This time, when I had gone to the ISABS National event, I met a lot of people talking about the MBTI instrument. Without any disrespect to Jung, I found the amount of importance given to this “typifying” of people rather alarming.
What does it really mean if I am ENFP or INFP or whatever? Honestly, I took the test quite a few times online, and got my results as ENFP. I thought that was great, until I did a document search for MBTI on my computer and found copy pasted results from a test I had done some time in the past out of curiosity. In those, I was INFJ. I read those results in detail as well, and they were pretty accurate descriptions of me in a different mood.
Really, the way we see the world after a date that ended with an engagement and after a board meeting that ended in a resignation are entirely different. I dare say plenty of answers would change between those two. Yet, there is much importance placed on those tests. An example being two statements made to me by a fellow team member:
“Oh great! You’re an ENFP - I’m a (Something or the other). We will balance each other nicely.” Huh? Did she have a clue to how moody I was, and unlikely to balance out people who tended to “figure me out”?
OR
“I wish we knew the types of everyone. It would help us work together better” And How? We would still be the same bunch of people working together. Does it really take a fancy label to tell us if what we are doing is working or not?
I can understand how tests like this can help people understand other people slightly better. I can’t see how these can be considered anything more than a rough idea - which you get after reading their answers anyway. Just asking someone for their letters would be unreliable, as who knows how accurate their test has been……?
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