CliftonStrengths, MBTI, PI, et. al. are Anathema for Leadership: We Need to Move Beyond Static Assessments

Written By Robert Synak

[Initium] ergo ut esset, creatus est homo, ante quem nullus fuit—That there be a beginning, [hu]man was created, before whom there was nobody

—Augustine

 

Education and business have a problem, an addiction, and it's hiding in plain sight: assessments going by names like CliftonStrengths Finder (CSF), Myers-Briggs (MBTI), and the Predictive Index (PI) Behavioral Assessment. They promise insights and deliver constraints. Dice people to pieces and reduce human potential to useful fatuous categories. Does leadership fit neatly into a spider chart? In your experience? It's about what happens when the situation changes, when everything you thought you knew becomes irrelevant. Leadership is action, not a personality trait, immutable–it’s earned, not assigned. It won’t be gate-kept out of the garden. It sneers at standardized tests

There’s ample critique of leadership assessment tools on the grounds of bias and both contra-indicative statistics, and dearth of statistical correlation supporting these assessments' use, and as in the case of CliftonStrengths and Predictive Index, a glaring lack of peer review.

I look at it from the perspective of a life-long leader who’s lately been increasingly confronted with these assessment frameworks and worried about the implications at a macro scale on our economy, intellectual landscape, innovation, and on the individual scale in the way it shapes and confines individuals and impacts access to opportunity.

Hazy black and white photo of the author staring into the camera, hands folded before him, perhaps a sneer or grimace or failed smile on his face.

A known leader.

Sneering, I think. Or grimacing? A failed fake smile?

I've taken CliftonStrengths in business school, and have done the CliftonStrengths, MBTI and PI during the hiring process. And every time I've walked away with the same realization: these tests aren't helping. They're locking people into narrow definitions instead of expanding their potential. They're telling organizations what people are—and subtly suggesting what they can never become.

I walk away thinking much less of the people who ask me to take them.

I urge a rethink of these frameworks' use, value, and cost. Leadership isn't a category. It's action. It's growth. It's what is happening now. Leadership requires more than a top-five list of traits. It's messy, unpredictable, and demands constant adaptation. As it is this moment right here, it is not scored on a $50 quiz.

 

Assessments Are Shackles, Not Tools

If you've applied for a few hundred leadership jobs recently you've likely been forced to take one of these assessments—before you even get a shot at an interview. For candidates, these tests feel less like tools and more like gatekeepers. They create an illusion of insight while filtering out talent based on algorithms. It's not just frustrating—it's dangerous. Squanders time. Drains value from our economy. Leadership doesn't show up in a 30-minute multiple-choice assessment. The ability to lead comes from experience, learning, and adaptability.

To their detriment, educational institutions and a surprising number of hiring managers treat frameworks like gospel, asking students and applicants to contort themselves into rigid models. For my MBA, I was required to do a CliftonStrengths. The professor who assigned the test didn't recognize my rejection of the test or criticism of it, despite me laying it out in a 2000-word essay I submitted in response to the test. The professor was blind to even the possibility that I might reject CliftonStrength's circumscription of my body. Faith in standardized testing closed their eyes to the possibility that I might supply them with something new in their life.

Modern English has lost the word for this kind of trust. The biblical word for it is obedience. Obedience in the biblical sense means unobstructed listening, unconditional readiness to hear, untrammeled disposition to be surprised. It has nothing to do with what we call obedience today, something that always implies submission, and ever so faintly connotes the relationship between ourselves and our dogs. When I submit my heart, my mind, my body come to be below the other. When I listen unconditionally, respectfully, courageously with the readiness to take in the other as a radical surprise, I do something else. I bow, bend over towards the total otherness of someone. But I renounce searching for bridges between the other and me, recognizing that a gulf separates us. Leaning into this chasm makes me aware of the depth of my loneliness, and able to bear it in the light of the substantial likeness between the other and myself. All that reaches me is the other in their word, which I accept on faith. But, by the strength of this word I now can trust myself to walk on the surface, without being engulfed by institutional power. 

–Ivan Illich, Educational Enterprise in Light of the Gospel

Show me the standardized test that has a category for Rainmaker.

Leadership Is a Moving Target—Not a Test Score

The biggest lie these assessments tell us? Strengths are fixed. Organic. Biological. Immutable. That categories circumscribe humans. That categories were found like magic creatures waiting to be discovered in the woods. Leadership requires more than knowing your top five strengths—it's about developing the skills you need as you need them. Sometimes, tucking a few away into your back pocket and bringing others out. Leaders aren't born strategic or communicative; they become that way when the situation demands it.

Think of how that sounds: "Klara over there, she was born Strategic." Ridiculous, isn't it? 

Leaders must be agile, responding to shifting challenges with new tactics. You don't stay relevant by leaning on what you already know. You grow by learning, adapting, and stepping into unfamiliar roles. An Achiever today might need to develop Empathy tomorrow. Or maybe they had it all along, and tomorrow is the day they chose to show it. A Competitor might need to become a Coach. Leadership is fluid—and these frameworks can't keep up.

Hiring Managers and Educators: Stop Outsourcing Insight

The real problem isn't the assessments; but the people and organizations that treat them as definitive. They're a fuzzy photograph representing only what was already in the emulsion. Business schools and employers use these tools as shortcuts, perhaps distrusting their own judgment, perhaps lazy or lacking skills, and assuming that a test result reveals everything worth knowing about a person. Leadership and leadership assessment can't be outsourced to an algorithm.

When hiring managers rely on assessments to determine who moves forward they miss out on great, better, surprising talent. And who could do so better. Business schools, too, do their students a disservice by pushing frameworks that limit their development. Instead of teaching students how to navigate ambiguity and grow into new roles, these institutions train them to fit into predefined categories. That is education in believing in education—it’s not what we need in our organizations.

PwC

One of many things I appreciated about my time at PwC, a company endemically composed entirely of leaders, is that when we were taught to interview new consultants, managers, and directors, we were taught and directed to look at only three things about them:

  • Analytic chops

  • Communication effectiveness

  • Time management

That was it. 

That's what we trusted with our money and reputations.

Leadership Isn't a Basket of Categories—It's a Battle, It's like Love

Like love, approach leadership tender, brave, and open.

In real life, leadership is earned every day. It's a battle. It's like love. A position and opportunity you take from someone else, and hold. A competitor knows this instinctively: leadership is never a given. It has to be held and defended, moment by moment, decision by decision. This isn't about being "strategic" or "communicative" or “competitive” or … or … any space within the limits of assessment tools. It's about figuring out what the team, the situation, and the mission require—and delivering, even if it's something you haven't mastered yet.

You will screw it up badly some days, and it will hurt.

If you're not growing, you're done. If you're not striving to out-lead your peers, you're already behind. Influential leaders keep their edge by evolving—not by ticking off a list of strengths but by adapting to new challenges, learning continuously, and staying sharp. Leadership is always up for grabs. And if you're not competing, not giving your people everything you have, you're just pretending to lead.

Real Leaders Build Themselves—and Their Teams

What separates real leaders from managers disguised as leaders? Vision and communication. Real leaders travel into the unknown, returning with a plan that makes the future clear. They inspire action—not through intimidation or manipulation, but by making everyone around them feel like stakeholders in something bigger.

That's not something a static framework can assess. Yes, I know they have a box for Communication. Outstanding leadership demands that you use every tool available, which means learning to access traits beyond the comfort zone of your top five strengths. Don't have "Communication" in your strengths profile? Too bad. You'll need it anyway. Leadership demands it.

The best leaders work across the spectrum—leading upward, laterally, and downward. They know when to be a pacesetter, when to step back, and when to coach. They're fluent in multiple leadership styles because they've had to be. They aren't born with the answers—they earn them by living through hard decisions and ambiguous situations.

Break the Framework. Lead Better.

Frameworks like CliftonStrengths and PI portend self-knowledge and revelation–to tell you who you are. And if that’s all you want to be, fine. See the above section.

Leadership is about showing up, leveling up, and never settling. To me, about love and a desire for surprise. It's about having a vision, communicating it clearly, and inspiring others to move forward with you. It's about winning and holding your ground, even when the rules of the game change. CliftonStrengths wants you to play to your strengths. Great leaders go beyond strengths—they play to the challenge.

You build reality in the wild, in real-time, when you willingly embrace uncertainty and do the work to stay ahead. That's leadership—dynamic, adaptive, and earned. Anything else is just management. The world doesn't need more managers. It needs more leaders.

Call to Action

Ready to leave static frameworks behind? Embrace your competence? Leadership isn’t about what an assessment says. It’s about what you do next. Let’s build leaders who thrive, and who are apart from their name, an unknown.

References and Further Reading

Photo Copyright @Sonja Synak, www.sonjasynak.com.

Robert Synak
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