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By Patrick L. Kerwin
Tip #1: Look both ways
As an MBTI practitioner, you undoubtedly have many resources that focus on the benefits of the MBTI assessment and how to use the tool in a variety of ways. But how many resources do you have that are focused on critiques of the MBTI assessment? You can stay one step ahead of your participants’ questions by doing a search for articles critiquing the MBTI assessment and preparing yourself with responses. Sometimes participants just want to know that you’ve actually looked at those articles, that you’ve considered their content, and that you’re not just (what they’ll call) a “type groupie!”
Tip #2: Click on the links
One of the upsides of many online articles is that they frequently contain live links to their sources. Often, however, our participants—or even we, as MBTI practitioners—will read an article critiquing the MBTI assessment, see that it refers to a “recent study,” take that information as fact, and then conclude that the article is solid. But click on the links! You may find, as I did, that a “recent study” was actually from 1993 and included sources from as far back as 1962, or that critiques of the “questions” on the MBTI assessment were actually referring to a free online type tool, not the MBTI assessment. Finding the root sources often makes responding to these articles remarkably easy.
Tip #3: Brush up on your theory
If you remember a little about type theory, you’ll be able to answer a lot of questions arising from articles critiquing the MBTI assessment. One of the common critiques of the MBTI assessment is its inherent binary model of someone having a preference for, as an example, Thinking or Feeling. “But people have a little of both,” the authors of the articles will say, thinking they’ve refuted type theory – when, in fact, what they’ve actually done is endorsed it! Type theory, of course, suggests that people with a preference for Thinking will have the Feeling process as part of their type dynamics hierarchy, and, conversely, that people with a preference for Feeling will have the Thinking process as part of their type dynamics hierarchy. It’s just that they’ll have different hierarchies, with Thinking types preferring Thinking over Feeling, and vice versa—hence the use of the word preference.
In my session “Creating a Culture of Clarity” at the 2016 MBTI® Users Conference, I’ll take a closer look at the most common critiques of the MBTI assessment, address confusion around “ambiverts” and the E–I preferences, and identify how to respond to misconceptions and misinformation about the MBTI assessment.
