Personal Development Tools and Assessments: Supporting Growth and Liberation or Reinforcing Oppression and injustice?

I have been meaning to write this article for some time. In personal development and coaching/consulting/healing spaces it is fairly common to use personality assessments like Myers-Briggs or Strengths Finders or similar to understand aspects of who you are and how best you work.

It also is commonly used in corporate or institutional settings to understand team dynamics and ways to come together in cooperation and more effective communication.

People live by these assessments. As much as I would love to say these assessments are wonderful and solve everything, I would be off the mark.

And some people do not want to have anything to do with them, and understandably so.
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In reality, the truth is somewhere in the middle.

​These tools, each have strengths of their own. They can illuminate the shadows and show the way for new perspectives and ways of being. They can give us insights into how we operate, communicate, and our needs and capacities. And they give us ways to come together as a team or in interpersonal relationships, so we can relate to each other in ways that support each other and the relationship. We could use the results of these assessments to help us achieve our goals and hone our vision and determine how best to take action.

In my work and experience, if not used with care, these tools can be wielded like weapons and cause further harm. Like in many other things, context matters here too. If we’re using these tools in the hopes of liberation without a great understanding of context, we’re bound to hurt ourselves and others with these tools.

As with all tools and systems and dynamics, the wider context and biases seep in here too. For instance, the origins of the Myers-Briggs assessment is steeped in misogyny and capitalism (You can read more about this here).

If we’re not actively dismantling the various ‘isms’ in our life, work, and relationships, we will inadvertently bring that baggage with us into this space as well. The creators of these systems, mostly, white men from the Global North, who brought their own biases and ways of being and ‘bootstrap’ mentalities with them into the personal growth space.

And it barely matters what assessment we are talking about, it is the basis and the underlying bias of the test. And access to taking, interpreting, and implementing the results.

Some examples...

Here are a few for your purview:

• The Kolbe A is a $50 (49.95 USD at the time of writing) investment. It helps determine our action styles, however, it does not take into account disability, capacity, and issues of accessibility and access. Knowing our action taking tendencies helps us align with those energies, yet fifty dollars is not in everyone’s budget.
• Scientific Hand Analysis has elements of the ancient art of palmistry and most definitely appropriates from these practices. Yes, it’s a new way to look at the dermatoglyphs and that contribution of translating these glyphs into and life’s lessons and themes. Yet, it can easily bypassour realities of trauma, layers of personal truth and experience, and the biases of the readers canalso impact the efficacy of the ways our hands are read.
• Human Design mixes from several traditions including astrology, the chakras, and Kabbalah (the tree of life). There are accessibility issues with many of Ra Uru Hu’s original teachings being put behind paywalls now (for many years much of his body of work was available widely online) and even finding your chart can be difficult if you’re unsure of birth times due to adoption or birth in places where birthtime was not noted. Yet the test is fairly common and accessible widely.
• How the World Sees You is amazing in finding ways you stand out to other brands but ignores the other implications of how the world really sees us, with our rose-tinted glasses of implicit biases in place. Without this crucial distinction, this test can easily be warped to upholding things like ‘you’re being too loud (or powerful)’ to women of color or ‘silencing or ignoring’ marginalized peoples in the marketing and branding process.
• Myers-Briggs designed to understand leadership qualities and specifically upholds patriarchy and capitalism, however, it’s a useful tool in understanding personality and ways of being.

Most of these tools are marketed and designed for white people in power and influenced positions or those in the middle classes. We must consider that those in poverty, those with disabilities and the marginalized in making this safe and accessible to them, where we can. The tropes of society can easily be mirrored in how the results are interpreted and put into practice.

Many of these tests are embedded with and uphold misogyny, gender binary, cultural appropriation, racism, ableism/saneism, capitalism/neoliberalism, alternate ways of being, and so on.

How this might work in practice

Here is an example of how this may work in practice:

Recently I had a conversation with a fellow human design enthusiast. I was not sure what to expect, but I am always pleased to talk to those who take the time to integrate human design or other assessments into their daily working lives, work, and relationships.

After introductions and pleasantries, the conversation quickly went the wrong direction. Human Design has a little known very nuanced application for small groups and teams called the ‘Penta’.

This person seemed to think that if all aspects of the Penta were met by a group of three individuals, they could work harmoniously even if they did not like each other or get along. This was a direct interpretation by Ra Uru Hu and how he described it. When I brought up structural and systemic oppression, this person shrugged and was silent. They were unable to see that misogyny or racism (or other forms of oppression) could play into that dynamic, that the value of the ‘Penta’ was more important than our individual needs and how such a framework could bypass these topics or actually actively encourage victim-blaming or silencing.

It was a difficult conversation and though there were some pearls that I gleaned from the discussion, mostly I had to wade through a common brand of white feminism and patriarchy, getting harmed along the way. I could have chosen to walk away but felt stuck. What if I had paid for a session only to be harmed? I had the spoons to deal with it that day, but what if I had not? What if that space turned out to be one of greater inequity and layers of privilege that also included her being the human design practitioner and I was the client? What if I walked into a space to network, or seek help as a client only to be harmed and gaslit? How else would these biases be used against me or others in other situations?

Many of my clients have hidden disabilities and multiple margins, and here are some ways I use these tools to uplift and empower, find clarity and insight, and move us into integration, embodiment, and aligned action.
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Way to Use Assessments in More Useful Ways
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1. Employ radical consent. I’ve worked with a number of practitioners in my years and few have had​ the skill level and embodied radical consent in their practice and ways of doing their work. It makes for a safe environment for radical change to take place. When we’re in a place of vulnerability in doing healing work, we need someone who can hold strong boundaries and make sure the container is a space of safety as we navigate big changes. When in doubt, let’s honor the sovereignty of another. Can we honor where people are and believe their experiences of the world? Can we honor our own truths?
2. Actively seek to understand and dismantle your biases. We’re all privileged in some form and have edges. We also have wounds that need healing. Determine where you are and do that work. Not only will it show in your ability to do this work with less harm, but you reintegrate and reclaim parts of your own humanity in the process. Can you name your biases? Can you name the tropes that people typically use against the marginalized and stop perpetuating and believing them? What mirrors and projections might be in play?
3. Translate ways of being and your methodology and approach that show (not tell) your clients they are in a safe space. Some people do this by using imagery and words of the social justice movement, but most are purely performative, not going nearly deep enough. The real translation happens at a granular level. Some of these are ‘best practices’ within the industry, many are not. And because these assessments are very personalized, how we translate them into practices and ways of being in HOW we deliver these teachings and our services is personal to us and our own brand.
4. Understand your intent. What do you want out of these test results for yourself or for others? Can you point out your agency, your agenda, your biases, and your needs and capacity BEFORE you use these types of tools and glean these answers from a healer/coach before entering into a client relationship with them? Be clear before going any further.
5. Go beyond binary thinking. It’s not simply a either-or or neither-nor proposition often times. Things are present in more complex and nuanced ways. There is almost always multiple layers at work, there is a both/and (and, and, and…) ways of being and levels of truth. Hold these tensions and truths in yourself.
6. Slow down. When we’re racing into action and into ‘knowing’ and to being the ‘expert’ we are bound to miss the nuance and the actual chance to connect, to listen, to be, and to explore. Most commonly, we fall into being pressured in ways that don’t support us. Things unfold in their own way, in their own time, and that is just perfect. When we add disability, trauma, or neurodivergence, we most definitely need to move at a rate that support us.
7. Remember who you are and your agency before taking any assessment. Take what works and leave the rest. There is always another way to glean the same information or find the answers, you’re not limited to working with people or tools that cause you harm.

Image: A person's hand holding a piece of broken mirror, or reflective glass, looking at their eye reflected back at them.

Image Credit: Vince Fleming, Unsplash