Pairing the MBTI® and Psychometrics 360 Assessments for Leadership Development 

One of the most valuable things you can do as a development professional is to build self-awareness in the people you support. Why? Research has long highlighted the importance of self-awareness in leadership development. For example, Church (1997) found that high-performing managers showed greater agreement between how they rated their own behaviours and how their direct reports rated them. 

For HR and L&D professionals, this highlights the value of helping leaders understand how their behaviour is perceived by others, so they can recognize strengths and identify opportunities for development. One of the most effective ways to build this awareness is to combine two complementary tools: the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator^® (MBTI^®) assessment, which reveals a client’s natural preferences, and the Psychometrics 360 assessment, which shows how their behaviour is experienced by the people around them. Together, they give you a structured, research-based foundation for coaching conversations that keep driving insight.  

Step 1: Use the MBTI® Instrument to identify preferences and explore intentions 

The MBTI assessment helps individuals understand their inherent preferences and motivations and explore how these preferences influence their approach to work and relationships. It is a powerful starting point for self-knowledge because it describes a person’s preferences without judgement. Every preference is valuable, and every type has strengths as well as possible challenges. When clients better understand their preferences, they can reflect on how those preferences shape their communication, decision-making, and general presence. 

Here’s an example using the MBTI Function Pairs

Step 2: Use the Psychometrics 360 to reveal impact on others 

The Psychometrics 360 assessment shows how your client comes across to others. This gives you the opportunity to explore directly how their self-reported motivations and intentions land with the people around them. Becoming aware of the gaps between self-perception and others’ perceptions encourages clients to take more direct action to use their strengths and address the limitations of their approach. 

Step 3: Combine MBTI® insights and Psychometrics 360 feedback in coaching conversations 

Once you’ve debriefed both assessments, the next step is to explore connections between a client’s preferences and how they are observed and felt by others. The most practical way to do this is to discuss how the client’s type preferences affect their behaviours in three key areas on the Psychometrics 360. 

Work and Execution 

Competencies in the Work and Execution section of the Psychometrics 360 are generally influenced by an individual’s whole type. A holistic impression of one’s type preferences reflects the kinds of environments, motivators, and tasks an individual finds natural and thus, how they probably approach their work in general. 

Questions to ask: 

• How does your MBTI type influence how often you use the competencies in this category? 

• Which competencies might feel more or less natural for you based on your type preferences? 

• What do you need to keep leveraging as you approach tasks? What’s working well? 

• Given your type and the expectations of your role, what are your developmental areas? 

Interacting with Others 

Competencies in the Interacting with Others category are most influenced by an individual’s preferences on Extraversion/Introversion (E/I) and Thinking/Feeling (T/F). While E/I preferences often determine the activities we naturally find energizing (reflection vs interaction; independence vs collaboration), T/F influences the way in which we consider others and make decisions. 

Questions to ask: 

• How does your preference for E/I influence the frequency of your interactions with others? Does this affect teamwork or collaboration? 

• Based on your preferences for T/F, how are you being perceived when it comes to sensitivity, coaching others, or handling disagreements? Are there developmental areas here? 

Thinking and Deciding 

S/N, T/F, and J/P preferences influence the kind of information an individual pays attention to (experience or possibilities), how they make decisions – or the key focus or outcome they try to achieve (outcomes or relationships) – and how decisive they are in their execution of their decisions (closure or exploration). 

Questions to ask: 

• How does your preference for S/N influence how others see you gathering information, focusing on issues, and innovating? 

• How does your T/F preference affect the way you analyze information, solve problems, and make decisions? 

• How does your J/P preference impact your planning and communicating purpose and vision? 

Using the MBTI and Psychometrics 360 Together for Leadership Development

Given the link between self-awareness and performance, and how rarely people receive behavioural feedback that could sharpen their awareness, effective development approaches should do two things:  

1. Use assessments to catalyze an individual’s understanding of themselves. 

2. Give individuals an accurate glimpse of how they affect the world around them.  

Using both the MBTI instrument and the Psychometrics 360 assessment gives you a deeper, multi-layered understanding of a client’s nature, motivations, behaviours, and skills, and of how these come together. That is the power of an integrated approach to individual development, and from there, individual evolution and long-term success. 

For more guidance on using these assessments together, explore our resource, Maximizing Self-Awareness and Individual Effectiveness, which provides practical guidance on connecting personality preferences with behavioural feedback. 

Church, A. (1997). Managerial self-awareness in high-performing individuals in organisations. Journal of Applied Psychology, 82(2) 281-292.