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comment by veen
veen  ·  3141 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: My customers are my friends. Ummm.... NO, THEY'RE NOT!

Thanks for your insights in a skill that I know little about.

Personally, I think tests like Myers-Briggs do more harm than good. They're fun to do but I wouldn't attach too much meaning to the results (if any at all).





user-inactivated  ·  3141 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Hey, look, a bullshitter writing about bullshit. Touchdown!

veen  ·  3140 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Good job completely dismissing arguments because you don't like the author.

I mean, it's not a brilliant article, but he does make some good points. Such as:

    The Myers-Briggs assumes that who we are is consistent from one situation to another [...] according to some studies, more than half of those who take the test a second time end up with a different score than when they took it the first time. Since personality is continuous, not dichotomous, clearly some people who are borderline Introverts or Feelers one week slide over to Extroversion or Thinking the next week. And since personality is contingent, not stable, how we answer is affected by which circumstances are foremost in our minds when we take the test.

    “Every individual is an exception to the rule,” he wrote; to “stick labels on people at first sight,” in his view, was “nothing but a childish parlor game.”
user-inactivated  ·  3140 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Completely dismissed the article because I don't like the author (or the subject). Never read the actual arguments. Well, except the ones you just quoted, which are ironic because

    “Every individual is an exception to the rule,” he wrote; to “stick labels on people at first sight,” in his view, was “nothing but a childish parlor game.”

this is what he spends all of his books doing, so that people with money to burn will burn it on him.

veen  ·  3140 days ago  ·  link  ·  

That's effectively the same though.

I mean, I also don't like Malcolm Awfulbad, but I have to really hate an author to completely dismiss all their past and future work.

user-inactivated  ·  3140 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I really hate him.

kleinbl00  ·  3140 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I circledotted every comment in this thread.

thenewgreen  ·  3141 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I was offended until I realized you were referring to Gladwell..... -you were, right?

user-inactivated  ·  3141 days ago  ·  link  ·  

HA yeah.

EDIT: I have hated the MB since it became a forum craze about 13 years ago.

thenewgreen  ·  3140 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Honestly, I hate it now too. I us no idea that a post I made on the decline of relationship selling would turn in to all this. The addition of the MB stuff at the end was sort of a last minute add-on.

I'll be more thoughtful with such things moving forward.

user-inactivated  ·  3140 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Hope it didn't turn into anything in particular, I haven't really been paying attention.

Unfortunately my non-quick submission hubski time has dramatically decreased with this new job/moving/life. Sucks.

Plus side, I read a quote or heard someone say that they listened to the White Album every day for a year so I'm listening to the White Album.

thenewgreen  ·  3140 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Plus side, I read a quote or heard someone say that they listened to the White Album every day for a year so I'm listening to the White Album.
That's awesome. It was the first Beatles album I owned when I was a child of twelve. I used to fall asleep to Julia on repeat.

I've gotten my daughter in a horrible habit of wanting to see a short video on my phone after I tell her a bed-time story. For a while there it was old Star Wars clips. Now, it's been the old Beatles Cartoons. I've never really seen them before, but I searched "Beatles Cartoons" one night to try and find some Yellow Submarine footage and stumbled upon them. They're EXTREMELY cheesy but she loves them and has been asking, "Daddy, can we watch the Beatles?" -Warms my heart.

We watched this one.

Good luck with the job/moving/life -it's a busy time for a lot of people I know right now. We'll get through it!

user-inactivated  ·  3140 days ago  ·  link  ·  

They follow Why Don't We Do It in the Road with I Will of all songs -- "Will I wait a lonely lifetime, if you want me to..."

EDIT: shit, I still watch those cartoons occasionally.

thenewgreen  ·  3140 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  

"I Will" is the first song both my children heard after being born. I sang it to them both. Best song ever.

thenewgreen  ·  3141 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I think that anything like MB that whittles a person down to an easily identifiable category can be dangerous only if people take them too seriously. They're good prompts for self-reflection and I've yet to find someone that earnestly answered the questions and then thought that the assessment they were given was wildly inaccurate. Also, it's worth noting that they're all quite different. For example, if I were told I was the personality style that was assessed to crafty, I wouldn't buy it for a moment.

In regard to the five categories the Sales Executive Council established, if you read the book Challenger Selling they make it pretty clear that most people have different gradients of each style. But, it's been my experience that their claim that Challenger's are the most successful is spot on.

As someone that has made a living being able to read personality styles in order to quickly create a buying environment, I know that there is validity to these index tests. Are they static? No. But they can provide insight in to yourself and others. And... like you said, they are fun.

veen  ·  3140 days ago  ·  link  ·  

First off, it is not at all difficult to generate a text that sounds like it fits you - especially with a questionnaire of over 60 questions as an input.

Second, for me 'taking it too seriously' is taking it serious at all. To put it bluntly, it's a completely made up test, based on 8 completely random traits, that only allows you to label / categorize / put people in boxes. People are complex, are changing over time and act different in different situations. All factors that the M-B completely ignores. I don't think any index can fix this properly, unless you want seven billion boxes to put people in.

    As someone that has made a living being able to read personality styles in order to quickly create a buying environment, I know that there is validity to these index tests.

From what I know about you and what you do, I would argue that you make much more use of experience, people knowledge and skill than whatever simplified label you can tag on them in the first five minutes. Once you've concluded that a person is, say, a sensing introvert, it becomes very hard not to fall prey to selection bias and framing. Hence my opinion that these kinds of tests are just toxic.

thenewgreen  ·  3140 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Let me be clear, I don't think the tests are anything but a device to get people thinking and discussing our different ways of experiencing the world and recognizing that others have different motivating factors.

I phrased the part you quoted poorly. The validity isnt the test, it's that we all have different "styles" as I mentioned before, these are not static.

I don't think we would disagree on much regarding these except hat I find them to be much more benign than you do, perhaps because I've never known someone to really take them too seriously. That said, I think everyone wants to think they're a precious, unique flower when in reality, yes on a level you are but on another level you can be pretty damn predictable. I really wish I had omitted any mention of MB. It was an afterthought in a post about the death of relationship and solution based selling.

veen  ·  3140 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Glad that you realize that it is only useful for reflection. You're right, I've had a different experience, where I know people who are very prone to blindly believing systems like this. I'm sorry if I distracted too much from your great post.

jleopold  ·  3141 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I've always considered the MB to be better than most systems, because it uses several individual axis addressed independently. None of the traits exclude someone from having any of the other traits (besides the polar opposite). One thing the test you linked doesn't do so well is focus on the gradients of each. I'm pretty strongly introverted and intuitive, but the other two are rather borderline, switching depending on timing and the test. From my understanding, it was originally developed as a tool for psychoanalysis. By placing the patient in a category, the psychoanalyst could then more easily focus on releveant problems. However, Jung's theories, off which the MB is based, have largely been passed over in the academic world. So, while a detailed analysis done by a professional (as opposed to a 12 minute test) could be useful for a patient and therapist, the use of MB for employment purposes is slightly terrifying. Plus, apparently even as the theory was first being published, there were questions as to its validity and that of the methods used to arrive at it.