“I start tuning out when type becomes stereotype.” That line came from my fellow Integral Master Coach, Michael Lamberti, during a recent exchange we had on LinkedIn, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it. In his post, Michael noted that some psychometrics teachers make irresponsible generalizations about their tools. And he’s right. I attended a workshop where a teacher told us that a certain personality type only had half of their emotions to work with. It made me roll my eyes so hard I could see my brain.
Personality frameworks and psychometric tools can be game-changing in leadership development, but when type turns into stereotype, we stop seeing the human being in front of us. It’s like mistaking a rough sketch for a finished painting. And when frameworks are distilled down too far, they risk becoming little more than an over-generalized sketch of the individual.
I’ve seen it happen in my work with teams, too. Someone reads their Enneagram Type 7 description to the group, and everyone around them assumes they must be the extroverted life of the party. A leader is tagged as an Insights “Cool Blue,” so the unspoken expectation is that they’ll be meticulous, logical, and great at budgets. Or someone is identified as a Myers-Briggs 'ENTJ,' and the stereotype is that they’ll automatically be a bold, take-charge executive. The problem is that these shorthand labels can blind us to a richer sense of a person's wiring: their values, communication preferences, decision-making styles, quirks, blind spots, limiting beliefs, assumptions, and untapped strengths. When we collapse someone down to the boilerplate description of a single 'type', we miss the richer, more complex portrait right in front of us.
THE DANGER OF ONE-DIMENSIONAL LABELS
Psychometric tools have enormous value. I use them frequently in designing coaching programs to meet my clients where they are, and to help me calibrate our live 1:1 coaching sessions. These tools can shine a light on how we process information, what motivates us, and how we’re wired under stress. But even when we make use of all the rich and robust aspects of a single psychometric model, it still offers just one window into a person. To see someone fully, we need to look through multiple lenses, each revealing different aspects of who they are and how they show up.
The danger comes when we let that single lens define the person. A DISC “C” detail-oriented leader may not actually be strong at planning or follow-through. An “influencing” style might not guarantee charisma or natural leadership. Labelling in this way becomes lazy shorthand and robs us of the deeper nuances of the real, evolving human sitting across from us. This is often how stereotypes are born: each of these psychometric tools has robust depth, with multiple layers of nuance and insight, but when people only memorize or repeat the surface-level summary, the richness is lost, and a flat stereotype takes its place.
This isn’t a new problem. Research on personality assessments has long cautioned against treating results as static or predictors of success. These tools reveal tendencies and preferences, not absolutes. And yet, I still hear leaders in meetings say things like: “Oh, she’s an Insights Yellow, she’ll love this project,” or “He’s an Enneagram 9, so conflict will always be hard for him,” or “Her Myers-Briggs ‘I’ is too high to be successful in that role.” That’s not development; that’s stereotyping.
WHY A DASHBOARD IS BETTER THAN A SINGLE GAUGE
Think about the dashboard in your car. When going on a road trip, you wouldn’t rely only on the speedometer and ignore the fuel gauge, oil pressure, or engine lights. Understanding people (and ourselves) also requires us to pay attention to a dashboard of indicators.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
Psychometrics give you a single lens on patterns and preferences.
Feedback (formal and informal) gives you an external lens.
Self-observation exercises looking for patterns and behaviours adds a third.
Context and environment matter too; how someone shows up can shift depending on culture, stress, and team dynamics.
Values and motivators offer another gauge, revealing what drives someone beneath the surface.
Experimentation shows you what happens when you try something new, then reflect on the gap between what you expected and what actually happened.
Coaching conversations, 360s, and stretch assignments each add data points to your dashboard.
The more gauges you can read, the more accurate your navigation becomes. Lean on just one, and you may think you’re cruising along safely, while in reality you’re going to run out of fuel in 20 kilometers.
MICHAEL LAMBERTI ON THE ENNEAGRAM
This is where I circle back to Michael’s terrific work with the Enneagram, a tool that, when used to its full depth, can surface profound insights about motivation and growth edges. It’s one of the most accurate and robust psychometric tools out there. But his caution is the same as mine: reducing people to stereotypes does them a tremendous disservice. If you’re curious to go deeper into the Enneagram and its applications for leadership, I encourage you to check out Michael Lamberti’s offerings on Substack and LinkedIn. He’s an excellent resource.
SO WHAT SHOULD LEADERS DO?
If you’re a leader using psychometric results to guide development, here’s my invitation:
Treat assessments as conversation starters, not finish lines.
Resist the urge to let a label explain away deeper nuances or complexity.
Stay curious about contradictions: the “introvert” who loves public speaking, the “detail person” who thrives in chaos.
Your team is made up of multi-layered, surprising, sometimes contradictory human beings. Honour that complexity. When type becomes stereotype, you stop seeing potential. But when type is just one gauge on a broader dashboard, you get a far truer picture of the leader – and the person – in front of you.
And when it comes to your own development, choose a coach who works with multiple lenses. A one-dimensional coaching approach will give you a single rough sketch of yourself, which may or may not be useful. The most effective coaches bring in a variety of perspectives and lenses. In Integral Coaching, for example, we look through six interwoven lenses and more than 20 sub-lenses that explore different dimensions of a client’s way of being. Executive coaching then adds further angles such as live observation, feedback, and triangulation with the client’s leader, reflection on developmental objectives, and real-world experimentation. Together, this layered approach offers a far more complete picture of who someone is and how they can grow.
YOUR COACHING CHALLENGE
This week, make it a practice to notice when you or others fall into shorthand labelling. Each time you hear someone say, “She’s a Yellow,” or “He’s so Type 8,” pause and treat it as a piece of data – but not the whole story. Your challenge is to experiment with the mindset that ‘people are layered, dynamic, and evolving’ in your daily interactions.
Here’s how:
Observe one colleague through the lens you normally use, and label them. For example, my go-to lens is the Enneagram, so I would choose a person, and label them with what I think is their Ennea-type (E7w6).
Now, look at that colleague through at least three different lenses (eg: their behaviour under stress, their underlying motivators, their communication style, their values, their interpersonal skills, the cultural or team context they’re operating within, their internal mindset or state, and the systems or structures influencing them). These additional perspectives reflect the inner world, outer behaviour, relationships, and environment, all shaping who someone is and how they show up.
Journal a brief reflection: What were the built-in assumptions you made when you first typed them? What additional insights came when you looked again through additional lenses? Where did your assumptions limit your ability to see them fully before?
Next, try a small experiment in a conversation with this person: frame a question that draws out the very differences you noticed in your reflection. For example, if you assumed they were detail-oriented but discovered they are more motivated by big picture impact, ask what outcomes feel most meaningful to them. If you assumed they avoid conflict but saw signs of strongly held values under pressure, ask what principles guide them when the stakes are high. Pay attention to how their answers confirm, challenge, or expand your assumptions, and consider how you might adjust your approach to meet them where they actually are, rather than where you thought they were.
People are never one-dimensional. They are shaped by inner states, observable behaviours, relationships, and environments. When you consciously widen your view, you start to see the whole layered painting rather than just the roughly sketched outline.
If you’d like support building your own dashboard of lenses and experimenting with them in real life, reach out for a free exploratory conversation at www.leslierohonczy.com. I’d love to be your coach.