MBTI, Enneagram, DISC, and EON
I read an article from the Vulcan Post article, titled, “Dear Bosses, Stop Thinking The MBTI Test Will Help You Hire & Build Your Dream Team” recently. I agree with the author, Faye Lee, who said, “It doesn’t tell you how well someone does all those things, it just tells you how they do it. So, to assess a potential employee based on all those things for a hiring decision makes no sense.”
Yes, it makes no sense, but the reality is that the HR departments of many large companies mainly do that. For example, many require that you complete some form of psychometric case study and/or personality test questionnaires for the screening exercises before they pre-select you for a follow-up interview. Well, these are presumptive responses, because my understanding of my own behaviour, thoughts, and abilities may not be the same today as next week. Again, as with any multi-choice questionnaire, responses do not usually reflect the truth or accurately represent the personality. Most people “bluff” through, and instead of correlating themselves to the posted questions, they would unconsciously think about what the best behaviours would be, in such a scenario. That’s what Faye said, “When a person takes a personality test, most of the time they would be answering the questions with respect to how they’re like in their personal life.”
So even if you’re ranked in one of the sixteen MBTI personality types, it doesn’t represent the real you today, because of the limitations of preconceived thinking about its behaviours, by filling out the appropriate answers to multiple-choice questions. You could be ISTJ now, and you could be ESFP another day because of situational reactions and disruptive exposures. Therefore, the naive thought of you belonging to just one of the sixteen personality types at any moment, is a bit myopic.
We have seen disruptive changes taken place everywhere; this time it’s different from past years. The economic, financial and political landscape of many countries have shifted. Employment, business needs, viability and profitability have changed. And so are our behaviours, mentalities, goals, social and moral ethics, working styles, spending, and beliefs as well. Your beliefs today have changed from last year. The disruptive global impact of the coronavirus pandemic has increased the awareness that we must change, adapt and improve, to be prepared for the new normal.
Psychometric and personality tests using the MCQ type are still warranted or required. After all, when such requests are properly adopted, they allow employers and the HR team to learn about the candidate’s reflection process in similar situations. Yes, it is still useful to identify candidates’ potential abilities, apart from their submitted resumes.
So this is not about these psychometric or personality methods, but rather the erroneous approach used by certain companies to conclude a candidate’s personality and abilities, in response to each set of questions.
Many years ago, a friend asked me if he can use the Elements of Numbers (EON) method for “staff optimisation.” Yes, that’s a possibility. It’s even easier today, because a lot has changed after I started developing the FEON+ Pro software, to incorporate a lot of my ‘needed essentials‘ as features into the software. Even without the FEON+ Pro software, anyone using the current FEON+ v1.x (Android) tool can use it in an optimal manner. It’s just that you need to do some kind of mapping with particular groups, know a person’s inner-self character, and reinforce your observations about them, including their external behaviours, during the interview sessions.
Some of my FEN (Five Elements Numerology) students are HR professionals who are knowledgeable about MBTI, DISC, Enneagram and other psychometric methods. They have access to many visual techniques that I have shared in class, to conduct profiling analysis mapped to the job scopes and tasks required. And once you understood the candidate’s potential abilities and their capacities to contribute further to the company’s performance goals; you can use the EON method as a first-level non-invasive-like approach to identify candidate’s strengths and weakness, without them participating in the psychometric and/or personality test. Yes, you can use the EON method to identify staff’s strengths and abilities, and align them optimally to the tasks needed, to achieve better performance goals.
I added the DISC-EON chart (see screenshot of sample EON chart) in FEON+ Pro, with additional information to assist anyone unfamiliar with the DISC method. You can easily share your observations using DISC methodology, but through the EON perspectives. This was an interesting concept, and I showed my FEN students an earlier version a while back. I have occasionally referred to the DISC-EON chart these days in my case analysis, particularly when I know the subject person is familiar with the DISC method.
Oh, the above image is taken from my main site – RonWZSun.com. This is the EONneagram method that I formulated a few years ago, on analysing Enneagram charts through EON perspectives. It’s similar to the DISC-EON approach. Again, this is another interesting technique that can be used to expand your profiling capability.
One last thought, at the individual level… having a growth mindset is always better than having a fixed mindset, whether it’s profiling others or your work attitudes and team skills. Strive to unlearn and relearn, as the theories and application techniques gained over a decade ago may not be relevant today.
Take the opportunity during this pandemic and be prepared to accept, embrace and accelerate the change of role in today’s career needs by upskilling and preparing yourself ahead.
Regard, Ron WZ Sun
