Myers Briggs commentary

There's an interesting post over on Canadian Headhunter about the Myers Briggs personality test.  Apparently the test is based on the principles of Carl Jung (I had no idea) and the test seeks to categorize your personality type into 4 buckets (this part I knew):

1. Extraversion-Introversion
2. Thinking-Feeling
3. Sensing-Intuition
4. Judgment-Perception

Here's a great quote from the post:

"I used to use Myers-Briggs as an icebreaker. People like taking it, and when you get the results back you feel good. But it has the intellectual content of a fortune cookie."

And more interestingly, this quote from Malcolm Gladwell:

Jung didn't believe that types were easily identifiable, and he didn't believe that people could be permanently slotted into one category or another.

"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."

For as many people that don't like the Myers Briggs test, there are just as many that swear by it.  There seems to be a resurgence of use of this test by HR departments and my feeling, if nothing else, is that the discussion of different personality types with a full team is certainly a worthwhile structured teambuilding event.

Yes, I have taken the Meyers Briggs and my type is ENTP (for those of you that were curious).