The Curmudgeonly Trainer

The recent exchange with Gary Lear about reliability and validity really highlights one of the major problems with these instruments and their usage. THIS IS IN NO WAY MEANT TO COMMENT ON GARY, BUT ON THE GENERAL SITUATION.
Even the companies that train and certify people to administer these tests are turning out people with a [...]

Ok, I guess it’s time to really wrap this up, this MBTI question. I realize that there are those that believe and those that don’t. I have to offer the observation that this is like discussing religion or politics. No amount of facts, research is going to change the minds of those that hold the [...]

The standards set for MBTI certification are set by the vending company, in EXACTLY the same way that the standards might be set by Langevin — they get to choose.
The requirements to administer the MBTI are not nearly high enough to qualify anyone to use a psychometric test of any kind, even the MBTI, [...]

Harrison Snow wrote:
> Hey Guys,
> Just a reminder that we are talking about an
> “indicator” around “preferences”…..
> MBTI is not the voice of Destiny and the mother-
> daughter team Myers and Briggs along with Carl Jung
> never claimed that it should be used with that kind of authority. It
> is always up to the individual [...]

Trainers, and others often speak of there being significant generational differences that affect how people learn and interact. That’s the pop psych view but it may not be true at all.
Just for thought provocation, there are actually two different “schools” regarding generational differences. The most common one (e.g. popular one) is that different generations are [...]

Robert initially writes this as a concern about the field of NLP:
If you are the type of person who looks at the “proof” about  Scientology  only on scientology sites, then great. The problem here is that the NLP  machine is a “business enterprise”, and as such any research from NLP  sources has to be examined [...]

I’m not sure what to make of what follows, except to say it’s perhaps a good example of trying to use outdated models in today’s world. (That’s if this is serious) Here’s a brief quote from an article
entitled:
Learning Styles
Freud’s Seminal Contribution to Learning Styles
“Anal learners have always been misunderstood and harshly treated in school. Learning [...]

In a discussion of web versus paper and pencil type evaluations, tests etc, often used by trainers or even by HR in selection, someone contended that the modality did not affect results. Dead wrong, and dangerously so particularly if the evaluation is challenged in court. Robert explains
The deal with personality tests, etc., and perhaps other [...]

Trainers often tend to ignore situations where MBTI results are actually used to harm people, classify them, exclude, etc, because the tool is not meant to be used that way. But it happens, and all one has to do is do some searching on the net and usenet. Here’s a few examples
I think it’s informative [...]

Don Clark wrote the following as part of a discussion about learning styles and training, and makes an excellent point about the many learning styles one could look at. My reply follows:
> That’s the whole point, the research does not support the VAK
> learning styles, or the other styles for that matter — it points [...]