4 ms·

I took what is probably the same all-day training course with my extended team at Microsoft about 10 years ago. I had some deep qualms about this -- "this cann

I took what is probably the same all-day training course with my extended team at Microsoft about 10 years ago. I had some deep qualms about this -- "this cannot possibly have any scientific basis, right? What is the point of this? How can anyone possibly assert that there are four basic kinds of personalities, that they respond consistently, or that they way they interact matches consistently?" A colleague's view was something like -- okay, yes, stipulated it's bullshit. But what's important is that we managed to get 100 people into a room together to talk about how they like to work with each other. The "colors" are canned, not-quite-true insights that can jump start the conversation about how people like to work. We gave people some shared vocabulary, however limited, for talking to each other, and they then spent hours working with each other to discuss how their communication and work styles have strengths and weaknesses. So it was a good team bonding exercise because it felt like people would try to work together more afterwards. I'm still a little torn about using a likely-false concept as a pretext for people to get together and connect with one another -- but there's plenty of this in human history.

chronotis 5y ago
My team also went through this at Microsoft, back around 2008-09. My team was firmly in the "this is bullshit" camp, but there were others who took it quite a bit more seriously. And then there were the "reds", which more often than not used it as defense/justification for their normal aggressive behaviors. Everyone received little foam color blocks; we were supposed to put our primary and secondary on our desks so that whenever people dropped by they would know what kind of person you are. We received binders with dozens of pages telling us who we were, how we think, what we cared about, what our barriers are, and so on. It reminded me a bit of market segmentation studies -- a passing fad used to describe in a moment the nature of a population, but something that loses value and relevance over time.
analog31 5y ago
People may also be concerned that there's a sinister purpose for the test, e.g., for screening. I was skimming through a translation of Seneca, and in the opening dialog, the participants come to an agreement, along the lines of: "Just to get things straight, we're talking about the real stuff that the philosophers believe in, not the crap that the people believe in, right?" The subject matter had to do with death and the afterlife. The thing that interests me is that someone's view on the purpose of the test might actually bias their answers and thus the results as well. So even if the test was valid in a controlled research or clinical setting, in a business setting it's a different test. Is intelligence a confounding variable?

chronotis 5y ago

My team also went through this at Microsoft, back around 2008-09. My team was firmly in the "this is bullshit" camp, but there were others who took it quite a bit more seriously. And then there were the "reds", which more often than not used it as defense/justification for their normal aggressive behaviors. Everyone received little foam color blocks; we were supposed to put our primary and secondary on our desks so that whenever people dropped by they would know what kind of person you are. We received binders with dozens of pages telling us who we were, how we think, what we cared about, what our barriers are, and so on. It reminded me a bit of market segmentation studies -- a passing fad used to describe in a moment the nature of a population, but something that loses value and relevance over time.

analog31 5y ago

People may also be concerned that there's a sinister purpose for the test, e.g., for screening. I was skimming through a translation of Seneca, and in the opening dialog, the participants come to an agreement, along the lines of: "Just to get things straight, we're talking about the real stuff that the philosophers believe in, not the crap that the people believe in, right?" The subject matter had to do with death and the afterlife. The thing that interests me is that someone's view on the purpose of the test might actually bias their answers and thus the results as well. So even if the test was valid in a controlled research or clinical setting, in a business setting it's a different test. Is intelligence a confounding variable?