3 ms·

For some reason, Myers-Briggs has gotten all of the publicity (all those high priced management consultants, I guess). I have found the Enneagram [0] to be just

For some reason, Myers-Briggs has gotten all of the publicity (all those high priced management consultants, I guess). I have found the Enneagram [0] to be just as useful (all the controversy about accuracy aside). It is a different flavor of a personality test and the spiritual growth connotations of it makes 'real' scientists discount it. But I think it provides useful info when you ignore all the surface level superficial writing about it and only read the books by Don Riso. At the very least it is as interesting or even more than Myers-Briggs. I have found it useful for creating characters as part of the script writing process because it makes one think about internal psychological processes. The main problem I think with Myers-Briggs, or even all of these things including the OCEAN model, is the general public not understanding their limitations and thus using them inappropriately as definitive or concrete sources of fixed information - like in interviews, HR assessments, etc. Myers-Briggs has been Agile-d(tm). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enneagram_of_Personality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enneagram_of_Personality

iso1210 6y ago
I did an Enneagram last week. I'm doing a part-time MSc at the moment, and the last 2 weeks has been talking about these types of tests. I'm certainly on the "cynical" side in any test. My Enneagram result was even in 4 of the 9 boxes. Wonderful. With all these tests, it seems that many people think the categorisation is what matters, rather than what you do with the information. You could use them as an icebreaker on a teambuilding day I guess, but then you could probably use a 'what hogwarts house are you' or 'what game of thrones character are you' test from buzzfeed. Maybe it's useful to create fictional characters of D&D backstories. I can see that if you have an idea of the type of person you have on a team, you might know how to help them, and an idea of personality traits they may have could help -- if you're an introvert that likes time alone to recharge, knowing that some people are weird and like to recharge with other people may help, but then you're just as likely to get it wrong anyway - for example thinking "I won't invite X to the pub because they're an introvert that doesn't like being around people"

iso1210 6y ago

I did an Enneagram last week. I'm doing a part-time MSc at the moment, and the last 2 weeks has been talking about these types of tests. I'm certainly on the "cynical" side in any test. My Enneagram result was even in 4 of the 9 boxes. Wonderful. With all these tests, it seems that many people think the categorisation is what matters, rather than what you do with the information. You could use them as an icebreaker on a teambuilding day I guess, but then you could probably use a 'what hogwarts house are you' or 'what game of thrones character are you' test from buzzfeed. Maybe it's useful to create fictional characters of D&D backstories. I can see that if you have an idea of the type of person you have on a team, you might know how to help them, and an idea of personality traits they may have could help -- if you're an introvert that likes time alone to recharge, knowing that some people are weird and like to recharge with other people may help, but then you're just as likely to get it wrong anyway - for example thinking "I won't invite X to the pub because they're an introvert that doesn't like being around people"