People Can T Be Summed Up By A Personality Test Summary

Employees Can’t Be Summed Up by a Personality Test by Peter Bregman
August 19, 2015

When we were in college, Eleanor, then my girlfriend (now my wife), wanted me to take a Myers-Briggs type test, a personality assessment that would categorize me into one of 16 boxes, each box containing four letters that would explain me.
I didn’t want to do it.
So she made it easy for me. “Come on, it’ll be fun,” she said. “I’ll read the questions. You just lie there and answer. I’ll write down your answers.”
She began asking me questions.
“When with a group of people,” she read, “you enjoy being at the center of attention.”
“No.” I answered. “I’d rather speak to one person.”
“No way!” she replied, “You love being the center of attention. I’m checking a

If you talk to someone in a meeting and then, a little while later, over a bite to eat, you may notice that his personality completely shifts. Curiosity allows you to see people more clearly and learn about them in all their beautiful and interesting variability. And because of that, it helps you build much stronger, more resilient relationships.
If you’ve based your relationship on curiositiy, when you have to communicate about something difficult, you’ll be talking to a person, not an ENTJ. You’ll be more understanding—and a lot more convincing.
But it’s hard to let go of the comfort that comes from thinking you’ve figured someone out.
I was leading a two-day training for senior-level coaches who were interested in working for my firm. Coaches love assessments and many of the coaches in the room were certified to administer a gaggle of them. During the training, I made it very clear that, at Bregman Partners, we don’t use assessments for all the reasons I stated above. I told the coaches that one of our hallmarks is that we remain curious and we encourage our clients to remain curious, which makes them much stronger leaders.
After the training, one of the coaches came up to me.
“You’re an ENFP,” she told me, referring to one of the boxes in the