Can you use MBTI to profile clients?
I mean you could, but a mood ring will work just as well.
A director at a training session I ran last month asked if we could build their entire sales approach around Myers-Briggs types. She wanted every salesperson to know instantly whether they were dealing with an INTJ or an ENFP and adjust accordingly.
I felt rather like a vet being asked to examine a unicorn. You don’t want to be cruel, but at some point you do have to mention that the animal isn’t real.
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator was developed by a mother and daughter, neither of whom were psychologists, based on their reading of Jung, who himself would probably have found the whole thing rather reductive.
The fundamental problem isn’t that it’s badly designed, though it is, it’s that it doesn’t measure stable traits. Take it twice, a few weeks apart, and somewhere between 39% and 76% of people get a different type.
In psychology, if your measuring instrument gives you a different answer every time you use it, that’s no different to a mood ring.
But the reason MBTI feels so uncannily accurate is itself quite beautiful psychology. It’s called the Barnum effect, and it describes our tendency to accept vague, flattering personality descriptions as deeply personal when we believe they’ve been tailored to us.
So your profile tells you that you value deep thinking but also enjoy meaningful connections, and you think good lord, that’s exactly me, when in fact it’s exactly everyone. It’s the same mechanism that makes horoscopes work, and I realise that comparison will irritate the devotees, but the architecture is identical.
When have you ever had an MBTI test come back and say actually you’re a bit of an asshole? Never I would wager.
This woman had reorganised her team’s seating plan based on MBTI compatibility. She’d moved people’s desks. When I undiplomatically pointed out that the evidence base was thin, she looked at me the way my mother looks at me when she thinks I’m trying to be amusing. Pity and exasperation in case you’re wondering.
Once you’ve adopted a type as part of who you are, evidence against it feels like a personal attack.
It’s not that people can’t process the data, it’s that processing it would mean dismantling something they’ve built their identity around, and that’s a much bigger ask.
The whole appeal of MBTI in the corporate world is the shortcut, a way of sorting clients into boxes so you don’t have to do the harder work of actually paying attention.
but in luxury, paying attention is rather the entire point. 🤷♂️
See you next week
Paul
So much snake oil, so little time to refute it. And to think I used to believe that these demarcations had real effect and meaning. BTW, my mother is no longer around to give me that look of pity and exasperation, but thankfully my wife has stepped up to take over.
The mood ring comparison is hard to argue with, given the test-retest numbers.
The director's instinct wasn't wrong, though, knowing something real about who you're selling to before the conversation starts is genuinely valuable. The problem is she picked the wrong instrument.
BaZi Astrology (Omnigram) works from birth data rather than self-report, so the result is the same whether someone takes it on a good day or a bad one, whether they're being honest or performing. For a sales context that's significant, you're not relying on the client's self-concept; you're working from something they can't consciously manipulate.
And since paying attention is the entire point, a system that tells you what someone is constitutionally built to respond to, rather than what they think they respond to, seems worth a look.