Annie Murphy Paul's recent book, The Cult of Personality, demonstrates why most commonly used behavioral assessment and personality "profiling techniques range from flawed to fraud. Even the vaunted Rorschach has questionable roots and results. The MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Inventory) has a frighteningly high degree of different results with retesters.

            Most of the instruments on the market that are valid (e.g., demonstrate reliability, construct validity, content validity, and concurrent validity) were originally meant to diagnose aberration and mental health problems, not to describe the main, healthy population. And most of the rest, well, just ain't valid. You can give a horoscope if you like, and even justify it by saying, "People feel that it does describe them, and I get amazing feedback as a coach, but that doesn't make it anything more than a parlor game.

            Someone who was investigating the possibility of joining my Mentor Program stopped me while I was providing a description and said, "Wow, you're really a high visualizer, aren't you? When I said I had no idea what he was talking about, he went on to ascribe quite a few behaviors and attributes to me, simply from three minutes on the phone.

            "What do you think? he said.

            "You're not right for this program, I said, hanging up.

            I once watched, flabbergasted, while an MBTI "analyst asked an executive vice president questions which the latter replied to in the manner he believed his deceased mother would have used. When I inquired about just what the heck was going on, the analyst said, "We're trying to type his mother, so that we can get to the route of their poor relationship over the years, which still bothers him.

            Who can make this stuff up?

            It's ironic is this politically correct age of doing somersaults to ensure that no one is offended by a pronoun that we think nothing of providing labels and characterizations to shrugs, moans, and responses to perfectly imperfect instruments. What is often merely a consultant's way of taking on more "product to enhance revenues becomes a divining rod for finding personality traits.

            I don't think so. The French still use handwriting analysis in hiring, of course, but then again, they drink warm Coca Cola.

Alan Weiss is an OD consultant for Fortune 500 organizations, a very popular keynote speaker, and the author of 23 books published in six languages. He serves on several boards, including The Harvard Center for Mental Health and the Media. You can reach him via his web site, http://www.summitconsulting.com. His newest book, The Million Dollar Consultant's Toolbox, will be released by John Wiley later this year.