The Pitfalls of Personality

by Kat Koppett

Recently, I opened an episode of my new livestream podcast, Performance Shift, by asking astronaut and Professor of Astronautical Engineering at USC, Garrett Reisman, if he wanted to be an astronaut as a little boy. I thought it was a cute question since so many little kids want to be things like ballerinas and astronauts but so few of us actually become those things. His answer, though, provided much more than a quick laugh. Yes, he was obsessed with the Apollo flights, and would watch the Super 8 movie versions of them till he wore them out. But, he said, his mother was deathly afraid of flying so he knew he would never be allowed to train as a test pilot, and that was the only path to astronaut he knew of, so he didn’t give it a second thought. I’ll be an engineer. It was only years later in graduate school that he actually researched the backgrounds of more astronauts and realized perhaps he could qualify. Representation, we discussed, can be important in many more ways than ethnicity and gender. 

This led me to think about the perennial topic here at LDA of personality type indicators like MBTI and DiSC. Plenty of folks in the LDA community have spoken vociferously against their use. Often the criticism rests on the weak validity of the instruments. We are, after all, lovers of good research-based tools. The case against them goes even deeper, I think.  Whether or not personality and behavioral assessment tools measure something real, we see their use pushing individuals and cultures in unhelpful directions. 

Ostensibly, the value of these tools is to increase self-awareness and the understanding of others. This in turn, theoretically helps us improve communication, teamwork and acceptance of difference. But what we see in practice is that often these typing tools simply lead to just that: stereo-typing. Folks end up limiting themselves and others by labeling and reifying their preferences, strengths and ways of being. Why would we want to do this? Especially at a time in the world when we are looking to reduce bias, increase the number of diverse voices in any given space and broaden opportunities for non-traditional “casting” in leadership roles, how can this kind of labeling possibly help? These tools, by definition, introduce new language and identifiers around which to stereotype. I hear facilitators of them demure that that is not the intention, nor how they present the work. Fair enough. But we know our brains lean toward bias so strongly. Why make it easier? Toward ourselves let alone others. 

Applied Improvisation approaches communication and team building from a completely different angle. We say, at any given moment you are making performance choices. Those choices are often habitual or unconscious, sure, but that does not mean they are your only choices, and they are certainly not “YOU”. Context as we know is at least as important a factor in determining behavior as individual difference.  Your behaviors are not even necessarily the most aligned with your core intentions, values, strengths, or authentic self. By increasing your awareness and range of your performance choices you can start to make more deliberate and conscious choices. That is the work we engage in, supporting people to expand their awareness and range not box themselves in.

To hear a little more of my rant against personality typing, check out this Disrupt HR talk I gave a while back. What do you think? Invalid tools aside: helpful or a hindrance?