2025-11-21 Merit Appeal Board Minutes

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Merit Appeals Board November 21, 2025 you give a due date, then we’ll work towards that. Whereas other people may naturally be, somewhat, more of a procrastinator—so they need that deadline to inspire them to do it. They may be thinking about the project the whole time, they just may not actively be working on it— and then, they’re going to work on it at the very last minute. And so, it helps to just, kind of, understand what some of those tendencies may be because, if then I’m working with someone who responds better to deadlines because they’re going to work on it as the deadline approaches, I may give more deadlines along the way during the process because that may inspire that person or help that person to accomplish those things. So—and, again, it was all—it’s all based on if the employee wants to share and wants to participate. So, the training was voluntary. We weren’t requiring anybody to share their results, but we let the group know if they wanted to share the results and participate in the activities—it was intended to be a supportive environment where we’re learning and building our communication and building the team. But they really enjoyed it—and we’ve gotten a lot of good feedback from a lot of different departments and a lot of different teams. So, she’s gotten more and more requests for that, so— MR. THOMAS: I remember being involved with this and having this kind of training, it was some years ago—10 or 20 years ago, I think. I remember it being, kind of, a fun parlor game, basically. And kind of, to remind myself of how it works, I went through a Wikipedia article, which turns out to go on for some pages with a lot of footnotes and so forth. But this one paragraph, which I saw, told me more about its scientific credibility—and it reads this way, it says, “Despite its popularity the Myer-Briggs has been widely regarded as pseudoscience by the scientific community. The validity—statistical validity and test validity of the Myers-Briggs as a psychometric instrument has been the subject of much criticism. Media results have called the test, quote, ‘pretty much meaningless’—and one of the worst personality tests in existence.” The Psychologist (inaudible) is especially vocal against Myers-Briggs. He called it, “A fad that won’t die”—in a Psychology Today article—and these are all footnoted—Psychosomatic Specialist Hogan wrote, “Most personality psychologists regard Myer-Briggs as little more than an elaborate Chinese fortune cookie”—can’t be—and comments that, “This is a fascinating example of disguised astrology masquerading as science in order to claim respectability”—so this sort of squares of what I remember of it as what I thought of it as, kind of, a entertainment parlor game that I just question whether the County of Hawaiʻi really wants to leave people with the impression that this somehow has scientific relevance or should have or be taken more seriously than it should be. MS. TOKIHIRO: And I don’t know that Jenny is—the focus of it, really, is on that individual understanding of themselves. I mean, we’re not trying to do anybody’s psychological profile. It’s really being used as just a tool to identify, kind of—are you more this or this—in your preference, right. Page 16