The Importance of ‘Best-Fit’ Type (and did Stephen Colbert find his?!)

The MBTI® assessment often appears in the news, most of the time in an article bashing its efficacy. Still, it was more fun this time – Stephen Colbert received an MBTI® interpretive session on late-night TV as part of his segment, “Who is Stephen Colbert?”

The segment prompted chatter with my fellow Type practitioners on Facebook: “Could Colbert really have INFP preferences?” “Why didn’t we get that gig?” And, of course, “What did the facilitator do wrong that we could have done better?”!

Type expert and Executive Coach Vicky Jo Varner wrote a balanced account of the segment: I respect Vicky Jo’s statement that we may be taking a cheap shot by analyzing the show in hindsight, and I agree with Type Practitioner and media guru Jill Chivers, who said that we will never know what occurred due to the possibility of clips being omitted from the actual aired segment.

However, an essential element was missing from the aired segment that may not be obvious to the untrained eye – the “Best-Fit Type” Process.  Vicky Jo states,

“Along with the declarative language about Colbert’s type pattern [you are a ___Type], it looks as though [the practitioner] simply handed him his result.  They did not televise (nor imply) a Best-Fit moment where Colbert was allowed to validate his best-fit type pattern.  Instead, it was blatantly handed to him as a printed report (with huge letters!).  Yet all facilitators have been trained that the client determines the type pattern and must reconcile a reported result with the client’s inclinations.  A client’s own choice always takes precedence over the assessment result.”

Although most lay people don’t know that this process is integral to the feedback session, our Certification courses stress the ethical importance of allowing people to select their Type before handing out reported results. The MBTI® was created to be one hypothesis of someone’s Type.  This is an ethical requirement for several reasons:

• If you are handed a computerized report before self-selecting your Type, you may be boxed into a Type that does not fit for you because…
• The MBTI® is not a test; it’s a self-report questionnaire that forces you to choose between opposites. Your mindset (e.g., what you were thinking about or the frame of mind you were in when you filled out the assessment) can affect what you select – it’s a snapshot in time, therefore…
• You may not select the answers that reflect who you truly are. You may even split your votes between opposite ways of behaving because you act differently in different situations.
• With a second opportunity to select again, you might see things differently in a facilitated session.

It’s a check and a double-check.

Research shows that environmental influences, including work or home pressures, culture, parental or other relationship pressures, misunderstanding words or questions, social pressures, life crises, or where you may be in your growth and development, can affect your reported results. This does not invalidate the psychometric validity and reliability of the instrument, which has been tested for over 60 years. Still, it does caution us as practitioners not to label or box people in and as consumers, to question results and think about our mindset when we took the instrument. No self-report questionnaire can be 100% accurate all of the time.

It is not surprising that Colbert did not get to select his Type and then compare it to his Reported Type to get his Best Fit; it’s comedy, after all. But what is disheartening for those in the business is that this is commonplace for most people who take the Indicator.

And why does it matter?  The MBTI is a tool to help us become better team members, leaders, change agents, communicators, problem solvers, learners, teachers, and collaborators. In that case, we need to work from a place of self-awareness – we need to work from an understanding of who we truly are so we can grow in ways that help us meet all of our individual and collective goals.

If people are boxed into a Type that is not their proper fit, MBTI results are dismissed, and Type becomes what Jung and Myers feared most – nothing more than a parlor game.

So, for those of you who have taken the Indicator without the opportunity to validate your Type or to put Type to work to resolve real-world issues, consider that you may have missed out on what Type has to offer; you may benefit from introducing the instrument again, but the right way.

If you are looking for a practitioner to facilitate an MBTI session for your group, ask if they conduct Best-fit Type interpretations. If they don’t, you may want to reconsider your selection; an instrument is only as effective as the person who delivers it.