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Comparison with Myers Briggs

I also use Myers Briggs and have an enormous amount of respect for the instrument. Indeed when it comes to giving people a detailed description of themselves Myers Briggs is probably better than Herrmann’s Thinking Preferences. However in nearly all cases I would recommend Herrmann because it has other major advantages over Myers Briggs. These include:

1. Herrmann is far more accessible to people because it is easier to use and they are almost immediately able to give close approximations of other people’s profile quite intuitively. Myers Briggs with its 16 quadrants is just too difficult for most people to be able to use unless they are experts in it. In the real world, we don’t know the profile of the person we are dealing with, therefore an instrument is not very useful unless we are able to make a close approximation on the spot.

2. Herrmann is more business friendly. With Herrmann we are able to measure the culture and leadership profiles of a team and an organisation and show these in a powerful, graphically way that communicates issues immediately to even the most hard-nosed business manager. Myers Briggs is great for individuals but weak for groups.

3. Herrmann does not put people into boxes, rather it shows that while all people use all four types of thinking they often have a preference for one (or two) types. Myers Briggs puts people in boxes; they are either Thinkers or Feelers, either Sensors or Intuitives. The world is not as black and white as this and pretending it is leads to many issues of self limitation.

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