Neuroscience as the honest broker in the psychometrics debate

I love my friends. I love the differences and the richness of everything we each bring to the relationship. In our world of leadership development, I’ve noticed a little ‘tension’ that sometimes occurs in one particular area. Psychometric tools. Everything from Myers Briggs to the Enneagram and all shades of Colour in-between. 

Putting it very simply there are two camps. In one, psychometrics are tools of the devil. (Yes, I’m totally overstating, for effect). The argument? People aren’t categories, they aren’t numbers, they aren’t letters, they aren’t colours or animals. Everyone is original and there is only the unique lived experience of each person. Psychometrics create categories and end up destroying uniqueness and creativity.  They limit people with endless shorthand conversations, like “I love this stuff; what your numbers? What are your letters? What are your colours?”

The other side of the argument? Psychometrics are from the gods (yes, I’m still overstating for effect). They are better than horoscopes, they describe people perfectly and they are liberating.  Everyone should know their type.

So, what is my take on it? It won’t surprise you to hear me saying it’s not either or, it’s both and. The dangers are clear on both sides of the argument, but I’d like to suggest we get away from polarisation to an intelligent and balanced view. ‘Intelligent’ is not a ‘put-down’ word, it literally means the ability to think something through to its conclusion, rather than get stuck in reactions.

I’d like to suggest that Neuroscience be brought in as the honest broker.

The brain emerges in its development from the right to left. We have a unified experience of life (Right brain) and then we need to make sense of it (Left brain). The way that the brain makes sense of its unified experience is through words, models and metaphors. For example, typology, letters, colours and numbers, provide metaphors and models and as such are necessary tools for the left side of the brain to make sense of ourselves. 

But here is the problem as I see it, explained brilliantly by Iain McGilchrist in Master & Emissary (note the use of metaphor in his title). Following the brains emergence in its development, from the right to left, the unified, lived experience of our lives (the ‘Master’ Right brain), is then managed by the need to explain that experience to ourselves  (the ‘Emissary’ Left brain). But, McGilchrist argues, the Emissary wants to unseat the Master and say “I don’t need you. I can be King all by myself thanks. Everyone understands me. You can’t explain yourself well to anyone”. The Emissary overreaches themselves. They go too far. They make their explanations King, which means we turn our Types and Models, our words and numbers, into a reductionist “this is who I am”. “I’m an 8”, “I’m a Red”, “I’m an INTJ”….”what are you?” 

We need language to make sense of our experience, but it’s a servant, not a master. When it does become spoken about as if it is the Master, then it makes us less than we really are, but if we avoid using language, metaphors or models at all, we deny our lived experience the necessary tools to share itself with others. Psychometrics are really useful to the brains need to complete its experience of itself, but it isn’t the holy grail. The 10 commandments, written on stone, were really useful to give the possibility of a conversation amongst people in this fledgling nation, but they weren’t the actual experience of the Divine that gave birth to the words in the first place. 

So, I suggest that we need to ask a different set of questions of our psychometrics.

ü  Do they have metaphors that explain our unified experience well? 

ü  Are they useful? (Not ‘are they god?’) 

ü  Are they reliable? (Can these psychometrics be used repeatedly across all population groups and cultures?) 

ü  Are they valid? (Do they measure what they say they measure?)

Humility needs to be king in the conversation around psychometrics. Myths have truth embedded in them. Personality is a deep and complex subject, but we shouldn’t shy away from finding words to explain it. Myth and type allow us to say our personality is like……, and not have to say, our personality is…….

Let the journey of self-discovery continue friends.