Myers-Briggs is baseless and stagnates your life. Here’s how to make money improving people’s lives while undermining it.

May 25, 2016 by Joshua
in Education, Entrepreneurship

I’ve written before about the problems with the Myers-Briggs test. Wikipedia points to plenty of research that shows it lacks validity, utility, reliability, and that its underlying model of four dichotomies has no evidence.

I’ve written about how its model that your traits on four axes stay the same independent of situation don’t help you and undermine your improvement. Some of my favorite posts show the model of what it calls introversion and extroversion likely make your life worse and complacent. I consider that model bankrupt at best and offer another model to replace introversion and extroversion that readers have described as one of the best things they’ve read to improve their lives.

Here’s a way to make money helping people improve their lives (instead of telling them they’re just that way) while undermining the Myers-Briggs test.

According to Myers-Briggs, you have certain types that stay consistent. According to my model to replace its bankrupt concepts of introversion and extroversion, scoring low in one of its “types” means you haven’t learned how to succeed in it. If you score low in some area of its made-up concepts of feeling, sensing, intuition, or whatever, that’s a set of skills you can learn. The test can’t tell between someone who is equally strong in two of its opposing “types” or equally weak in them, which is a failing of the test even by its own standards, but you can tell.

If you’re good at logic but not empathy, I suggest you can learn empathy.

The business model

So here’s the business: offer courses in strengthening people in the axes they score low in. Since the test has four axes with two values each, you could offer eight high-level courses to teach each value, or even sixteen courses for each possible type.

The courses could satisfy a demand of people who need skills on their teams but don’t have resources to acquire new people. They can develop themselves. Some people might want to become more N or S or I or J or whatever value. Others might want to become strongest in INTJ or whatever specific type they want.

The courses also undermine the test, since it shows you can become what you want. It empowers you to change yourself if you want.

Let’s end this baseless test and empower each other in the process.

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