What Personality Tests I’m Liking These Days

Which ones help Christian leaders? And how do we faithfully/unfaithfully use them?

So many of my friends are into one personality test or another. Which one do I like and what’s my thinking behind it?

Caveat: this is just my opinion. Please don’t hate! And sorry If I’m being reductionistic about any of these.

Enneagram

I think it’s kind of neat to describe people’s underlying motivation for doing something. I’m squarely an Enneagram 3w4. It’s helpful to know my internal motivation for success, image, and productivity.

However, I find the categories to be limiting. And the stretches that people make once they fit outside the category don’t quite make sense to me. E.g “I’m a 4 but I’m a 1 in stress” → that makes 0 sense to me. Also, I find an unequal balance of distribution. I barely know anyone that’s a 6.

Also, I wonder how much of these categories are culturally conditioned.

Working Genius

I like this one because this is one of the few ones that are 1) highly pragmatic and 2) said in the context of a working team. The concept is that every team should have one of these working geniuses. And these working geniuses reveal the type of work that love doing and loathe doing. I found this to be really helpful in one season of my life. PS - mine are: “Wonder” and “Invention”

Myers Briggs

Honestly, I don’t think this is super helpful. On the spectrum between practical and abstract, I find Myers Briggs to be highly abstract.

In my experience people will share their Myers Briggs, then people just go “hmm interesting.” and they think to themselves “I have no idea what to do with that information. Other personality tests are more direct and actionable in my opinion.

Aside from E v I, I don’t see people talking about Myers-Briggs in a pragmatic way.

Mine is ENTJ (but I have literally no idea what to do with that)

Strength Finders

So personality tests, in my opinion, fall into 2 categories: Categorical or Compositional. Category means you “fall into one of these categories”. Compositional meaning “You are a unique composite of any number of personalities.”

Strengthfinders is amazing as a compositional tool. A person can be a unique combination of any mixture of personalities.

The only caveat is that there are so many strengths that it’s

1. hard to remember yours (I surely don’t remember mine off the top of my head and

2. hard to figure out how to position people to work well together since it’s so complicated.

In short, my favorite ones these days are Working Genius and Enneagram

How should we use personality tools as Christian leaders?

I see several good uses for these personality tests as Christian leaders. Here are my top ones:

1. Figuring out how to work well together as a team

Undoubtedly if you’re a Christian leader, you are going to be working on a team. I’ve found it helpful to have a loose idea of what personality I am in context to others so that I can measure how to fit in and work together as a team. Particularly the Working Genius is really helpful for that.

2. Figuring out your heart motivation for growth

For this reason, I do like enneagram. As a 3, it has helped me to constantly check myself on whether I’m driven by success or fame. People who have an awareness of their tendencies have a better idea of submitting those desires to Jesus so that they can work out of a place of health.

Biggest Mistakes I see Christian Leaders Make

That being said, I think we should have cautions. I have learned all these the hard way and by watching people.