Personality Type and Work Teams
Personality Type and Work Teams
by Kenneth L. Meyer
There are two huge realities in today’s workplace related to human resources. One is that most operations get broken down or reduced to work teams
or sections and secondly is that most folks who work today do not like what they are doing more rather than less. Dissatisfaction in the workplace is pandemic so a analysis of how work team can be helped via personality type can be critical and very profitable.
If we could match our unique skills and abilities in a better way with what we do for a living we would be much happier and work would be more productive.
This article is the first of several approaching the idea that work teams and work assignments go better when the people on the work team know more about who they are; and understanding who they are begins with a detailed knowledge of their own personality type.
Let’s take a look in an overall way at how work teams functions, what they are and how they can be more positively impacted when work team members understand their personality types.
There are many factors impacting the work team environment such as the corporation or overall employment entity, let’s call it a corporation to keep it simple. Within the corporation there will be contexts impacting the work environment regarding such things as corporate politics, certain technical realities, geographical impacts, economic matters and other cultural factors within which the work team will find themselves functioning. Each and all of the corporate realities will set up a context all its own and within which the work team must function.
We won’t dissect each of the above corporate factors at this writing; we’ll take a look at them later. For now there are about five areas within the overall corporate setting that impact the work team.
They are
1. How the team sees itself.
2. Collectively who are the team members?
3. What are the team members here to do in the first place?
4. Just exactly how are they going to do it (whatever it is)
5. How did they do it or how are they doing so far.
The first feature of most work teams are collectively who are the team members? First and foremost a team is a collection of individuals. Each has an array of differing (sometimes complementing) skills, talents, values, experiences, perspectives and ideas to bring to the team. Now the more self-aware each team member is of what they are bringing to the team the more positive their contribution can be, the less sure, the more foggy each team member is about what they do well and the less productive they will be. In addition, the more each team member knows and understands about
other members of the team regarding skills, talents, etc….the better working relationship they can have and the more accurate any expectations will be. The better one team member can “use” or allocate the assets of other team members the better for the group
effort.
This is where we introduce and use Myers-Briggs personality types. There are 16 personality types each with individual strengths and weaknesses. The better one understands their personality type the better the work team member can understand how they will work well or may not work so well with the other personality types represented on the work team.
Secondly, who are the team members? Varying communication preferences and relationship preferences impact this stage. Each of the 16 personality types are unique in the manner they build relationships and in the manner they instinctively prefer to communicate. Any communication differences related to personality types will show in this stage and the affects can be very damaging. One of the keys to understanding personality type is that it is a particular personality function that governs how we prefer to speak our native tongue. To drastic a difference in this personality reality can really set work teams back by creating various degrees of irritation.
Thirdly, so many times work teams begin without really understanding what they are there to accomplish. Unrealistic expectations would be one way of describing this reality. Most people on work teams “assume” they know why they are on the team and what they are responsible for doing; most importantly work team members assumes everyone else sees the situation just like they do. This can be a very costly mistake and lays the foundations for work team conflict, disagreement and argument right from the very beginning. A knowledge of personality type can help members better understand ahead of time any instinctive differences that exist on the team regarding how one sees their jobs and decides what to do about what they see.
Fourthly, work teams will spend an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out how to get the work done when a better understanding of the preceding three factors will carry more weight functionally and can make this stage very productive. People of varying personality types will have different preferences to how work is to be done; but we normally “expect” everyone else to do work like we do. When any personality differences are identified and validated not put down or criticized work team goals are more easily achieved.
Finally, each of the 16 personality types will have a different perspective on what constitutes a job well done and a job not so well done. For example, some personality types do not believe, in the core of their being, that there is such a thing as constructive criticism. Any such differences in instinctive preference for work accountability need to be understood and validated from the very beginning.
In conclusion, when each member of the work team knows their own unique personality type via the Myers-Briggs approach then their contribution to most work team environments can be optimized. With work and career dissatisfaction at an all time high and with work falsification of type at pandemic proportions, knowledge of personality type is an inexpensive and wise approach to improving work team performance.
