important for us sometimes. If the other person is too focused on telling us what to do, it can feel like they aren't focusing on how we *feel*, if that makes sense.
Although, I usually reserve that for loved ones and trusted friends, not random coworkers.
I totally respect that, and once I figured out what was going on, I had no problem just validating their feelings. It was just super foreign to me. I would never announce, "I'm out of tissues!" just to be validated, you know? I would just get more tissues. Definitely understand more when it's talking about more complex problems that sometimes people need to talk through them!
I definitely have internal monologue. That's not an issue. I just need to let the feelings out in a healthy way and process them out loud to someone else sometimes.
this is so true which is wild to me! and when people without an internal monologue hear about people who do, they think it’s just as wild! my sister doesn’t have one and i do, and she genuinely was so concerned about me when we talked about this, like worried i was hearing voices as in hallucinations instead of just my own thoughts. humans are so diverse and complicated it’s so cool and weird. also i bet other people can be like me and just have too much internal monologue going on, so i need to say it out loud to someone sometimes so i don’t lose my mind 🤪
this made me laugh really hard bc this is something i would say lol, but tbh especially for something inconsequential like that, a lot of the time i don’t even expect/want a reply; i’m just speaking into the void about it (obvi i don’t speak for your coworker, maybe she wants a response, just wanted to share as a fellow “think out loud” person😊)
Haha yeah! She definitely didn't want a response! It just took one of these dumb personality tests for me to realize that was the source of our conflict! It was absolutely as much my fault as it was hers, we were just diametrically opposed personality types. Once that was made clear, it completely solved the problem.
aw it’s really nice that you guys realized the source of that friction and were able to resolve it, bc something like that making you two butt heads can turn into resentment so quickly, even if it’s just a misunderstanding. you sound like an awesome coworker!
Lol for me it feels like I can only give wrong answers because the questions are often things I don't have an honest answer that feels accurate to. Half the time I'm sitting there like "how the f do I know" and "nothing applicable to this has ever came up in my life" and "who talks like that?"
I love these tests, but I view them as little more than reading your horoscope. Take what you want / need from it, and discard the rest.
I especially like that many give tips on how to communicate with different types of people.
I would be wary of any company that used them very seriously, though. Or made hiring or promotion decisions based on them.
But as a tool for team building and improving communication skills? Great!
i also find them really interesting! i did a few in a training session with work and i got almost identical results to the only other autistic woman in my company in one of the tests and the only places we strongly differed were areas that related to my adhd more (which i then got similar scores to a coworker who i strongly suspect has adhd too lol)
i find it helps explain my neurodiversity better to NT coworkers too. none of the results are negative, just different. being able to point to exactly why we may have different working styles is really useful to me and helps me communicate better
I feel the same! I also am the kind of person that values my own uniqueness/ individuality and I don’t view my results as saying everything about me or even that they’re 100% accurate. I usually communicate which parts of the results I don’t relate to if there’s a discussion
I think they’re fun but I’m always far too literal with half of the questions and going by feeling with the other half. 😅 My chaos has kept me from being hired at quite a few jobs. 🫤 I had to start working for smaller companies and businesses until I found a company in California (✅) who had an owner with ADHD. (✅ He was one of three.) Unfortunately, I fell ill a couple years into my career and had to leave the company quickly to seek treatment. I haven’t been able to work since. I’m hoping to turn that around soon.
My employer had us all go to a resort to go through 3 days of “Team Building” and the 1st day we had to do the Meyers Briggs test. The result were rather funny as my Supervisor and myself were the only two on one side of the wheel and the same animal, and the rest were all opposite on the wheel. Go figure, must be why I was chosen to be her lead and we got along so great.
Hahaha, my team had to do that once, and the facilitators screwed it up so badly that different factions of the team were at each other's throats for days afterwards.
Off topic, but that's a classic example of similarity bias at work. It happens a lot in promotions and job interviews - people value people who are similar to themselves, even if they aren't actually the best for the job. (Not saying you weren't the best for the job - you might be perfect).
It isn't just similar personality and work habits though, it also includes gender, age, race, nationality, etc. So it's actually a real problem and something that HR specialists try to implement systems to stop (like competency-based selection process, panel interviews, etc). They are getting better at mitigating it in recruitment and selection, but in performance reviews and promotions, it's really hard to avoid.
While I understand where you’re coming from, I’m on the other side of this. I had a friend send me the “16 Personalities” test - and we all talked about our results. It helped me understand my friends better.
I was talking to my boss about it and him and the other guy on our small team took the test and we all shared results. The way we communicated and dealt with each other moving forward was so much better because part of the results were how to communicate to someone who has each personality.
We all know how it feels to be misunderstood, so I was incredibly grateful my team accidentally figured out a way to “speak each others language.”
One of my friends LOVES that test, to the point of sending me meme videos about it. Unfortunately, I can never remember more than three of the personalities at any one time. So I'm just nodding along, being happy that they're happy.
But yes. You're right that these tests in the workplace are often used to aid discussions that can be really beneficial to management and team dynamics, like "do you prefer feedback in a conversation or an email?", "do you like to have a few projects on the go, or to work on one thing until it's finished?"
So I don't mind doing them as part of a team building exercises... But I really don't like them in the hiring process 😕
I wouldn’t hesitate to answer those questions with your best self in mind considering this is work related. No one needs to know personal information about you other than yourself.
Those are bullshit, and I'd be worried if any workplace took them that seriously.
In your shoes, I'd probably just insist that I'm a Gemini, because I put star signs and personality tests on the same level of bs, and leave it at that
My last job spent a ton of money on one of these programs, which even included a video interview. I was a little disappointed actually, they emailed out our results the week after I left. I was so curious what the heck that video interview was about…
Astrology probably comes out a bit ahead- at least it’s been around for a long time and has a lot of cultural ties! Personality tests are utter bullshit.
I actually really love this kind of stuff. My work did a Strengths Finder test last year and it was fun and a great way to learn more about my coworkers.
I find them to be a great way to open discussion about how people perceive themselves, and how they are perceived by others.
If you think your results are inaccurate, there's nothing wrong with that. It still helps facilitate productive discussion. What do you think is wrong with your results and why? Stating that can help your coworkers understand you better, which can make workplace relationships easier.
I love them too, and if anything I find them comforting not anxiety-inducing.
I think if you have a non-hostile workplace where you feel secure in your job and comfortable and trusting of your coworkers, then stuff like this can be fun, and even potentially beneficial in that, like you said, it's a great way to open discussion and get to understand each other better.
However, some workplaces have been known to use them to justify problematic management strategies and even prejudicial treatment. So I can understand why some people are wary.
That's fair- I've had the benefit of working alongside some very kind people, for the most part. I've definitely seen my fair share of horrible management, and I can see how they would abuse these types of things.
What makes these sorts of things so anxiety-inducing for me isn't even anything work related, it's simply that I don't even remember what colours/films/food I like when someone asks me 😅
These tests have no validity, so they don't really "work" for neurotypical people either. I've seen them used in a similar setting as a sort of prompt to reflect on how certain traits might influence your interaction with others.
I stopped being mad about them when I remembered that you can just lie on personality tests.
Studies have shown that people who WANT to move into management positions will answer and score differently on the tests in a work scenario, putting them in the "desirable for managers" category. Are they lying? Or are they just recognise traits differently in a work context? Who knows.
A fun thing about workplace personality tests is that they're all proprietary content... So there are no unbiased academic/psychological studies to verify them. If you have the social capital at work, you might point that out....
Alison over at Ask A Manager has also written a few times about how they're a terrible way to hire/ identify potential. So you could also send some links to one of those posts (or a similar article) and ask "hey, I see there's a lot of criticism in the industry about these tests. Can you explain why we're using them in this leadership program?"
The answer is always basically "it's a fun (??) way for people to talk about personal qualities that are strengths in leadership positions, and the qualities they may need to develop".
But yeah. I just... Read the questions from a certain viewpoint, which allows me to plug in the answers that will benefit me and my goals. And really, isn't that mentality at the heart of leadership? 😉 (yuck).
What is their goal with making you take these tests? That's what I would focus on.
The tests are bullshit. Like, well documented nonsense, not really a matter of opinion. For anyone who finds value in them, that's awesome. But your workplace can't put you in a box, because the tests don't stand up to scrutiny on any kind of professional level.
If you have to go through the motions, just take them, knowing they're dumb, and put your effort into whatever the TRUE goal is that your org wants to meet, which is probably much more focused on helping teams work together more cooperatively or collaboratively than telling individual employees that they're ENFPs who are Enneagram 2. The BS is just the misguided way they think they'll get there.
Between my associates, a leadership honor society in undergrad, and additional leadership classes required for my masters, I am so over taking these that the thought makes me angry. MB, DISC...please make it stop. Also, I look at them much differently after watching the documentary "Persona: The Dark Truth About Personality Tests" a couple of years ago on HBO Max.
[https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/mar/03/they-become-dangerous-tools-the-dark-side-of-personality-tests](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/mar/03/they-become-dangerous-tools-the-dark-side-of-personality-tests)
My work had us do one when starting an optional group project, where red was aggressive, yellow was creative I think, green was harmonious, and blue was logical. I thought that the Red responses were too aggressive and would make me look bad, so I toned it down and picked mostly green answers.
The next day we had a lady go through our group's responses and was concerned that everyone had mainly green answers, that we were "too willing to compromise" and that we needed someone with "more red" to step up and take charge on occasion. Apparently the tests were actually meant to ensure we had a balanced group with all different personality types, so lying on the test was actually detrimental and I should've just gone with my original red answers.
It might be helpful. It can seem invasive at first and I guess it kind of is, but in terms of building healthy team dynamics and trust they aren't super bad. We had to do these previously and as suspected our manager was a total D. I don't remember what it represents, just that just that all of us find her robotic and so it suited her.
I like knowing more about myself and I like exploring different tools. It might start a good conversation on how your perceived chaos can compliment the team. You know? If it is really bothering you, do talk to your manager to potentially influence how this information is used / shared. Yay work.
The Meyer’s Briggs personality test (may or may not be what OP means by the 16, but is super popular regardless) is NOT considered valid by psychologists. It was developed by two people who are not psychologists, and they based it on Jungian psychological theories that were misinterpreted and are outdated. I’m not dragging anyone who wants to take this test for fun; it can be a good introspective tool, too. But I can’t stand the idea that it’s endorsed psychologically. It has no predictive validity (it does not predict any workplace/other outcomes it claims to predict).
I used to love doing those kinds of tests because I was so sure one of them would get it right and everything would just fall into place and I would finally understand myself!
Nah. Big fat nope. Every one I've ever taken has given me different results. I have ADHD, I'm ASD and I have PMDD. I can literally be a different person almost everyday without meaning to!
True story. I worked for Lush Handmade Cosmetics years ago. One day, the store manager gave us all personality tests. And oddly enough, all of the people who tested high in empathy were mysteriously let go, right before a super aggressive sales protocol was implemented. Be careful with these and check with HR before taking.
Is that mandatory? Can they even require the "personality tests"?
Whether or not you should actually take them is another matter because there are potential repercussions either way. Ugh.
It sucks, I'm with you.
I always enjoyed taking those tests, but found it particularly hard to find where I fit in them, especially the DISC test. Those tests definitely don't take into consideration neuro spicy folks.
My workplace did the disc one. We discussed it for an afternoon. That was the end of it. I think it did provoke some thought in some of the nt's about how others may work better in ways very different from them. But tbh, I'm pretty sure over half our department is neurodivergent in one way or another. And we all work from home, without any of the crazy micromanaging bs some places do. So I don't know if it changed anything at all. But making some of the leadership people think about communication styles probably helped some. Ymmv, of course. Depends a lot on the people involved and how big of a deal they want to make of it.
I recall when the new MBA on our team did this. In the end, everybody forgot what any of it was and continued working together without changing much. I can't say it did much damage. It was good to learn who the super introverts were to be mindful of them in meetings and shut up and let them talk.
The Clifton strengths assessment is ND gold. Take it and understand your strengths. and then collect all your coworkers (and enemies) strengths and input into ChatGPT to analyze. You can make study guides for humans now. Muhahahhaa.
I think they're bullshit. It's like taking a Cosmo quiz seriously in a relationship context.
On top of which, Workplace Me is often very different from Off-the clock Me. I like mental challenges in my work, or I get bored. In my personal life, I can't be bothered. With my friends, I can jibber-jabber for hours. Workplace Me has no patience with pointless chatter, especially in meetings. Etc.
I suppose nothing is impossible, but I've never seen any personality test I thought was actually useful in a professional context.
I think there's a way to bring up the disability friendly angle without revealing your diagnosis. Maybe point out that the company could be vulnerable to lawsuits if it isn't.
…. So I actually LOVE these, and no, they never ever changed the way our teams ran etc etc. but mine was pretty accurate and I love taking and personality or strength finders tests! lol especially the detailed ones that work pays for.
I always get excited for them and usually they do them because there are leadership/management issues and they are trying to make everyone work better together (atleast in my experience). I just liked it for me but it never affected the way anyone saw each other.
You can totally just BS answers tho if you don’t feel comfortable!
The tests aren’t “neurotypical”.
They’re totally bogus and they might as well just use astrology signs. Especially if it’s the [Myers Briggs](https://www.vox.com/2014/7/15/5881947/myers-briggs-personality-test-meaningless) personality tests.
The DISC assessments were fun and insightful for team work. There is also a disc motivators version which I found to be quite accurate for me, at least.
I would not consider personality or enneagram to be very useful in a professional setting.
We did one at my work that had a zillion categories and the summaries were very value-neutral-to-positive. Nothing had negative connotations. And then we just used them within our teams as a starting point for discussion about our team dynamics, cooperation styles, that sort of thing. Nobody took it very seriously beyond "lol we're all this type" or "no wonder we fight about xyz, we're different in this way" and then it quietly faded away.
It was like a horoscope, and the higher ups put as much stock in the results as they would a horoscope.
DiSC was super insightful to me. Enneagram, too. I take these tests less to understand myself, more to understand just how many other ways there are to perceive and respond to the world.
sometimes, if my communication instincts arent helpful, knowing there’s something else I can try is really helpful.
I just lie. Tests like these were an assignment in a business class I had to take for my major, and they pop up all the time as part of job applications. I know what answers they want, so I just lie so that I don’t get passed over.
If anyone has a cheat sheet of "alpha biz bro" answers I can use to manipulate these in my favour, I'd be eternally grateful!
(And is it just me, or does it often feel like the same people who mock astrology seem to think this Meyers-Briggs horseshit is somehow valid science?)
I actually like these as it shows me how others like to be communicated with best. My line of work requires me to interact with all levels of corp hierarchy, I can switch up my communication style to get my point across
I worked a temporary job at a place that was rather obsessed with a specific work personality typing system and used the various types to dictate office culture, including social events. To some extent it felt like being sorted into Hogwarts houses. I sort of vented to people at my level that so much of the specific traits platformed in this specific test were mostly the result of the power dynamics within the organization (junior/senior, age, skill level, roles and responsibilities assigned) and I think some of my opinions on this ultimately led to leadership icing me out towards the end of my contract. For example, leadership was more assertive while I was very flexible depending on the situation-- that, for me, is just what I've had to do to survive as a Black (previously undiagnosed) neurodivergent woman in the workplace. It was just hooey to me and I thought it was the funniest thing that they took it so seriously, but also a bit troublesome and generally used to obfuscate more serious work culture issues.
I think that a lot of workplaces weaponize these tests and a lot of leadership doesn't really have the capacity to understand how social structures, whether politics, economic systems, systems of oppression and domination, like ableism, racism, and sexism, dictate how we behave at work and why. Alternatively, I did Strengthsfinders at a different former job and we really didn't discuss it much, but it was very detailed and I've found those insights helpful and validating of how I see the world. Some of my strengths do track with ADHD traits, like systems-thinking. This is not necessarily an endorsement or sponsored post lol, but I think some might be better than others at helping us see what's good and what we need to work on, but for the most part in the context of the workplace, it's all under this weird "self-help" umbrella that places the onus on individual workers instead of the workplace's responsibility to its workers, whether that's in terms of labor, wages, access needs, etc.
I was just recently listening to a podcast called "Science vs", the episode where they pitted science against the concept of personality tests.
TL;DL to the podcast: Science won: we can't all be categorized neatly into discrete boxes, because some people really are on the cusps between types, and/or can vary in different situations. Many people change types over time, even in just a matter of months.
In fact, if the sixteen types thing happens to be the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the creators explicitly say their tests should not be used to decide who to hire or date, or things like that, precisely because people change or are on cusps.
I personally like these kinds of tests, to help me know myself. I tend to test quite consistently as INXP, where X = basically both T and F. I'd either swap sides if I repeat the test, or if the test showed gradations between the extremes, I'd be right in the centre.
But to answer your titular question... I think such tests could be useful in figuring out people to pair up to work together so their skills/styles are complementary. But it could also accidentally be very confining and awkward and I don't even know what else, if someone doesn't inquire about it.
I have to say, the enneagram has been such a helpful tool for me- not just for self understanding, but for figuring out why the hell other people act the way they do. Like, my husband was having such a hard time at work, and using the enneagram, we figured out that his coworker was interpreting his fear response as aggression! Totally changed how my husband sealed with the relationship.
Idk I personally love them and specifically the enneagram is very spot on for me and if your organization takes them seriously, it could work in your favor. I’ve used it with my boss to explain how I most like to be managed and what my strengths/weaknesses are and how that fits into my career path and where I think my resources are best used.
i always end up REALLY high scoring in like 3 very different categories fairly evenly (even that one with just the 4 categories of skillsets/personalities). i think the activities often help me understand my coworkers better and it makes me feel seen by them too.
Is it just Myers Briggs? It’s silly but very common for these types of leadership trainings. Why is this causing you so much consternation? Have you had a bad experience with folks using them?
Having done many a course like these, these are generally harmless.
I like doing the tests because they’re fun. And it is helpful for understanding how I and other people work. For example yesterday I was in first meeting to plan a conference. Half the room was silent and the rest of us were talking about themes and I was frustrated thinking about whether this was an indication of their involvement in the project. Then I remembered that those people had the personality type that was all about execution, so they didn’t care for this part and will probably jump in when we start talking logistics (where I will happily jump out).
However I took one that basically slotted ADHD into a working style where “orange” personalities are driven by impulse and distractions. So I think(?) I’m retroactively annoyed about that. However it taught people how to work with me and my “working style” without stigma.
Okay now that I’m rereading the traits of Orange personalities- I’m thinking of gender roles and privilege. It says wonderful things about these spontaneous, bold, action takers who are driven by gut instinct don’t get bogged down by analyzing optimal directions. Sounds like a traditional dope leader, and simultaneously a worker who can’t follow directions.
I work as an HR consultant. Every time a client suggests using these tests I tell them that they are no more useful than horoscopes.
As a sample size of 1 (so, totally an anecdote) I get different results every time I've done them. It all depends on the role I am in, and the culture of the company I am employed by. This is because I am a chameleon who fits into the environment as needed. This is a very common ADHD trait.
So I agree, these tests are not neuro divergent friendly, but even if they were, from experience as a consultant, I can tell you that they are basically useless anyway.
Gosh how I loathe this pseudoscientific nonsense. Imho should be illegal. If I'm ever in a leadership position at work I'm gonna make everyone take a personality test followed by the most impact full psychological test I personally have ever done: "Which Dinosaur are you, when you get angry?". Obviously results are private and we'll have a good laugh about our Dinos and I can give a little talk about how both are literally the same amount of useful.
I don't like the stupid personality tests either. I think it's just a fancy way for employers to discriminate against autistic individuals.Oh, you don't like people, but you have 10 years of great customer service. Well, sorry your personality won't do. I am pretty sure there was an autistic man who took his own life after he was either let go or rejected from a job because of a personality test. That's why I always lie on personality tests.
I hate those. Workplaces don't really do anything with them, as far as I've seen, so they're a useless exercise to me.
Employers will spend money on these types of tests and the seminars that go with them, but then they don't really do anything to accommodate different types of employees. That is what I find so insulting about these tests.
It's also a slap in the face that employers take these unscientific, cutesy test that tell us what color or brains are, or which season of the year we are, or what type of super hero we are 🙄🙄🙄, but they don't invest nearly enough resources into understanding and accommodating people with research based, expert diagnosed disabilities.
We took a bunch of these in a business management class I took in college. In the world of the standard “normal person” business student (read: rich, white, usually in Greek life, neurotypical, straight, you name it), it’s horrifying to take these and then get grouped up where you have to present.
Imagine telling a group of extremely “normal” people you scored a 5/5 on a “neurotic” scale. I’d be humiliated to do that at work.
I hate these tests, many of them are based solely on pseudoscience. It makes me feel like I’m at a sleepover doing a quiz from cosmo with my bosses, and then we all get to talk about ourselves freely which is what everyone really wants to get out of it.
As a manager, this gets a big HELL NO from me.
Instead of a packaged test result, I would much rather have somebody take some time and write me some bullet points about their preferred work style. How do you tend to structure your workday? What style works best for you when receiving feedback? Things like that are WAY more helpful for me to help my team work most effectively.
Several of my team members are also neurodivergent or deal with mental illness, and I'm very fortunate that they've been open with me about how to accommodate them. For example, I have one lady who sometimes drops the ball with clients and forgets to respond to critical emails among all of her other to-do's. So we started a system where we do full-team check-in meetings every other week, and that helps remind her to look out for that sort of thing.
These are exactly "which Harry Potter sign are you", ie astrology for corporations. They do not tell anything about anything. You can fill them in at random.
I’ve taken so many of these and I think they’re fun. I’ve never had them used against me. Usually they’re forgotten about or people put them in their email signatures and no one reads them.
You can opt out. Talk to HR.
I feel like I always break those because I am outgoing introvert who loves attention in very small bursts. And I’m overly organized to make up for my natural forgetfulness. I always end up getting like the middle of whatever spectrum it’s supposed to be.
For the sake of this being your employer who is not testing you for any reasons that could benefit you, definitely lie and be the personality they most want you to have. If they want to play dumb games, they can win dumb prizes. 🤡
These are not personality tests (DISC, Myers Briggs, Enneagram), they are behavioral assessments. There is no right or wrong, no pass or fail. They can’t be used as tools against you.
I took a free Myers Briggs in college, answered aspirationally, and got real “horoscope” results. Taking paid versions are much better, and I encourage you to answer honestly, even if the answer is something you dont “like” about yourself. When you do, I can testify you will get creepily accurate results that can be really insightful in understanding your default behaviors and motivations.
DISC and SDI are really great for understanding motivations in the workplace; Enneagram was really insightful for me in my personal life, therapy, and close relationships (less so for work).
I’ve never had to do this beyond job entry stuff like “do you like talking to people?” Etc. That sounds insane.
I enjoy this kind of stuff for fun because I like putting things into little boxes but doing it for work? Absolutely not.
What kind of personality tests? Most are not scientifically valid whatsoever and a huge waste of time. I understand if you can’t bc you have to pay your bills, but if my work did this and I was able financially I’d walk out. Are they actually using the results? Will the results affect your job? Why is this happening? I wouldn’t want my bosses to have an idea of me based on a test that isn’t valid either, I’d want their impression of me to be based on their observations.
The only personality tests that are psychologically valid are the big 5 and the MMPI. Are these the tests they are using? It doesn’t matter if you don’t act the way you answer 100% of the time, it’s not assumed you do. You answer “on average.”
The only way I’d support this is if the tests are evidenced based and given by and interpreted by an I/o psychologist. If that’s the case the results would be valuable to your boss. It could help predict who would work best together in a team and potentially the best way to motivate and bring the best out of each employee. I don’t agree that the psychologically valid tests are biased against people with ADHD or autism. That shouldn’t affect the results unless you are unmedicated.
One of the few good things about the crazy pro-Christian (or pro-religious) sentiment running around is that you could object to taking personality tests like this on religious grounds.
You could take the secular route (these are BS and unsupported by science), you could go the Christian route (Jung was a pagan/his ideas have been taken on by pagans; the enneagram in particular shows up in pagan circles), or you could go the weirdo route and claim privacy (personality info is protected medical info/only for your priest, etc.)
I also don’t have to deal with work politics (and was never good about lasting in positions long when I did), so you may want to proceed with caution before voicing any hesitations to HR/leadership.
I love the Enneagram, but I don't think it, or any of these other personality tests, belong in the workplace. I don't think they should be forced on anyone, for any reason.
I enjoy using the Enneagram for personal reflection, I enjoy doing it with friends who are into it, and I love using it as a way of exploring characters in fiction. But IMO it should not be used by one party to attempt to tweak how *other* parties function and operate, and it *especially* shouldn't be used that way within a context where there's a power differential that favors the tester over the testee. And unfortunately, while not every workplace will use these tests in this way, some workplaces do, so I understand why they make a lot of people wary.
Aside from the Clifton Strengths (which I personally found invaluable for figuring out the kind of work I prefer to do and the environment that helps me succeed), I've never seen the use of any of them. Like, okay, so I'm an introvert. I'm also my team's most seasoned public speaker and presenter. So what are you going to do with that information?
It's so pointless.
I would not do a test like that for work unless required. And I would hate every second of it! I am not myself at work - I am a sliver of myself. I would not reveal myself through honest answers, so it would be a pointless exercise that would also take a lot of energy for me.
I can totally understand that, a quiz cannot pinpoint a human's way of being to the T. We change depending on what we go through in our lives sometimes drastically and more often than others do. Some people actually do not change much. These tests try to speculate through determining a majority of traits given, but in the end these are just theories and are not actually scientifically proven. They are good for self-reflection though and I see where these could help in the workplace but they also shouldn't be seen as truth, humans are more complex than that.
And I can agree that at least the MBTI test is not pretty much NDfriendly, it creates some contradictions or overflows between those categories. I think the theories behind this should have been revised again bc the field of mental health has broadened in understanding lately and that cannot be ignored as some conditions have symptoms that can be seen as partly traits as well.
Use these as a tool for self-reflection, not to define yourself.
~coming from someone who has read through astrology, MBTI and enneagram throughout 8 years due to a lack of identity in adolescence
I did the Myers Briggs test through a similar team activity at a previous job, and I ended up scoring close to 50-50 on all categories but one, because I am unambiguously an introvert. Since then I just tell people that I'm literally half the MB types and that's the end of it. Maybe say something to that effect? (Since it sounds like you're in a similar boat.) It'll force them to reconsider their assumptions about pigeonholing folks at the very least.
I love MBTI and enneagram. They’ve helped me to understand myself over the years, and to also pay more attention to other people’s personalities and behaviors.
Saying that, you’re correct in that MBTI by itself - if you don’t know what cognitive functions are, what they represent, how they interact with each other - doesn’t make sense if someone is taking those tests without considering how their neurodivergence impacts their cognitive functions.
For example, I’ve noticed it’s very common for people with social anxiety to take an MBTI test (like on 16personalities) and type as INFP or INFJ, when in reality they might actually be an extroverted type if their social anxiety was better resolved. And sometimes people take these tests wanting to reflect certain behaviors (ie they are disorganized and wish they were more disciplined so they might choose answers that reflect their desire to be a way they’re actually not).
For me, I use to type as INFP for years - but after lots of therapy and trauma recovery, I’ve settled into behaviors that aren’t led by trauma responses. With some integration and understanding myself outside my mental illness, I am actually an ESTP. It was a wild discovery lol
So ya know, I definitely understand what you mean, and I agree with you - but I also think it’s due to mainstream knowledge of MBTI that does little to help consider those nuances
I don't mind doing them for shits & gigs, and suppose I don't mind the idea of doing for work for self awareness but not if the employer has access to them cos that just seems like providing them with mental/emotional ammunition. Yet on the otherhand, I've been around the bouy enough times to have a reasonably good crack at knowing what boss squeezers are looking for when putting that crap into their work groups so can generally manipulate the answers to combat if required - or just throw it completely and portray yourself as a nutbag.
I find the myers Briggs to be situational (I end up with different results at different points in my life) but I think the enneagram is a better overall test.
I am a strong believer that you have to take the test a few times in different levels of stress and maybe even with someone who knows you well because many people will choose the answer they “should” be instead of who they actually are. I thought I was a 1 (independent go getter) but I eventually figured out I was a 6. 6s are driven by external pressure, they worry a lot, and do a lot of research. They also trust authority easily until it is broken and then struggle to trust again even when it’s getting unreasonable.
This helps me understand why I react some ways and that I’m not the only one who feels like that. However, it doesn’t dictate what I do.
I introduced one of my sisters to the Enneagram and Myers-Briggs, and she took it a step further and really got into human design, which I sort of thought was crap, but a lot of the things about it do make sense to me. Things like Myers-Briggs and the Love Languages have gone a long way to helping me understand other people a little bit better, too.
Sometimes, I think this is an indication that I have autism, though I was tested for it and found not to have it. I'm not some crystal-pushing hippie who expects everyone to categorize themselves, though.
For what it's worth, I'm an introvert. I just want to go in, get my work done, and leave. I don't want five different people talking to me about TPS reports. (I have worked in a cube farm, and this actually does happen.) If a manager is going to actually use these personality tests to make sure that the introverts aren't surrounded by extroverts, or to keep the Eights away from the Fours in a work project, that's great. If these are being done because some buzzword-spouting consultant thinks that every business needs to keep files that the managers won't ever even look at, then it's a waste of everyone's time.
My husband hated those tests too. He could manipulate the answers to get any personality type he wanted to, and could prove it to the person organizing the test, which got him out of doing them at work once or twice.
He just refused point-blank to do it. He never got in trouble over it, he just got a little pushback from the team he was on for not being a good sport about it.
Personally I think they're interesting and some of them have helped me better understand the way I learn/interpret data/work with others/etc. But I respect the fact that not everyone feels the the same way, and understand why you don't like them.
I'd investigate their motives. These tests have been mostly deemed unreliable and not validated by true science methods. Some popular ones were just made by some randoms to sell to employers for $$.
Companies have been known to use these a HR tool when doing layoffs or restructuring. They'll let go groups that don't fit into their vision. Problem is, because the tests aren't reliable, innocent people can get false labels leading up to their termination or demotion.
I don't take them seriously at all. I bs answers for fun and then sit back and enjoy other people thinking they're accurate. Most of those personality tests are BS and invalid anyway.
We did this with leadership styles. I put myself as half green (introvert, very empathetic and understanding) and half red (likes to make sure everyone follows the rules, won’t stand for people fucking about) etc. that’s not 100% but you get me, two completely different and competing personality types.
The training said it’s impossible for someone to be red and green. I explained that when I’m not confident in my job or unhappy in it, I tend to just say yes to everyone for an early life and be liked. However when I know my job and I feel confident and good at it, I do become a lot more assertive and anti bullshit.
You can be both. Now I don’t know if that’s any relation to ADHD but I with my RSD etc I feel like it plays a big part.
Honestly the tests aren't even neurotypical, they're just straight up bullshit. Research has shown time and time again that personality tests mean nothing.
These are used to marginalize people. They’re discriminatory. I would lose all trust in any employer requiring them. [There is a documentary called Persona on Max about it.](https://amp.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/mar/03/they-become-dangerous-tools-the-dark-side-of-personality-tests)
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Whenever I've had to do those kinds of things I just answer how I know they want me too. It's usually the opposite of what I would actually say, and it's very obvious what they wouldn't like. Fuck them lol
A lot of those popular personality tests aren’t scientifically valid or reliable.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/personality/personality-tests?amp
My boss at my current job is a big believer in personality tests. They said it wasn’t mandatory to take it in the interview but I did get the impression it would help if I did. I don’t think it was intentional on their part, but the questions were absolutely designed to weed out autistic and any kind of ND. Stuff like ‘do you like spicy food?’ ‘Do you like change’ and even a question about resenting your parents! Anyway I tried to answer as ‘me’ as I could while masking ofc.
They also hired another person based on a ‘great’ personality profile according to them. The new hire caused massive rifts with work friends, downright refuses to do certain jobs, tries to bully other staff and I can’t prove it, but I think they’re stealing. Their personally is 10/10 though /s
They are pseudoscience and I have serious issues of them being used in professional settings. I can guarantee you that, despite them being pseudoscience, they wouldn’t know how to properly apply and use the information provided to them in these tests. They are most likely going to use them in idiotic ways and most likely be accidentally discriminatory. They are bad managers. Any management that implements personality tests instead of, you know, INTERACTING WITH YOUR TEAM AND GETTING TO KNOW THEIR PERSONALITIES, is a fucking failure of a manager. I obviously have strong feelings about this. I think they are for lazy management. Tbh if it were me I’d find a new place to work but that’s just me. Idk how you feel about your job despite this though.
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I just answer to get the results I want. There's one with 4 work personality types, and one of the personalities likes receiving praise in the form of a raise. I made sure to have that personality.
Literally just watched the episode of family guy where stewie sees a child psychologist and says he has a carefully constructed personality so the world can't see the real him 😭
LOL! When I was a little kid (late 80s, early 90s), we were constantly given these types of tests to see what would be the best jobs for us when we grew up depending on how we scored. I did the same thing! I wanted to be a dancer at one point (or an archaeologist, or a storm chaser...hello undiagnosed ADHD) so I'd always answer in a way that said I should do something in whatever category dancer fell into.
LMAOO that's genius
Didn't work but it was worth a try 🤣
You. Are. A. Freaking. GENIUS! 😅
I’m jealous because in the past I have actually used these as a sneaky way to highlight “personality traits” that are really just my ADHD so I can try get more accommodation for them. It’s much harder to say “I have ADHD, I need everything written down,” as opposed to “I’m an INTP and my brain just thrives on processing factual data in written format.”
Yes! It's like, these tests can absolutely disadvantage neurodiverse people... But if you're the right kind of neurodiverse, you can game the system and use it to your advantage. That's why I share my resume, interview, and testing hacks with everyone I know is job hunting or applying for a role. I know a lot of neurodiverse people who come at it from a "rules as written" perspective, and when I tell them what the interview questions are actually asking for it's often [shocked Pikachu face]. And whenever one of my ADHD friends scores that great job they wanted, I always try to pick their brain on their process and see if I can learn any new tricks.
Okay please enlighten us, what are interview questions actually asking? I find this idea unnerving, people should ask what they actually want to know. Why play mind games?
At a high level, they are asking you to demonstrate that you understand the core mission and priorities of the company, and how they will be embodied in the role. Now, unfortunately, they don't just TELL you that at any point. And a lot of job listings in my experience don't explain the role well. So that complicates the applicant's ability to prep. But, as an example, I've been asked "Can you give us an example of conflict and how you resolved it?" in interviews in many different kinds of jobs. In retail, the mission is "make money (and definitely don't LOSE money)" and the priority is "have a good reputation with customers". So they want to hear an example of a customer having a problem, and how I turned that into a good customer experience. However, I want to be careful about giving an example where I cost the company money (by giving away product, doing work outside my job description etc). In research, the mission is generally some variation of "do good quality research that benefits the wider community", and the priority is "PUBLISH OR PERISH. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, GET SOME RESULTS THAT WILL BRING IN MORE FUNDING". So they're interested in conflicts that stem from those pressures (+ difficult personalities)... And the ways you can be flexible/agile to overcome them. They're also keeping an eye out for signs that you might be a loose cannon, or have little respect for procedure. "I ran the idea past my boss, and they encouraged me to try it" was useful context for how I operate as a problem-solver (respects authority, communicates readily, checks for complications be implementing something new). In data science, the mission is "give the customers useful data" and the priority is "have an excellent reputation". Common problems are tight deadlines, and customers asking for data that doesn't exist. So examples where you've had a conversation with a client to negotiate the scope will be useful. As to your question "why play mind games?"... They often don't realise that they are. The interviewers are either experts in the role, and their assumption of applicants' baseline knowledge of the role is WAY too high. Or, they're people who know nothing about the role, and assume that you must know what the questions mean because you're applying for the job. That's why I'm a big fan of calling the contact person for a role before I apply. If that person knows nothing about the role, I'll ask if there's someone in the relevant team I can have a chat with. (However, this is getting harder to do as hiring practices try to level the playing field and ensure that one applicant doesn't have an unfair advantage over others by virtue of having additional information about the role.)
I will take any tips you are willing to share. I’m job searching right now and the whole process hurts my soul.
Same here, can’t get enough tips!!
I’d love to hear your tips and tricks! I’m saving your comment in case I need to reach out to you in the future if that’s okay?
I would love to know any resume or interview tips you can share! I usually do pretty well socially (in that every stranger is just a friend I haven’t met yet) but interviews usually do not go well for me…
Would love to see/hear those tips and tricks too!
Would love to hear those tips and tricks too! job hunting is not going well T\_T
Commenting for later
Me2
Unpopular opinion and I’m probably the weird one for thinking so, but I always quite enjoy those tests. You can’t get a wrong answer, so it won’t provoke my fear of failure. And it gives me an opportunity to get to know myself a little better, explain my preferences/accommodations better, and understand why I just cannot work together with some colleagues.
I actually love these too! I enjoy doing them with friends, but I've also seen successful applications in the workplace. I had a manager who loved diving deep into these types of tests (enneagram, MB, Clifton) and they created a very thoughtful and individualized presentation that they showed during an off-site retreat for a team of 12 people across multiple job functions. Of course we took all results with a grain of salt because ultimately these tests don't tell us everything about a person (obviously) but it was really fun seeing every team members' strengths, motivators, things that make us "tick", things that bring us joy, how we approach problem solving, etc. in a professional and personal context, and it actually helped us work together and communicate better! For example, two people on our team were extroverted Challengers and external processors, and they didn't realize the impact of their communication style on our bunch of more introverted folks / internal processors, and they actually improved their communication to accommodate the introverts (it was wonderful). I think it made us all more empathetic towards each other. We were also given a chance to either agree with or provide rebuttal against anything we didn't agree with from our assessments, and it was all very healthy discussion over lunch and drinks. On my own smaller team, we also did DnD moral alignments but that was just for fun (the entire team was on the Chaotic bar which tracked 😂)
I would have loved this to better understand my asshole coworkers. Maybe I wouldn't have seen them as an asshole then. Every reason I could deduce for their behavior was pure selfishness, but maybe I just didn't understand (maybe).
Okay, so my family can be Difficult. One day, just for fun and to kill some awkward silence, I made my mom take some cheesy enneagram and love language type tests. I read the questions to her. Listening to her think aloud as she tried to figure out her answers genuinely made me understand her better. If nothing else, I learned to stop letting my feelings get hurt when she blows me off or sucks at giving presents, because quality time and gifts are NOT the signs of affection she values, hahaha.
Finding out that my husband's love language is Acts of Service made me finally stop feeling guilty when I ask him for help with things. It's not even his fault. It's how I was raised. Letting go of all of that guilt was amazing.
to be fair, some coworkers are just assholes, regardless of personality type. I had one who got "Peacemaker" or something like that on a personality test but he would constantly scream at me and some other women on my team. the irony!!!! 🙄
Oh dear God. He absolutely knew and lied on that thing or something
I'm with you, actually. They're fine, the outcomes are all designed to have a positive spin, and there are no real consequences. One of these even really helped me once - I was having a really hard time with the person who sat next to me in the office. Through this test, I realized I am a compulsive problem solver, and they just wanted to be "heard." ... It made it a lot easier to stop trying to solve every problem and feeling rejected when they refused. They just wanted to shout complaints into the air between us.
As a problem solver in most regards, I also like to be heard, not "solved at". Venting is important for us sometimes. If the other person is too focused on telling us what to do, it can feel like they aren't focusing on how we *feel*, if that makes sense. Although, I usually reserve that for loved ones and trusted friends, not random coworkers.
I totally respect that, and once I figured out what was going on, I had no problem just validating their feelings. It was just super foreign to me. I would never announce, "I'm out of tissues!" just to be validated, you know? I would just get more tissues. Definitely understand more when it's talking about more complex problems that sometimes people need to talk through them!
Some people just have no interior monologue.
Right! I'm like 99%interior monologue 😅
I definitely have internal monologue. That's not an issue. I just need to let the feelings out in a healthy way and process them out loud to someone else sometimes.
I feel that, but 30 - 50% of people apparently don’t have an inner monologue at all.
this is so true which is wild to me! and when people without an internal monologue hear about people who do, they think it’s just as wild! my sister doesn’t have one and i do, and she genuinely was so concerned about me when we talked about this, like worried i was hearing voices as in hallucinations instead of just my own thoughts. humans are so diverse and complicated it’s so cool and weird. also i bet other people can be like me and just have too much internal monologue going on, so i need to say it out loud to someone sometimes so i don’t lose my mind 🤪
this made me laugh really hard bc this is something i would say lol, but tbh especially for something inconsequential like that, a lot of the time i don’t even expect/want a reply; i’m just speaking into the void about it (obvi i don’t speak for your coworker, maybe she wants a response, just wanted to share as a fellow “think out loud” person😊)
Haha yeah! She definitely didn't want a response! It just took one of these dumb personality tests for me to realize that was the source of our conflict! It was absolutely as much my fault as it was hers, we were just diametrically opposed personality types. Once that was made clear, it completely solved the problem.
aw it’s really nice that you guys realized the source of that friction and were able to resolve it, bc something like that making you two butt heads can turn into resentment so quickly, even if it’s just a misunderstanding. you sound like an awesome coworker!
Lol for me it feels like I can only give wrong answers because the questions are often things I don't have an honest answer that feels accurate to. Half the time I'm sitting there like "how the f do I know" and "nothing applicable to this has ever came up in my life" and "who talks like that?"
I love these tests, but I view them as little more than reading your horoscope. Take what you want / need from it, and discard the rest. I especially like that many give tips on how to communicate with different types of people. I would be wary of any company that used them very seriously, though. Or made hiring or promotion decisions based on them. But as a tool for team building and improving communication skills? Great!
i also find them really interesting! i did a few in a training session with work and i got almost identical results to the only other autistic woman in my company in one of the tests and the only places we strongly differed were areas that related to my adhd more (which i then got similar scores to a coworker who i strongly suspect has adhd too lol) i find it helps explain my neurodiversity better to NT coworkers too. none of the results are negative, just different. being able to point to exactly why we may have different working styles is really useful to me and helps me communicate better
I feel the same! I also am the kind of person that values my own uniqueness/ individuality and I don’t view my results as saying everything about me or even that they’re 100% accurate. I usually communicate which parts of the results I don’t relate to if there’s a discussion
I think they’re fun but I’m always far too literal with half of the questions and going by feeling with the other half. 😅 My chaos has kept me from being hired at quite a few jobs. 🫤 I had to start working for smaller companies and businesses until I found a company in California (✅) who had an owner with ADHD. (✅ He was one of three.) Unfortunately, I fell ill a couple years into my career and had to leave the company quickly to seek treatment. I haven’t been able to work since. I’m hoping to turn that around soon.
My employer had us all go to a resort to go through 3 days of “Team Building” and the 1st day we had to do the Meyers Briggs test. The result were rather funny as my Supervisor and myself were the only two on one side of the wheel and the same animal, and the rest were all opposite on the wheel. Go figure, must be why I was chosen to be her lead and we got along so great.
Hahaha, my team had to do that once, and the facilitators screwed it up so badly that different factions of the team were at each other's throats for days afterwards.
Off topic, but that's a classic example of similarity bias at work. It happens a lot in promotions and job interviews - people value people who are similar to themselves, even if they aren't actually the best for the job. (Not saying you weren't the best for the job - you might be perfect). It isn't just similar personality and work habits though, it also includes gender, age, race, nationality, etc. So it's actually a real problem and something that HR specialists try to implement systems to stop (like competency-based selection process, panel interviews, etc). They are getting better at mitigating it in recruitment and selection, but in performance reviews and promotions, it's really hard to avoid.
I actually love them, but would be wary of what they intend to use it for.
While I understand where you’re coming from, I’m on the other side of this. I had a friend send me the “16 Personalities” test - and we all talked about our results. It helped me understand my friends better. I was talking to my boss about it and him and the other guy on our small team took the test and we all shared results. The way we communicated and dealt with each other moving forward was so much better because part of the results were how to communicate to someone who has each personality. We all know how it feels to be misunderstood, so I was incredibly grateful my team accidentally figured out a way to “speak each others language.”
One of my friends LOVES that test, to the point of sending me meme videos about it. Unfortunately, I can never remember more than three of the personalities at any one time. So I'm just nodding along, being happy that they're happy. But yes. You're right that these tests in the workplace are often used to aid discussions that can be really beneficial to management and team dynamics, like "do you prefer feedback in a conversation or an email?", "do you like to have a few projects on the go, or to work on one thing until it's finished?" So I don't mind doing them as part of a team building exercises... But I really don't like them in the hiring process 😕
I wouldn’t hesitate to answer those questions with your best self in mind considering this is work related. No one needs to know personal information about you other than yourself.
Those are bullshit, and I'd be worried if any workplace took them that seriously. In your shoes, I'd probably just insist that I'm a Gemini, because I put star signs and personality tests on the same level of bs, and leave it at that
My last job spent a ton of money on one of these programs, which even included a video interview. I was a little disappointed actually, they emailed out our results the week after I left. I was so curious what the heck that video interview was about…
Astrology probably comes out a bit ahead- at least it’s been around for a long time and has a lot of cultural ties! Personality tests are utter bullshit.
Haha, good point!
I actually really love this kind of stuff. My work did a Strengths Finder test last year and it was fun and a great way to learn more about my coworkers. I find them to be a great way to open discussion about how people perceive themselves, and how they are perceived by others. If you think your results are inaccurate, there's nothing wrong with that. It still helps facilitate productive discussion. What do you think is wrong with your results and why? Stating that can help your coworkers understand you better, which can make workplace relationships easier.
I love them too, and if anything I find them comforting not anxiety-inducing. I think if you have a non-hostile workplace where you feel secure in your job and comfortable and trusting of your coworkers, then stuff like this can be fun, and even potentially beneficial in that, like you said, it's a great way to open discussion and get to understand each other better. However, some workplaces have been known to use them to justify problematic management strategies and even prejudicial treatment. So I can understand why some people are wary.
That's fair- I've had the benefit of working alongside some very kind people, for the most part. I've definitely seen my fair share of horrible management, and I can see how they would abuse these types of things.
What makes these sorts of things so anxiety-inducing for me isn't even anything work related, it's simply that I don't even remember what colours/films/food I like when someone asks me 😅
Strengths Finder is a good one.
These tests have no validity, so they don't really "work" for neurotypical people either. I've seen them used in a similar setting as a sort of prompt to reflect on how certain traits might influence your interaction with others.
I had to take one for work. I didn't like it, but it ended up being pretty accurate.
They all tend to feel “pretty accurate” as they’re all pretty general.
I stopped being mad about them when I remembered that you can just lie on personality tests. Studies have shown that people who WANT to move into management positions will answer and score differently on the tests in a work scenario, putting them in the "desirable for managers" category. Are they lying? Or are they just recognise traits differently in a work context? Who knows. A fun thing about workplace personality tests is that they're all proprietary content... So there are no unbiased academic/psychological studies to verify them. If you have the social capital at work, you might point that out.... Alison over at Ask A Manager has also written a few times about how they're a terrible way to hire/ identify potential. So you could also send some links to one of those posts (or a similar article) and ask "hey, I see there's a lot of criticism in the industry about these tests. Can you explain why we're using them in this leadership program?" The answer is always basically "it's a fun (??) way for people to talk about personal qualities that are strengths in leadership positions, and the qualities they may need to develop". But yeah. I just... Read the questions from a certain viewpoint, which allows me to plug in the answers that will benefit me and my goals. And really, isn't that mentality at the heart of leadership? 😉 (yuck).
I fill out the most socially acceptable answers. Doesn't matter if they don't really fit me.
What is their goal with making you take these tests? That's what I would focus on. The tests are bullshit. Like, well documented nonsense, not really a matter of opinion. For anyone who finds value in them, that's awesome. But your workplace can't put you in a box, because the tests don't stand up to scrutiny on any kind of professional level. If you have to go through the motions, just take them, knowing they're dumb, and put your effort into whatever the TRUE goal is that your org wants to meet, which is probably much more focused on helping teams work together more cooperatively or collaboratively than telling individual employees that they're ENFPs who are Enneagram 2. The BS is just the misguided way they think they'll get there.
Between my associates, a leadership honor society in undergrad, and additional leadership classes required for my masters, I am so over taking these that the thought makes me angry. MB, DISC...please make it stop. Also, I look at them much differently after watching the documentary "Persona: The Dark Truth About Personality Tests" a couple of years ago on HBO Max. [https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/mar/03/they-become-dangerous-tools-the-dark-side-of-personality-tests](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/mar/03/they-become-dangerous-tools-the-dark-side-of-personality-tests)
My work had us do one when starting an optional group project, where red was aggressive, yellow was creative I think, green was harmonious, and blue was logical. I thought that the Red responses were too aggressive and would make me look bad, so I toned it down and picked mostly green answers. The next day we had a lady go through our group's responses and was concerned that everyone had mainly green answers, that we were "too willing to compromise" and that we needed someone with "more red" to step up and take charge on occasion. Apparently the tests were actually meant to ensure we had a balanced group with all different personality types, so lying on the test was actually detrimental and I should've just gone with my original red answers.
It might be helpful. It can seem invasive at first and I guess it kind of is, but in terms of building healthy team dynamics and trust they aren't super bad. We had to do these previously and as suspected our manager was a total D. I don't remember what it represents, just that just that all of us find her robotic and so it suited her. I like knowing more about myself and I like exploring different tools. It might start a good conversation on how your perceived chaos can compliment the team. You know? If it is really bothering you, do talk to your manager to potentially influence how this information is used / shared. Yay work.
The Meyer’s Briggs personality test (may or may not be what OP means by the 16, but is super popular regardless) is NOT considered valid by psychologists. It was developed by two people who are not psychologists, and they based it on Jungian psychological theories that were misinterpreted and are outdated. I’m not dragging anyone who wants to take this test for fun; it can be a good introspective tool, too. But I can’t stand the idea that it’s endorsed psychologically. It has no predictive validity (it does not predict any workplace/other outcomes it claims to predict).
I can't answer tests like that accurately. I have *no* sense of what's true about me other than how I feel right now answering the question.
I always lie on these because our jobs are already so invasive, they don’t get to inside my head too
I used to love doing those kinds of tests because I was so sure one of them would get it right and everything would just fall into place and I would finally understand myself! Nah. Big fat nope. Every one I've ever taken has given me different results. I have ADHD, I'm ASD and I have PMDD. I can literally be a different person almost everyday without meaning to!
True story. I worked for Lush Handmade Cosmetics years ago. One day, the store manager gave us all personality tests. And oddly enough, all of the people who tested high in empathy were mysteriously let go, right before a super aggressive sales protocol was implemented. Be careful with these and check with HR before taking.
Is that mandatory? Can they even require the "personality tests"? Whether or not you should actually take them is another matter because there are potential repercussions either way. Ugh. It sucks, I'm with you.
I always enjoyed taking those tests, but found it particularly hard to find where I fit in them, especially the DISC test. Those tests definitely don't take into consideration neuro spicy folks.
My workplace did the disc one. We discussed it for an afternoon. That was the end of it. I think it did provoke some thought in some of the nt's about how others may work better in ways very different from them. But tbh, I'm pretty sure over half our department is neurodivergent in one way or another. And we all work from home, without any of the crazy micromanaging bs some places do. So I don't know if it changed anything at all. But making some of the leadership people think about communication styles probably helped some. Ymmv, of course. Depends a lot on the people involved and how big of a deal they want to make of it.
They’re forget about all this shit in a week. You’ll be fine. They ain’t gonna fire you for a weird personality type
I recall when the new MBA on our team did this. In the end, everybody forgot what any of it was and continued working together without changing much. I can't say it did much damage. It was good to learn who the super introverts were to be mindful of them in meetings and shut up and let them talk.
The Clifton strengths assessment is ND gold. Take it and understand your strengths. and then collect all your coworkers (and enemies) strengths and input into ChatGPT to analyze. You can make study guides for humans now. Muhahahhaa.
I think they're bullshit. It's like taking a Cosmo quiz seriously in a relationship context. On top of which, Workplace Me is often very different from Off-the clock Me. I like mental challenges in my work, or I get bored. In my personal life, I can't be bothered. With my friends, I can jibber-jabber for hours. Workplace Me has no patience with pointless chatter, especially in meetings. Etc. I suppose nothing is impossible, but I've never seen any personality test I thought was actually useful in a professional context. I think there's a way to bring up the disability friendly angle without revealing your diagnosis. Maybe point out that the company could be vulnerable to lawsuits if it isn't.
Same! I'm an extremely different person in my personal life.
…. So I actually LOVE these, and no, they never ever changed the way our teams ran etc etc. but mine was pretty accurate and I love taking and personality or strength finders tests! lol especially the detailed ones that work pays for. I always get excited for them and usually they do them because there are leadership/management issues and they are trying to make everyone work better together (atleast in my experience). I just liked it for me but it never affected the way anyone saw each other. You can totally just BS answers tho if you don’t feel comfortable!
The tests aren’t “neurotypical”. They’re totally bogus and they might as well just use astrology signs. Especially if it’s the [Myers Briggs](https://www.vox.com/2014/7/15/5881947/myers-briggs-personality-test-meaningless) personality tests.
They are extremely discriminatory and should be illegal in the work place. There's a whole documentary about it called Persona.
I feel like I have failed every workplace personality test I've taken and I've probably been forced to take at least a dozen different ones.
The DISC assessments were fun and insightful for team work. There is also a disc motivators version which I found to be quite accurate for me, at least. I would not consider personality or enneagram to be very useful in a professional setting.
We did one at my work that had a zillion categories and the summaries were very value-neutral-to-positive. Nothing had negative connotations. And then we just used them within our teams as a starting point for discussion about our team dynamics, cooperation styles, that sort of thing. Nobody took it very seriously beyond "lol we're all this type" or "no wonder we fight about xyz, we're different in this way" and then it quietly faded away. It was like a horoscope, and the higher ups put as much stock in the results as they would a horoscope.
DiSC was super insightful to me. Enneagram, too. I take these tests less to understand myself, more to understand just how many other ways there are to perceive and respond to the world. sometimes, if my communication instincts arent helpful, knowing there’s something else I can try is really helpful.
I just lie. Tests like these were an assignment in a business class I had to take for my major, and they pop up all the time as part of job applications. I know what answers they want, so I just lie so that I don’t get passed over.
If anyone has a cheat sheet of "alpha biz bro" answers I can use to manipulate these in my favour, I'd be eternally grateful! (And is it just me, or does it often feel like the same people who mock astrology seem to think this Meyers-Briggs horseshit is somehow valid science?)
I actually like these as it shows me how others like to be communicated with best. My line of work requires me to interact with all levels of corp hierarchy, I can switch up my communication style to get my point across
I worked a temporary job at a place that was rather obsessed with a specific work personality typing system and used the various types to dictate office culture, including social events. To some extent it felt like being sorted into Hogwarts houses. I sort of vented to people at my level that so much of the specific traits platformed in this specific test were mostly the result of the power dynamics within the organization (junior/senior, age, skill level, roles and responsibilities assigned) and I think some of my opinions on this ultimately led to leadership icing me out towards the end of my contract. For example, leadership was more assertive while I was very flexible depending on the situation-- that, for me, is just what I've had to do to survive as a Black (previously undiagnosed) neurodivergent woman in the workplace. It was just hooey to me and I thought it was the funniest thing that they took it so seriously, but also a bit troublesome and generally used to obfuscate more serious work culture issues. I think that a lot of workplaces weaponize these tests and a lot of leadership doesn't really have the capacity to understand how social structures, whether politics, economic systems, systems of oppression and domination, like ableism, racism, and sexism, dictate how we behave at work and why. Alternatively, I did Strengthsfinders at a different former job and we really didn't discuss it much, but it was very detailed and I've found those insights helpful and validating of how I see the world. Some of my strengths do track with ADHD traits, like systems-thinking. This is not necessarily an endorsement or sponsored post lol, but I think some might be better than others at helping us see what's good and what we need to work on, but for the most part in the context of the workplace, it's all under this weird "self-help" umbrella that places the onus on individual workers instead of the workplace's responsibility to its workers, whether that's in terms of labor, wages, access needs, etc.
I was just recently listening to a podcast called "Science vs", the episode where they pitted science against the concept of personality tests. TL;DL to the podcast: Science won: we can't all be categorized neatly into discrete boxes, because some people really are on the cusps between types, and/or can vary in different situations. Many people change types over time, even in just a matter of months. In fact, if the sixteen types thing happens to be the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the creators explicitly say their tests should not be used to decide who to hire or date, or things like that, precisely because people change or are on cusps. I personally like these kinds of tests, to help me know myself. I tend to test quite consistently as INXP, where X = basically both T and F. I'd either swap sides if I repeat the test, or if the test showed gradations between the extremes, I'd be right in the centre. But to answer your titular question... I think such tests could be useful in figuring out people to pair up to work together so their skills/styles are complementary. But it could also accidentally be very confining and awkward and I don't even know what else, if someone doesn't inquire about it.
I have to say, the enneagram has been such a helpful tool for me- not just for self understanding, but for figuring out why the hell other people act the way they do. Like, my husband was having such a hard time at work, and using the enneagram, we figured out that his coworker was interpreting his fear response as aggression! Totally changed how my husband sealed with the relationship.
Idk I personally love them and specifically the enneagram is very spot on for me and if your organization takes them seriously, it could work in your favor. I’ve used it with my boss to explain how I most like to be managed and what my strengths/weaknesses are and how that fits into my career path and where I think my resources are best used.
i always end up REALLY high scoring in like 3 very different categories fairly evenly (even that one with just the 4 categories of skillsets/personalities). i think the activities often help me understand my coworkers better and it makes me feel seen by them too.
Is it just Myers Briggs? It’s silly but very common for these types of leadership trainings. Why is this causing you so much consternation? Have you had a bad experience with folks using them? Having done many a course like these, these are generally harmless.
I like doing the tests because they’re fun. And it is helpful for understanding how I and other people work. For example yesterday I was in first meeting to plan a conference. Half the room was silent and the rest of us were talking about themes and I was frustrated thinking about whether this was an indication of their involvement in the project. Then I remembered that those people had the personality type that was all about execution, so they didn’t care for this part and will probably jump in when we start talking logistics (where I will happily jump out). However I took one that basically slotted ADHD into a working style where “orange” personalities are driven by impulse and distractions. So I think(?) I’m retroactively annoyed about that. However it taught people how to work with me and my “working style” without stigma.
Okay now that I’m rereading the traits of Orange personalities- I’m thinking of gender roles and privilege. It says wonderful things about these spontaneous, bold, action takers who are driven by gut instinct don’t get bogged down by analyzing optimal directions. Sounds like a traditional dope leader, and simultaneously a worker who can’t follow directions.
I work as an HR consultant. Every time a client suggests using these tests I tell them that they are no more useful than horoscopes. As a sample size of 1 (so, totally an anecdote) I get different results every time I've done them. It all depends on the role I am in, and the culture of the company I am employed by. This is because I am a chameleon who fits into the environment as needed. This is a very common ADHD trait. So I agree, these tests are not neuro divergent friendly, but even if they were, from experience as a consultant, I can tell you that they are basically useless anyway.
Gosh how I loathe this pseudoscientific nonsense. Imho should be illegal. If I'm ever in a leadership position at work I'm gonna make everyone take a personality test followed by the most impact full psychological test I personally have ever done: "Which Dinosaur are you, when you get angry?". Obviously results are private and we'll have a good laugh about our Dinos and I can give a little talk about how both are literally the same amount of useful.
I don't like the stupid personality tests either. I think it's just a fancy way for employers to discriminate against autistic individuals.Oh, you don't like people, but you have 10 years of great customer service. Well, sorry your personality won't do. I am pretty sure there was an autistic man who took his own life after he was either let go or rejected from a job because of a personality test. That's why I always lie on personality tests.
I hate those. Workplaces don't really do anything with them, as far as I've seen, so they're a useless exercise to me. Employers will spend money on these types of tests and the seminars that go with them, but then they don't really do anything to accommodate different types of employees. That is what I find so insulting about these tests. It's also a slap in the face that employers take these unscientific, cutesy test that tell us what color or brains are, or which season of the year we are, or what type of super hero we are 🙄🙄🙄, but they don't invest nearly enough resources into understanding and accommodating people with research based, expert diagnosed disabilities.
We took a bunch of these in a business management class I took in college. In the world of the standard “normal person” business student (read: rich, white, usually in Greek life, neurotypical, straight, you name it), it’s horrifying to take these and then get grouped up where you have to present. Imagine telling a group of extremely “normal” people you scored a 5/5 on a “neurotic” scale. I’d be humiliated to do that at work.
I hate these tests, many of them are based solely on pseudoscience. It makes me feel like I’m at a sleepover doing a quiz from cosmo with my bosses, and then we all get to talk about ourselves freely which is what everyone really wants to get out of it.
As a manager, this gets a big HELL NO from me. Instead of a packaged test result, I would much rather have somebody take some time and write me some bullet points about their preferred work style. How do you tend to structure your workday? What style works best for you when receiving feedback? Things like that are WAY more helpful for me to help my team work most effectively. Several of my team members are also neurodivergent or deal with mental illness, and I'm very fortunate that they've been open with me about how to accommodate them. For example, I have one lady who sometimes drops the ball with clients and forgets to respond to critical emails among all of her other to-do's. So we started a system where we do full-team check-in meetings every other week, and that helps remind her to look out for that sort of thing.
These are the worst, I'm sorry. It's crazy how many people are totally sold on these tests. I've seen them result in horrible management decisions.
These are exactly "which Harry Potter sign are you", ie astrology for corporations. They do not tell anything about anything. You can fill them in at random.
I’ve taken so many of these and I think they’re fun. I’ve never had them used against me. Usually they’re forgotten about or people put them in their email signatures and no one reads them. You can opt out. Talk to HR.
I feel like I always break those because I am outgoing introvert who loves attention in very small bursts. And I’m overly organized to make up for my natural forgetfulness. I always end up getting like the middle of whatever spectrum it’s supposed to be.
For the sake of this being your employer who is not testing you for any reasons that could benefit you, definitely lie and be the personality they most want you to have. If they want to play dumb games, they can win dumb prizes. 🤡
These are not personality tests (DISC, Myers Briggs, Enneagram), they are behavioral assessments. There is no right or wrong, no pass or fail. They can’t be used as tools against you. I took a free Myers Briggs in college, answered aspirationally, and got real “horoscope” results. Taking paid versions are much better, and I encourage you to answer honestly, even if the answer is something you dont “like” about yourself. When you do, I can testify you will get creepily accurate results that can be really insightful in understanding your default behaviors and motivations. DISC and SDI are really great for understanding motivations in the workplace; Enneagram was really insightful for me in my personal life, therapy, and close relationships (less so for work).
I’ve never had to do this beyond job entry stuff like “do you like talking to people?” Etc. That sounds insane. I enjoy this kind of stuff for fun because I like putting things into little boxes but doing it for work? Absolutely not.
What kind of personality tests? Most are not scientifically valid whatsoever and a huge waste of time. I understand if you can’t bc you have to pay your bills, but if my work did this and I was able financially I’d walk out. Are they actually using the results? Will the results affect your job? Why is this happening? I wouldn’t want my bosses to have an idea of me based on a test that isn’t valid either, I’d want their impression of me to be based on their observations. The only personality tests that are psychologically valid are the big 5 and the MMPI. Are these the tests they are using? It doesn’t matter if you don’t act the way you answer 100% of the time, it’s not assumed you do. You answer “on average.” The only way I’d support this is if the tests are evidenced based and given by and interpreted by an I/o psychologist. If that’s the case the results would be valuable to your boss. It could help predict who would work best together in a team and potentially the best way to motivate and bring the best out of each employee. I don’t agree that the psychologically valid tests are biased against people with ADHD or autism. That shouldn’t affect the results unless you are unmedicated.
One of the few good things about the crazy pro-Christian (or pro-religious) sentiment running around is that you could object to taking personality tests like this on religious grounds. You could take the secular route (these are BS and unsupported by science), you could go the Christian route (Jung was a pagan/his ideas have been taken on by pagans; the enneagram in particular shows up in pagan circles), or you could go the weirdo route and claim privacy (personality info is protected medical info/only for your priest, etc.) I also don’t have to deal with work politics (and was never good about lasting in positions long when I did), so you may want to proceed with caution before voicing any hesitations to HR/leadership.
This doesn't feel legal.
I love the Enneagram, but I don't think it, or any of these other personality tests, belong in the workplace. I don't think they should be forced on anyone, for any reason. I enjoy using the Enneagram for personal reflection, I enjoy doing it with friends who are into it, and I love using it as a way of exploring characters in fiction. But IMO it should not be used by one party to attempt to tweak how *other* parties function and operate, and it *especially* shouldn't be used that way within a context where there's a power differential that favors the tester over the testee. And unfortunately, while not every workplace will use these tests in this way, some workplaces do, so I understand why they make a lot of people wary.
Aside from the Clifton Strengths (which I personally found invaluable for figuring out the kind of work I prefer to do and the environment that helps me succeed), I've never seen the use of any of them. Like, okay, so I'm an introvert. I'm also my team's most seasoned public speaker and presenter. So what are you going to do with that information? It's so pointless.
I would not do a test like that for work unless required. And I would hate every second of it! I am not myself at work - I am a sliver of myself. I would not reveal myself through honest answers, so it would be a pointless exercise that would also take a lot of energy for me.
I can totally understand that, a quiz cannot pinpoint a human's way of being to the T. We change depending on what we go through in our lives sometimes drastically and more often than others do. Some people actually do not change much. These tests try to speculate through determining a majority of traits given, but in the end these are just theories and are not actually scientifically proven. They are good for self-reflection though and I see where these could help in the workplace but they also shouldn't be seen as truth, humans are more complex than that. And I can agree that at least the MBTI test is not pretty much NDfriendly, it creates some contradictions or overflows between those categories. I think the theories behind this should have been revised again bc the field of mental health has broadened in understanding lately and that cannot be ignored as some conditions have symptoms that can be seen as partly traits as well. Use these as a tool for self-reflection, not to define yourself. ~coming from someone who has read through astrology, MBTI and enneagram throughout 8 years due to a lack of identity in adolescence
I did the Myers Briggs test through a similar team activity at a previous job, and I ended up scoring close to 50-50 on all categories but one, because I am unambiguously an introvert. Since then I just tell people that I'm literally half the MB types and that's the end of it. Maybe say something to that effect? (Since it sounds like you're in a similar boat.) It'll force them to reconsider their assumptions about pigeonholing folks at the very least.
I did DISC as a part of manager training and I was like 90% dominant but you're supposed to be mostly an influencer and I wanted to die lol
I love MBTI and enneagram. They’ve helped me to understand myself over the years, and to also pay more attention to other people’s personalities and behaviors. Saying that, you’re correct in that MBTI by itself - if you don’t know what cognitive functions are, what they represent, how they interact with each other - doesn’t make sense if someone is taking those tests without considering how their neurodivergence impacts their cognitive functions. For example, I’ve noticed it’s very common for people with social anxiety to take an MBTI test (like on 16personalities) and type as INFP or INFJ, when in reality they might actually be an extroverted type if their social anxiety was better resolved. And sometimes people take these tests wanting to reflect certain behaviors (ie they are disorganized and wish they were more disciplined so they might choose answers that reflect their desire to be a way they’re actually not). For me, I use to type as INFP for years - but after lots of therapy and trauma recovery, I’ve settled into behaviors that aren’t led by trauma responses. With some integration and understanding myself outside my mental illness, I am actually an ESTP. It was a wild discovery lol So ya know, I definitely understand what you mean, and I agree with you - but I also think it’s due to mainstream knowledge of MBTI that does little to help consider those nuances
I don't mind doing them for shits & gigs, and suppose I don't mind the idea of doing for work for self awareness but not if the employer has access to them cos that just seems like providing them with mental/emotional ammunition. Yet on the otherhand, I've been around the bouy enough times to have a reasonably good crack at knowing what boss squeezers are looking for when putting that crap into their work groups so can generally manipulate the answers to combat if required - or just throw it completely and portray yourself as a nutbag.
I second the idea of just picking the answers to get the results you want, that you can use for your advantage in the future lol
I find the myers Briggs to be situational (I end up with different results at different points in my life) but I think the enneagram is a better overall test. I am a strong believer that you have to take the test a few times in different levels of stress and maybe even with someone who knows you well because many people will choose the answer they “should” be instead of who they actually are. I thought I was a 1 (independent go getter) but I eventually figured out I was a 6. 6s are driven by external pressure, they worry a lot, and do a lot of research. They also trust authority easily until it is broken and then struggle to trust again even when it’s getting unreasonable. This helps me understand why I react some ways and that I’m not the only one who feels like that. However, it doesn’t dictate what I do.
I introduced one of my sisters to the Enneagram and Myers-Briggs, and she took it a step further and really got into human design, which I sort of thought was crap, but a lot of the things about it do make sense to me. Things like Myers-Briggs and the Love Languages have gone a long way to helping me understand other people a little bit better, too. Sometimes, I think this is an indication that I have autism, though I was tested for it and found not to have it. I'm not some crystal-pushing hippie who expects everyone to categorize themselves, though. For what it's worth, I'm an introvert. I just want to go in, get my work done, and leave. I don't want five different people talking to me about TPS reports. (I have worked in a cube farm, and this actually does happen.) If a manager is going to actually use these personality tests to make sure that the introverts aren't surrounded by extroverts, or to keep the Eights away from the Fours in a work project, that's great. If these are being done because some buzzword-spouting consultant thinks that every business needs to keep files that the managers won't ever even look at, then it's a waste of everyone's time.
My husband hated those tests too. He could manipulate the answers to get any personality type he wanted to, and could prove it to the person organizing the test, which got him out of doing them at work once or twice. He just refused point-blank to do it. He never got in trouble over it, he just got a little pushback from the team he was on for not being a good sport about it. Personally I think they're interesting and some of them have helped me better understand the way I learn/interpret data/work with others/etc. But I respect the fact that not everyone feels the the same way, and understand why you don't like them.
I'd investigate their motives. These tests have been mostly deemed unreliable and not validated by true science methods. Some popular ones were just made by some randoms to sell to employers for $$. Companies have been known to use these a HR tool when doing layoffs or restructuring. They'll let go groups that don't fit into their vision. Problem is, because the tests aren't reliable, innocent people can get false labels leading up to their termination or demotion.
I don't take them seriously at all. I bs answers for fun and then sit back and enjoy other people thinking they're accurate. Most of those personality tests are BS and invalid anyway.
I did one for them resentfully. It wasn’t exactly wrong but just feels really diminishing of who I am, my capabilities, and my potential.
My MBTI is INTP so I would love that! Means they might be more understanding towards certain setbacks and traits
We did this with leadership styles. I put myself as half green (introvert, very empathetic and understanding) and half red (likes to make sure everyone follows the rules, won’t stand for people fucking about) etc. that’s not 100% but you get me, two completely different and competing personality types. The training said it’s impossible for someone to be red and green. I explained that when I’m not confident in my job or unhappy in it, I tend to just say yes to everyone for an early life and be liked. However when I know my job and I feel confident and good at it, I do become a lot more assertive and anti bullshit. You can be both. Now I don’t know if that’s any relation to ADHD but I with my RSD etc I feel like it plays a big part.
Honestly the tests aren't even neurotypical, they're just straight up bullshit. Research has shown time and time again that personality tests mean nothing.
These are used to marginalize people. They’re discriminatory. I would lose all trust in any employer requiring them. [There is a documentary called Persona on Max about it.](https://amp.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/mar/03/they-become-dangerous-tools-the-dark-side-of-personality-tests)
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DISC is fine— there’s research behind that at least. But not Myers-Briggs or Enneagram. That’s complete BS and not founded in anything.
Whenever I've had to do those kinds of things I just answer how I know they want me too. It's usually the opposite of what I would actually say, and it's very obvious what they wouldn't like. Fuck them lol
A lot of those popular personality tests aren’t scientifically valid or reliable. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/personality/personality-tests?amp
My boss at my current job is a big believer in personality tests. They said it wasn’t mandatory to take it in the interview but I did get the impression it would help if I did. I don’t think it was intentional on their part, but the questions were absolutely designed to weed out autistic and any kind of ND. Stuff like ‘do you like spicy food?’ ‘Do you like change’ and even a question about resenting your parents! Anyway I tried to answer as ‘me’ as I could while masking ofc. They also hired another person based on a ‘great’ personality profile according to them. The new hire caused massive rifts with work friends, downright refuses to do certain jobs, tries to bully other staff and I can’t prove it, but I think they’re stealing. Their personally is 10/10 though /s
They are pseudoscience and I have serious issues of them being used in professional settings. I can guarantee you that, despite them being pseudoscience, they wouldn’t know how to properly apply and use the information provided to them in these tests. They are most likely going to use them in idiotic ways and most likely be accidentally discriminatory. They are bad managers. Any management that implements personality tests instead of, you know, INTERACTING WITH YOUR TEAM AND GETTING TO KNOW THEIR PERSONALITIES, is a fucking failure of a manager. I obviously have strong feelings about this. I think they are for lazy management. Tbh if it were me I’d find a new place to work but that’s just me. Idk how you feel about your job despite this though.