THE TEST THAT DOESN’T DEFINE YOU: WHY DISC, MBTI AND THE ENNEAGRAM REVEAL HOW YOU SEE YOURSELF, NOT WHO YOU ARE (PART 2 OF 3)

Recapping Where We Left Off
Yesterday, in Part 1, we jointly dismantled one of the most repeated (and least questioned) concepts in the development market: the fallacy of the “comfort zone”.
We saw that the coloured-circle diagram—ubiquitous in corporate workshops and motivational slide-decks—is neurologically problematic. “Comfort” is not psychological prison; it is embodied mastery. Genuine development is not about dramatically “leaping” into panic, but about consciously expanding your window of tolerance.
The comments were revealing. Many of you recognised you’ve been using tools automatically, never asking whether they serve your purpose or whether you are serving theirs.
Today we go significantly deeper.
We will talk about something almost nobody dares question publicly: behavioural tests.
DISC. MBTI. Enneagram. HBDI. Insights.
I will show you the distinction that completely changed my way of working—and that can radically change how you see yourself:
Behavioural tests do NOT reveal who you are.
They reveal how you see yourself.
This apparently subtle difference has absolutely monumental consequences.
Ready to question some of the market’s most sacralised tools?
Let’s go.

THE SCENE THAT EXPOSES THE PROBLEM
Multinational company, executive-committee meeting, a few months ago. Discussion about the cultural change the organisation needs. The story is real!
Mid-meeting the CFO—an extremely competent professional, 15 years in the company, brilliant track-record, solid leadership history—interrupts the discussion:
“Look, take my name off that cultural-transformation leadership list. There’s no point insisting. I’m a high D in DISC. Pure high D. I’m not a ‘people person’. I’m about results, numbers, execution. I don’t have the profile for this. It’s my nature.”
A few days later HR calls me.
“Marcello, we need to talk. I have an urgent case.”
When we met, the HR manager told me what happened in the meeting, emphasising the pause that followed the CFO’s statement. Everyone around the table nodded in agreement, as if something so out of touch with reality had happened that no one dared object—after all, it sounded like an irrefutable scientific argument.
“Marcello, that makes no sense. This executive has been here 15 years. He has always led teams. He has always been a technical and relational reference. And now he’s using a 15-minute questionnaire—and a 1-hour debrief we hired only as a 360° self-assessment tool—as an alibi for not taking on a responsibility that has always been his.
Something is very wrong. We want to hire you for a DCC process. We need to work on these beliefs. Because what he said doesn’t match his reality here. And this could become a serious problem.”
That’s how I landed on this case.
And when I started investigating I realised something that completely changed my understanding of behavioural tests:
Wait.
A 15-minute questionnaire filled out quickly on some random Tuesday and a 1-hour conversation with a stranger telling you the result almost verbatim dictated who you are ontologically?
And you—an intelligent, experienced executive with an excellent education—accepted that as an immutable psychic sentence?
Worse: everyone around the table passively agreed, as if DISC were a DNA exam revealing a fixed genetic makeup?
Here is the structural problem almost nobody openly discusses:
These psychometric tools were originally created as descriptive—momentary snapshots of current behavioural patterns in specific contexts, to be accompanied by an exceptionally trained professional delivering a precise, impartial debrief.
But they are systematically and dangerously used as prescriptive—permanent identity definitions, passively accepted limitations, convenient alibis for not changing.

THE DISTINCTION THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING
Behavioural tests do NOT reveal who you essentially are.
They reveal how you see yourself at the moment you answer.
Let that be fully absorbed before you read on.
When you answer DISC, MBTI, Enneagram—whichever—it is NOT that you are accessing some immutable psychological essence encoded in your DNA or brain structure. You are reporting your current self-perception, laboriously built over years by:
• Personal and family history
• Social and professional context
• Incorporated beliefs about yourself
• Learned fears and insecurities
• Adaptations necessary to survive in specific environments
• Identity narratives you have internalised
A gigantic difference. Radical consequences.

TWO SCENARIOS: CHOOSE WHICH TO BELIEVE
Scenario A – Dominant belief (deeply mistaken):
“I took MBTI. Result: INTJ. Therefore I can’t work effectively with emotions. It’s my fundamental psychological nature. The scientific test proved it.”

Scenario B – Neurobiological reality (precisely correct):
“I answered MBTI saying I consistently prefer logic to emotion. This faithfully reflects how I learned to see myself over life—probably because:
• The formative environments where I grew up intensely valued rationality over emotional sensitivity
• Emotional vulnerability was punished, ridiculed or systematically ignored at crucial moments
• I built a solid professional identity around ‘being rational’, ‘being analytical’, ‘being objective’
• I developed a deep belief that emotions are signs of weakness or irrationality
• When the test asks about preferences I reproduce the narrative I built about myself
Therefore the result is a mirror of my current self-narrative, not a scientific X-ray of my immutable essence.”
See the tectonic difference?
In the first scenario: test as revelation (I discover something fixed)
In the second: test as mirror (I see what I already believe)

THE STORY OF JULIANA: WHEN THE “IMMUTABLE” CHANGES
Juliana, CFO of a mid-size company, took DISC with me three times over three years:
Year 1 (when we started working):
High C absolutely dominant (Conformity / Precision)
“I viscerally need clear rules, rigorously defined processes”
“I can’t function well with ambiguity”
“I’m an extreme detail person by nature, I’ve always been like this”

Year 2 (after deep DCC work):
High D emerging, C reducing significantly
“I can make strategic decisions without having all the data”
“I tolerate uncertainty much better”
“Less paralysis by over-analysis”

Year 3 (now):
Balanced profile across D-I-C
“I access different modes depending on context”
“I’m not hostage to a pattern”
“I have repertoire, not prison”

What changed in Juliana?
Her essential neurology? No.
Her genetics? No.
Her “innate personality”? An increasingly questionable concept.

What changed was how she saw herself.
The narrative about who she was changed.
The beliefs that limited her behavioural repertoire changed.
Environment and assumed responsibilities changed.

And when self-perception changes, test answers change.
When answers change, behaviour changes.
When behaviour changes, results change.

But here is the crucial point:
If Juliana had believed that first DISC was scientific truth about her essence she would have said:
“I can’t become CFO. CFOs need high D, fast decisions, tolerance for ambiguity. I’m a C. It’s my nature. The test proved it. No point trying to change the immutable.”
Perfect self-fulfilling prophecy.

THE QUESTION THAT TERRIFIES CERTIFIERS
“If these tests reveal an immutable psychological essence, why do results change over time?”
Standard (weak) answer:
“Oh, context was different, life moment was different…”
Honest (liberating) answer:
“Because tests capture self-narrative, and narratives are constructed, hence mutable. You are not discovering who you are. You are confirming who you learned to believe you are.”

THE NEUROSCIENCE BEHIND IT
Anil Seth, neuroscientist at the University of Sussex, demonstrates:
“Perception is not passive reception of reality. It is controlled hallucination based on predictions the brain makes.”

Applied to self-perception:
You are not introverted / extroverted / analytical.
You predict you are, based on historical patterns.
That prediction becomes action (you act consistently).
Action generates result that confirms prediction.
Confirmation reinforces belief (“see? I really am like this”).
Belief solidifies an apparently fixed identity.
A self-reinforcing loop that looks like essence but is construction.
Tests capture that loop perfectly. But they do not break it. Often they strengthen it.

VULNERABILITY: MY OWN STORY
For years I was a manager and project lead in telecom engineering. I dealt with people daily. I coordinated teams. I solved conflicts. I made strategic decisions.
And when I took behavioural tests? High C. Pronounced introversion. Technical, rational, analytical profile.
“That’s who I am,” I said with conviction. “I’m a technical manager. Rational. Focused on processes and results.”
But there was a problem I didn’t name: I hated that field. I hated telecom engineering.
I loved people. I loved human development. I loved behavioural transformation.
But I was stuck in a context that wasn’t mine. And the tests? They perfectly captured who I had become to survive there.
Until in therapy the professional asked:
“Marcello, either this is who you are… or it’s who you needed to become to survive in an environment that was never really yours?”
Silence.
I had to rebuild myself. Restart professionally. Leave engineering. Dive into cognitive-behavioural development.
Today, years later? Tests show a radically different profile.
Not because I “discovered my hidden essence”.
But because I finally stopped adapting to the wrong context and started inhabiting the right one.
And when context changes, self-perception changes.
When self-perception changes, tests change.
Because they never capture who you are.
They capture who you are being in the environment you are in.

MBTI: THE SPECIAL CASE
“I’m INTJ. I can’t work with emotions.”
Neurologically false.
You have a limbic system. Hence you process emotions.
You have mirror neurons. Hence you have empathic capacity.
You have ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Hence you can develop emotional regulation.

What you meant was:
“I learned to avoid emotions and built an identity around that avoidance. MBTI gave me a legitimising label so I wouldn’t have to change.”
Quite different, no?

ENNEAGRAM: SOPHISTICATED AND DANGEROUS
Deeper than DISC/MBTI. More nuanced. Exactly for that reason, more dangerous when misused.
“I’m Type 5. I need to withdraw to process. I can’t be emotionally present.”
Maybe.
Or maybe you have a developmental wound related to emotional safety that led you to build a withdrawal pattern.
The Enneagram captured that pattern.
But pattern is not essence.
You can work on it. In psychotherapy, systemic constellation, EMDR, body work.
But if you accept it as “Permanent Type 5” you won’t work on it.
You will manage it.
Big difference.

HOW TO USE TESTS CONSCIOUSLY
I am not saying: “Don’t use tests.”
I am saying: “Use them with acute epistemological awareness.”

Good use of DISC:
“Under pressure I tend to activate a Dominant pattern—fast decisions, results focus, less attention to relational impact. Does this serve me? When? When does it limit me?”

Bad use of DISC:
“I’m a D. I don’t have patience for participative processes.”

Good use of MBTI:
“My current preferred pattern is introversion. I need to manage energy in extroverted contexts. And I can develop extroversion muscles when necessary.”

Bad use of MBTI:
“I’m introverted. I can’t speak in public.”

Good use of Enneagram:
“I notice I avoid confrontation. The Enneagram suggests this might be linked to Type 9. Let’s investigate: why? And do I want to change it?”

Bad use of Enneagram:
“I’m Type 9. I avoid conflict by nature. It’s who I am.”

THE QUESTION THAT IS NEVER ASKED
Why did you answer the test that way?
When you ticked “I prefer to work alone” — was it genuine preference or a protection strategy because teamwork in the past was traumatic?
When you indicated “I don’t like conflict” — was it temperament or a learned belief that conflict is dangerous?
Tests don’t capture this.
They photograph what you are doing.
They do not reveal why you are doing it.
And they definitely do not determine what you could do differently.

FOUR PRINCIPLES FOR CONSCIOUS USE
1. As starting point, never as finish line
“DISC says I tend to be D. Interesting. Let’s explore: when does this serve me? When does it limit me? What am I avoiding by always being D?”

2. As hypothesis, not as truth
“Enneagram suggests Type 8. Maybe. Or maybe I developed this pattern in response to a specific context. Let’s investigate.”

3. As shared language, not as label
In a team, saying “my D is high today” can be useful.
Saying “I can’t do this because I’m a D” is an excuse.

4. As pattern recognition, not as prison
“I notice I avoid confrontation. Tests capture that. Now: why? And do I want to change it?”

FINALLY
What if you are far more fluid, adaptable, mutable than any test suggests?
What if you have the capacity to develop any ‘style’ your life demands?
What if these tests are capturing who you learned to be, not who you essentially are?

Because here is the neuroscientific truth the test market doesn’t want you to know:
Neuroplasticity is real.
You can change.
Patterns are not destiny.

As I always say: The Map Is Not the Territory—You Are the Territory!
Psychometric tests are maps. Some well-drawn, others questionable.
But no map—however sophisticated—can fully capture the complex, mutable, contextual topography that is you.

Use maps. Question maps. Transcend maps.
You are the territory.
And territories, unlike PDF reports, are alive.

TOMORROW: THE END OF THE JOURNEY
We questioned the comfort zone.
We deconstructed behavioural tests.
Tomorrow, in Part 3, the wrap-up:
• What happened to Marina after she closed the notebook?
• Why is DCC/DCCO different from everything you know?
• How to use tools without being used by them?
• And the final invitation to your own transformation

But before tomorrow, reflect:
Is your DISC/MBTI/Enneagram result an insight to explore or an alibi not to change?
How you see yourself—is that who you are, or who you learned to be?
See you tomorrow for the closing.

#marcellodesouza #marcellodesouzaoficial #coachingevoce #desenvolvimentohumano #DISC #MBTI #Enneagrama #testesComportamentais #liderançaconsciente #coachingexecutivo #transformaçãoreal #autoconhecimento #neurociencia #psicologia #DCC #desenvolvimentocomportamental