After nearly 60 years in use it is abundantly clear the MBTI was never developed for the purpose of changing personality. Such a claim would be unsupportable. No such claim has been presented here.

The intent has never been to "change" personality. Rather, it is to understand it and more fully use it in our daily lives at home and at work.

It does help people understand more about their own hierarchy of preferences in the areas of perception and judgment (our preferred ways for taking in information and making decisions about that information). We use these preferences at work, at home...every day. These preferences represent an explanation, not an excuse, for behavior.

And because it explains basic patterns in human functioning, the MBTI is used for a wide variety of purposes including the following:

Self-understanding and development
Career development and exploration
Organization development
Team building
Management and leadership training
Problem solving
Relationship counseling
Education and curriculum development
Academic counseling
Diversity and multicultural training

“Since type provides a framework for understanding individual differences, and provides a dynamic model of individual development, it has found wide application in the many functions that compose an organization," Gordon Lawrence and Charles Martin in Building People, Building Programs

(Note: The Myers & Briggs Foundation website provides a far more thorough discussion of personality and the MBTI.

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The MBTI should never be used to try to change a person's core personality traits. The very thought of it makes me cringe. That would be a gross misuse of the instrument.

I agree wholeheartedly.

I don't think it is a matter of his personality, it is more of a matter of his interpersonal communication skills. So what if he is robotic, he just needs to learn to find common ground with his clients. Does your company offer education reimbursement? He could attend an IP communication course and I bet once he learns to show interest in his clients needs, his numbers will improve.

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he just needs to learn to find common ground with his clients.

Yup - that's what I was referring to when I talked about making a connection with his customers. Thing is, there's interpersonal communication and there's interpersonal communication. There's no way to infuse a person with the talent to interact with others. Some people have a knack and others have to work hard at it --- the latter group have to *WANT* to work at it. Does he WANT to change? If not, no amount of training will help.

Of course personality cannot be trained, but what I think the above poster is getting is is that by using a tool you can attempt to raise awareness of interpersonal communication style of one's self and use it for a communicative improvement program.

More importantly, once you truly understand your own personal communication style you can begin to build strategies to help determine what that style may be in others and begin to build more effective strategies in dealing with people who aren't like you. For a "people person" it might come more naturally, but it doesn't mean that it can't be learned by everybody.

It's not a matter of changing someone's personality. It's a matter of raising awareness in yourself and effectively recognizing traits in others. This allows you to build strategies to meet the needs of the person with whom you are communicating.

What you end up with at the end of the day isn't someone with a "new personality", but you do have someone who can exhibit vastly improved on the job behaviors - if properly trained.

All that said, you can't beat job-fit. But though the thought of personality training is certainly cringe-worthy, it doesn't mean you need to fire anyone either.
Personality/Behavioral assessments are a great tool in this case, not to say
"Hey Mr. Jones, you are an INTJ at your core and we need to train you to become a ENTP at your core."
But to say:
"You are an INTJ and we need you to recognize where you are likely to trip up when you encounter an ENTP and lose the connection, so here are some strategies to keep in mind when communicating with so and so.".

That's the basis for using the tool. Improving someone's ability to recognize style in others and effectively "flex" their own preferred communication style momentarily to meet those communication needs. Anybody can do it if given the right information.