Have you ever had that colleague you keep clashing with and you’re not really sure why?
Do they go about completing a task in a way that you’d never think of, make decisions you don’t necessarily agree with, or react in ways you don’t really understand?
Chances are, they think exactly the same about you.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t work together in harmony.
Sometimes, it’s nobody’s fault if you rub each other up the wrong way. It’s just down to you having completely different personality profiles.
But it can make things really awkward for your teammates if you start avoiding working together because of these clashes. Not to mention, being able to work with people of all personality profiles is a skill that can take you to some pretty cool places in your career.
So, here’s how you figure out what your personality profile is and how you can work in harmony with personalities of all types.
First thing’s first – what’s your personality profile?
The first step is looking in the mirror.
If you don’t understand your own personality, how can you expect to be able to identify areas where you might clash with others or that you could improve on?
So, sit and reflect on what makes you tick.
Who are you? What are your key drivers? What motivates you – and what de-motivates you? How do you prefer to work and interact with others?
These are just some of the key questions you can ask yourself.
Take a personality test
Sitting and reflecting on your personality is a great way place to start. But we humans often aren’t the best judges when it comes to ourselves.
We can find it difficult to see our faults. We can miss behaviours and actions that might cause issues for others. And we can struggle to figure out which conditions we work best under.
“Taking a personality test is a great way to get an objective view of who you are and how you work best”
Taking a personality test is a great way to get an objective view of who you are and how you work best.
Although tests like Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) are well known, they offer limited, binary results which aren’t always helpful in terms of the workplace. They also aren’t backed by scientific evidence and can give inconsistent results.
Some, like 16Personalities, are a little more comprehensive and illuminating, and incorporate psychological and social research such as the Big Five Personality Traits. They’re still fairly broad, but for understanding your own drivers and personality tics, they can be useful.
Best and most detailed of all are psychometric tests like our own Psycruit.
Psycruit creates detailed, nuanced profiles to assess:
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Your personality, behaviours, emotional style, motivation and culture-fit
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Development opportunities based on your personality profile
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Hints and tips on how to adapt your style
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Career guidance on the types of roles that are likely to suit your personality
We don’t test you based on ‘out-of-the-box’ traits and profiles, like Myers-Briggs and 16Personalities.
We instead evaluate you based on strategic thinking, humour and rationality. These help to determine your strengths and how well you might fit in with certain types of teams.
Step 2 – what are your colleagues’ personality profiles?
Working with people – particularly if you’re looking to progress in the business – requires diplomacy. The more you understand psychological drivers, the better equipped you’ll be to handle your peers, those working under you, and senior management.
Knowing your own personality type, key drivers, behaviours, and motivators is a great place to start – and can help you identify where some of the key issues might lie.
But understanding your colleagues’ personality types, as well as your own, is key to figuring out how you can best work together.
To do this, you could ask your manager to get everyone to take a test. Or if you’re in a senior position yourself, you could make taking a test a team activity.
As we suggested earlier, psychometric testing is the best way to understand their personality profiles. But despite its limitations, 16Personalities can be a good place to start too.
16Personalities even offers team assessments that can help you understand yourself, your team, and how to work better together.
Once your colleagues know what their personality types are, you can begin to compare notes and analyse where any clashes might arise.
Understanding their personality traits, drivers, and behaviours can really put some of their decisions and reactions into perspective. You might even get that ‘aha!’ moment and suddenly realise what’s been causing you to clash with certain colleagues.
You can then start to even find new ways of approaching problems or suggesting ideas that are better aligned with the people you’re talking to and how they prefer to work.
Test during recruitment
This part might not be so relevant for you unless you’re in a management position (so, if you aren’t, feel free to skip ahead), but the best way to use psychometric testing is to ask candidates to take these tests during the recruitment process.
“You can assess how well they’ll fit into your team before they sign their contracts”
That way you can assess how well they’ll fit into your team before they sign their contracts.
Some of the world’s most successful companies believe so wholeheartedly in the power of personality profiling that they use multiple tests to gain a nuanced, granular understanding of the person they’re considering employing.
Bridgewater Associates (the world’s biggest hedge fund) has developed a detailed process where candidates must take four tests online and one over the phone.
This massively increases their chances of hiring the right person for that role, as they’ve already identified which personality types work well at their business.
So, we’d suggest exploring the idea of asking your HR department to build a tool like Psycruit into the recruitment process.
Lastly, work on your soft skills
One last thing before we reach the end of this article.
We often talk about getting along with people as though it’s something that just happens because you ‘click’ or have shared interests.
But you can work on getting along with people who you don’t ‘click’ with and side-stepping any potential conflict by developing your soft skills.
Understanding personality types is a good start, but honing skills like communication, empathy and diplomacy can help you find common ground with someone and alleviate tension.
The best place to start is always communication. Simply reaching out and asking if a colleague is happy with a situation or project can start to build a relationship based on mutual respect and empathy.
Work better with your colleagues
We can’t always choose who we work with. But we can choose how we work with them.
When you know why someone behaves the way they do, what motivates them or how they work best, you can learn how to react and communicate in a way that facilitates, rather than hinders.
So, do you know your colleagues’ personality types?
Do you know yours?
If you want to find out your personality type, get in touch and we’ll give you access to our free personality profile test.
