How to Avoid the Personality Test Trap

There’s Myers-Briggs, DiSC, Hexaco, Enneagram and more – countless personality assessments designed to provide us with a deeper understanding of ourselves and each other. Here at Balcom, we find them especially helpful for colleague relationships and improving company culture.

But if you’ve taken one of these assessments, particularly with a group of people such as your coworkers, you may have noticed two traps people can fall into:

• Pigeon-holing people into their personality types
• Using personality types to justify behavior

While it’s natural for all of us to fall into these traps as we learn to look at ourselves and others through the lens of the assessment, it can cause us to miss two important truths.

Truth No. 1: People defy categorization

People are complicated. Some personality assessments may describe you to a T, others may seem slightly off. Or maybe no matter what test you take, you straddle multiple personality types, and feel left out because you never fit perfectly into one.

The truth is, we all have traits from all over the map.

As an example, I’ll use True Colors – that’s the personality assessment we use at Balcom, and the one I’m certified to facilitate. It’s rooted in Myers-Briggs, but simplifies the 16 personality types into four, easy-to-remember colors: Blue, Green, Orange and Gold. (Learn about the four types here.)

Most people will test “brighter” in one of these colors, but we all contain all the colors; many of us even “turn up” certain colors in different situations. You may be more green at work, more blue with your spouse, more gold with your kids or more orange with your friends. And that’s healthy – each of the colors is crucial, and sometimes different situations call for different colors or personality traits.