MBTI versus Strengths-Based Leadership

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator was the first personality assessment I did in my life and it had an important impact on my self-awareness and leadership development. Later, I came to appreciate the Clifton StrengthsFinder and the Five-Factor-Model, but up until today I often think in terms of the 16 MBTI types and make comparisons.

This blog is about strengths-based management and leadership. But recently, after browsing through one my MBTI books, I was wondering to what extent strengths-based leadership is similar or different from MBTI-based leadership. 

For those who don’t know: the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is a personality assessment based on the late Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung’s work. It has four dimensions: 

• Intoversion vs. Extroversion: the source of our energy 
  
• Sensing and Intuition: how we gather information 
  
• Thinking and Feeling: how me make decisions 
  
• Judging and Perceiving: how we approach life 
  

“These four scales are used to sort into 16 types; the types themselves are are characterized by certain values, preferences or cognitive styles. Information about a person’s type is then used for career guidance, team building and other activities associated with organizational development.” writes Dr. Robert Hogan in “Personality and the Fate of Organizations” (p. 28). 

And he goes on like this: “Most personality psychologists regard the MBTI as little more than an elaborate Chinese Fortune cookie. … Nontheless, psychological consultants have discovered that the business community has an endless appetite for MBTI-based feedback.” 

There seems to be quite some discussion among academic psychologists and MBTI supportes to what extent the MBTI is scientifically proven to work, and the Feeling-Thinking dimension seems to be particularly controversial. I am not an academic psychologist, so I have little to contribute to this discussion here.  If you would like to learn more about this, click here. Academics like Hogan and Costa&McCrae prefer to work with the Five-Factor-Model, which still has many similarities with the MBTI. 

While I often had some difficulty to assess myself or other people with regard to the 16 MBTI types, I had less problems with the Five-Factor-Model. For example, introspection, an important "ingredient" of self-awareness and therefore leadership development, is considered a quality of introversion  in the MBTI literature. More recent Five Factor research however shows that introspection has more to do with a high "Openness to new Ideas", which is somewhat similar to the Intuition-Sensing dichotomy in the MBTI. For these and other reasons, I prefer to use the Five-Factor-Model in my work as a manager and personal coach.  

Anyway, this post is not about a comparison between the MBTI and the Five Factor Model. Instead, it is about a comparison between the MBTI and the Clifton StrengthsFinder, and more importantly, about a comparison between leadership based on the MBTI vs. strengths. 

I define strengths-based leadership as the principles and practices of a leader who wants to make best use of his employee’s strengths in their everyday work. Gallup research has shown such employees are much more engaged with their work, which in turn has a very positive effect on customer satisfaction and shareholder return. 

What would be MBTI-based leadership? I would think that it is actually very similar: I would define it as the principles and practices of a leader who wants to respect people’s individual differences (based on the insights gained from MBTI), leveraging their strengths and compensating their weaknesses. I would dare to say that the MBTI literature tends to emphasize equally strengths and weaknesses, whereas the StrengthsFinder literature emphasizes more the development of strengths. 

Thus, at a first look, I don’t see too much of a difference between the two leadership styles. There is at least one important difference, though, that has more to do with logic of the MBTI and StrengthsFinder, rather than the leadership style based on them: In the MBTI, especially if you work with the 16 types, there is a tendency to some sort of black and white thinking: you are either an introvert or an extrovert, for example. The MBTI folks would probably aknowledge that this is a simplification necessary for the workplace environment, and that in fact people usually are on a continuum between the two sides, rather than on opposite ends.  There is a risk however that this nuance is forgotten once people receive their label “INTJ” or “ESFJ” in a typical MBTI training at the office. 

What I have always found fascinating about the StrengthsFinder is that people can have “contradictory” combinations of talents: at the same time someone can have Intellection, which tends to me more of an introvert talent, and Woo,  which is clearly an Extrovert talent. Another one can have Adaptability or Activator, which are more of a Perceiver nature, and Focus, which is more of a Judging nature. Someone can have Empathy, which is more of a Feeler talent, and Analytical, which is more of a Thinking talent. Such combinations really exist. And this may explain why some people have difficulty in finding their place among the 16 MBTI types. 

As a consequence, the 34 talent themes of the StrengthsFinder are more complex than the 16 MBTI types, not only for the simple fact that 34 is more than double than 16, but more importantly, because the 34 talent themes can have more complex and sometimes counter-intuitive combinations. This is certainly a challenge for consultants who have limited time in a typical leadership workshop, and who have to deal with managers or employees who may have limited patience for too much complexity around personality. The 16 MBTI types are already quite an amount of information to absorb, let alone the 34 StrengthsFinder talent themes and their myriad combinations. 

Nevertheless, in my practical experience, I have seen that the 34 Clifton StrengthsFinder talent themes can also be successfully taught in a short time to a broader audience of employees. As a leader, however, you need to develop an advanced understanding of the 34 talent themes, their combinations and implications on workplace performance. That requires time for studying and practicing, which is probably not the most common privilege of managers these days.  

Another important consideration is the question whether or not to select people for MBTI type or talents. Gallup, the owner of the Clifton StrengthsFinder, advises against using this tool for recruiting purposes. The main reason is that talents are not the same as strengths, and what you need on the job are well developed strengths. I would say that the same logic applies to the MBTI. If someone is an INTJ, for example, he has certain talents, which he may or may not have developed into real strengths. I am not sure what the MBTI supporters advise with regard to using the MBTI for recruiting, and I would not be surprised if there were different oppinions.  But from what I have seen in the literature, the MBTI is very much used for team building and –I would assume- for the selection of team members. From there, it is only a small step to using it for the selection of new hires. I think that this could be a bit dangerous.