There is a documentary on HBO/Sky called: Persona: The Dark Truth About Personality Tests. What it highlights is that:
- According to Richard Thompson, Senior Director of Global Research, The Myers-Briggs Company, there is: "No reason to assume that a person with one particular type preference can do a job better than someone with another type preference." He said that it should not be used for hiring and Myers-Briggs has stopped selling to organisations who insist on doing this.
- There is a belief that personality profiling favours extroverts for senior leadership positions.
- There is a belief that personality profiling is biased against people with mental health issues (it can 'red flag' them as people not to recruit).
- There is a belief that personality profiling is biased towards the group of people it was originally tested upon.
- People are being coached to 'beat the system' and not tell the truth in the tests to try to increase their job prospects.
Personality Profiling is a multi-billion-dollar business, but given the above, should it really have such an influence over who gets a job or a promotion? Are the tests limited in their scope? Do they take enough into account that people can flex their behaviours? Many organisations will, of course, use the profiling as just one aspect of recruitment (even though Myers-Briggs don’t recommend this) or to decide who to promote but it is assumed it would be very difficult to ignore a red flag from the results.
The power of understanding your employee’s intrinsic motivators
Many of our clients at Brand Experiences are utilising mojo – our motivation and productivity platform – to understand their employees and to drive their productivity efforts. We believe that focusing on people’s intrinsic motivators is a vital aspect towards the success or failure of someone’s experience at work. Mojo doesn’t care about someone’s background, gender, age or religious beliefs; it’s a self-inventory which helps the employee and their line manager understand what motivates them. With the idea that if someone’s main intrinsic motivators are being met, they will be more productive, happier and will feel that what’s important to them is important to the organisation.
We believe that understanding someone’s motivation preferences is a good guide to role suitability. For example, if someone is motivated by money and materialism (the Builder) they’re unlikely to be satisfied in a role in frontline care; whereas someone motivated by finding meaning in their work (the Searcher) and enjoying fruitful working relationships (the Friend) is more likely to.
Personality Profiling has its place, but if you want a deeper understanding of what gets your employees out of bed in the morning and support for how to satisfy their intrinsic motivators to enable them to be more productive, then mojo is your go-to tool.
If you’d like to understand more about mojo, click here.