Personality Types in the workplace

If you are in charge of people, no matter how big or small your team, at some point you will face a situation where your personality simply doesn’t gel with one of your staff or colleagues.

Two years ago my business coach introduced me to the concept of ‘personality profiling’ to use as a management tool. Ever since then I have made this one of the key pillars upon which I base my leadership philosophy.

During this time I have taken this process to the next step by creating a database of all of the people I have had do the test – to give myself the best chance of understanding what type of person I am working with, what their motivators are and what behaviours I can expect to see from them in the future.

Once you take the time to fully understand the frame work, amazing things start to happen. People are no longer frustrating, you simply see their strengths and weaknesses. You will understand why they may not be getting along with a certain staff member and you will have some place to start when offering advice how to rectify the situation.

Most amazingly, you will start to build more self-awareness in the process, which is the key to great leadership. It is not about changing who you are, but understanding how you are impacting other people.

I have looked at many different tools that you can use to establish a person’s ‘personality type’. These include,

·        Hexaco personality inventory

·        Facet 5

o  These are both well suited to a pre-start check for an employee and understanding ones learning styles.

·        16 Personality Types (an adaptation of the Myers Briggs format) – which is the one I like the best.

o  It gives a very structured outline of a person’s behavioural preference and a summary of what you can expect to see as they become more known to you

o  I personally like this application as the caricatures used make it easy for people to engage with the information

Each of which has it strengths and depending on the scenario…. you will find one that works best for your organisation.

For what it is worth, on the 16 personality test, I am an ‘Executive’ which means I like taking on responsibility for things, can be traditional in my views and overbearing on others if I am not careful…….I have to work on this every day.

Let me know how you go with the tests.