“...what role do personality typing systems play within the church, and should church leaders pay attention to them?”

I once interviewed with an employer that made extensive use of Gallup testing for new employees, and one of the traits they were strongly looking for was the “Achiever” mindset, at least as far as I could tell. That’s the guy who’s happiest when you put new work in his inbox, works 60-80 hour weeks, that sort of thing. What they gained with it was employees they really didn’t have to motivate as much.

What did they lose? Well, I looked at their “StrengthsFinder” book, and the “Achiever” does a lot of work, but doesn’t always…..do it well, or with good quality. Later that year, I saw a bunch of billboards from a legal firm asking whether patients at Rochester’s little clinic had had averse effects from the very products I would have been working with if I’d been hired by that particular medical devices manufacturer.

Cause and effect? I can’t prove it, but let’s just say I don’t know that this particular move by that company was helpful in this case. I’d been interviewing for a quality engineering job, and my first thought on reading “StrengthsFinder” and coming to the “achiever” section is “Achievers probably don’t do FMEAs very well”. (FMEA, failure mode effects analysis, is a key tool to protect the customer, especially in high risk industries)

Same basic thing happens in a church setting if it’s used wrongly. Now to be fair, each organization probably selects for a few personality types by default with no intent. So if you use personality typing right, you can see your own weaknesses and work to mitigate them so you don’t get a church that appeals only to certain personalities. Do it wrong, and you get all the weaknesses of the dominant personality type, supported strongly and often unthinkingly by those who work well with that type.

Input: People exceptionally talented in the Input theme have a need to collect and archive. They may accumulate information, ideas, artifacts or even relationships.

Strategic: People exceptionally talented in the Strategic theme create alternative ways to proceed. Faced with any given scenario, they can quickly spot the relevant patterns and issues.

Learner: People exceptionally talented in the Learner theme have a great desire to learn and want to continuously improve. The process of learning, rather than the outcome, excites them.

Belief: People exceptionally talented in the Belief theme have certain core values that are unchanging. Out of these values emerges a defined purpose for their lives.

Intellection: People exceptionally talented in the Intellection theme are characterized by their intellectual activity. They are introspective and appreciate intellectual discussions.

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Might explain a lot about me……………or might be pure bunkum. =)

(Took the test at my workplace, btw.)