Revisiting the MBTI - Musings on my relationship with the mother of all assessments

I use assessments a lot in my work as a leadership psychologist and coach, and there is no doubt that they can be incredibly insightful, and even sometimes incredibly fun. I have a few favorites (like Hogan Assessments ), which I think are terrific. But I’m super skeptical of the “assessment industrial complex” in general, particularly because a lot of instruments out there are poorly designed, and even the good ones are sometimes misused. I think this does a huge disservice to a lot of companies and a lot of people.

Still, I’ve been inspired by Nikita Mikhailov 's wonderful work on personality assessments, and I’ve been intrigued by the idea of challenging some of my own assessment assumptions. So, I’ve set out on a modest quest to do just that by taking a bunch of them!

Of all of the assessments that I regularly use, and there are a few, I’ve largely ignored one that is perhaps the mother of them all: Myers Briggs. And to be honest, until about two weeks ago, I had pretty much dismissed the MBTI as utter hogwash, even as I get that it is both wildly successful and also that it can be really, really fun.

And the fun is real. I recall many team offsites, at various stages of my career, where we did MBTI and had an absolutely blast. And in hindsight, those events were a big part of what inspired me to become a psychologist. They gave me a glimpse into a different way of thinking about what happens at work — and sparked a genuine curiosity about interpersonal and team dynamics. All told, in many ways, I am very grateful to the MBTI.

But, but, but…

I’m reasonably well-versed in the critiques of the MBTI (including Merve Emre’s brilliant book, Louis Menand’s fantastic New Yorker article, and Adam Grant 's smart and pithy insights), so I understood the limitations of the instrument, as well as the head-scratching degree to which it’s been misused. But my main beef with it was more personal. I was annoyed that my results changed pretty much every time I took it. Which, if you read the critiques, is not that uncommon.

Personality is meant to a reasonably stable construct in psychology, and yet, in the many times taken the MBTI during my life, each time I’ve had a different result. Not only that, but the results also never really “felt” like me. I’d read each description and find very little that I recognized as being part of my experience of myself in the world. I also realized that the MBTI is quite easy to game.

Now older (ahem) and wiser (ahem, ahem) in 2025, I’ve retaken the MBTI and, for the first time ever, I’m rather flabbergasted that my results are (drumroll please)….accurate!

Granted, they are, once again (eye roll), quite different from my younger years, but unlike in the past, this time they feel spot on.

All this has me reflecting on why. Why is the MBTI, at least for me, and at least for right now, suddenly accurate?

Is it that the instrument is just unreliable? As they say, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Or is it me? ?Is there something going on around how I answer the questions now, versus how I did in the past? Am I a better assessment taker? (Perhaps that doctorate came in handy after all....)

Or do I just “like” the results more this time? ?After all, we are much more likely to buy into things that reinforce our own self-concept.

Although personalities are often regarded as fixed, psychologists now understand that there is a certain degree of malleability. It’s not that we can wake up one day and become completely different people; it’s more that some personality dimensions are best understood as being on a spectrum, and that people move along that spectrum based on a lot of things, including life experiences, and (rather gorgeously) through activities such as reflection and psychotherapy – all of which can be transformational. We also know that significant events, including trauma, play a role in behavior and personality – so this can also account for some of the changes that we see over time.

But there's also something else going on. One of the biggest challenges for assessments is when people, sometimes without realizing it, answer questions in a contrived way – e.g., answering how they think they “should” be rather than how they actually are. Newer and better instruments (than the MBTI) have some sophisticated ways of ferreting out this kind of impression management, but it’s still very much a challenge, particularly when interpreting an assessment’s results (all the more reason one needs to have a debrief with a trained expert).

Impression management isn’t in itself a bad thing – in fact, there can be awesome benefits of being so attuned to how one is being perceived. The problem, of course, is when the person becomes so vigilant about fitting into what they think is the right “mold”, they start doing the exhausting work of living a dual identity: the person they really are AND they person they think they have to be. That can make many things, including the simple act of taking an assessment, a very fraught business indeed.

Then there is the complex nature of being itself. Who am I? What am I like? What do I believe? How do I behave? How do I experience the world? For people who might be a little more emotionally reactive, and a lot harder on themselves, it can be tricky figuring out what their baseline state is, particularly when some aspects of the self seem to be transient or fleeting.

Another fascinating facet of assessments is the tendency that many have of seeing them as a definitive judgement. This is a huge problem, and an area where they can potentially do the greatest harm. Many people view their results as a kind of proclamation from the assessment gods: this is who you are. They grant these instruments omnipotent powers of knowledge and prediction: how they will react in different environments, what they should do for a living, even who their partner should be. Eek, eek, and eek. Not what these instruments were designed for.

Assessments are better understood as one of many data points: ones which describe, sometimes quite well and sometimes less well, a few aspects of the inner workings and outward behaviors of very complex human beings.?

Nikita said one of the best things about assessments that I’ve ever heard, which it is that the creators of assessments are even more interesting than the assessments themselves. Indeed, we get a fascinating glimpse into what these psychologists valued, particularly in the epoch they were in.

But I also think another fascinating aspect of assessments is the relationship we have with them over time. If we are able to map our results over the years, we can see that these data points are not just about the here and now, but part of a larger life story. Because even if the past scores were inaccurate or “wrong” – perhaps they were wrong in a revealing and wonderful way? This is because these small clues can yield big insights into the preoccupations and worries of the self. Perhaps a person who is trying to be somebody else. ?A person wanting to fit in. A person feeling lost. A person not knowing themself.

And perhaps, over time, a person on a path toward wisdom.

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