The Role of Personality in the Workplace

Workplaces are dictated not only by policies but also the personalities of employees. Trying to stifle personality can result in disgruntled and
frustrated employees. When managers understand the role of personality in the workplace, they can use it to grow the company and move it
forward.
Creativity
A person's ability to think creatively stems from her personality. Brainstorming sessions and one-on-one idea exchanges with employees can help
spark creativity. When employees are allowed to apply their creativity to solving company issues, the company benefits from a wider variety of
ideas and options. Managers must maintain control over creativity, however, to prevent aggressive personalities from dominating. Policies
regarding the submission of ideas can help keep aggressive personalities in check while still benefiting from their creativity.
Retention
Appealing to an employee's individual personality can help increase job satisfaction and reduce employee turnover. For example, rather than
assume that all employees welcome challenges, you should talk with them to gauge their feelings on job duties. Some employees might prefer
routine jobs with few changes or surprises, while others might look forward to challenges. By gauging employee personalities, you can better
match employees with job duties.
Teamwork
Some people are not inclined to work well in a team. They are strongly independent, or they prefer to follow their own set of instructions. These
personality traits are important to discover in the interview process through written tests and personal discussions. Hiring someone who does not
value teamwork can significantly hinder a work team's progress.
Production
Some people are just not motivated and cannot be motivated. When their personal productivity drops and they are consistently behind on
deadlines, they drag down their department and the company as a whole. This also causes resentment and frustration among staffers who are
forced to work harder to make up for the drop in productivity. They may even slow down their own productivity if the uninspired employee is
kept on at the company. A general drop in morale will occur.
References (3)
"Graziadio Business Review"; Personality Traits and Workplace Culture; Mark Mallinger, et al.; 2001
Rochester Institute of Technology; The Five-Factor Model of Personality in the Workplace; Sean P. Neubert; November 2004
It's Time; How Personality Roles Affect the Workplace; September 2002


How Personality Affects Behavior in the
Workplace
When people arrive at the office, they bring with them their individual traits and personalities. Regardless of a person's
position or responsibilities in the workplace, personality plays a role in how a person approaches a job, completes a task
and interacts with others.
Teamwork
Individual personalities become recognizable during teamwork activities. Someone with an outgoing personality is likely
to be a cheerleader for the group, focus on positive aspects of the project, and possibly volunteer for leadership and
coordination roles. Likewise, someone who is shy and reserved is more likely to take a follower role and be more
comfortable completing tasks that are assigned to him or taking direction from others.
Time Management
People who are naturally focused and organized are usually efficient in managing time and completing tasks on schedule.
These people do well in leadership roles, but their personalities can potentially conflict with those who have a more laid-
back and relaxed approach and aren't as deadline-conscious or motivated. This becomes a problem if a colleague has a
manipulative personality as well, and attempts to sabotage other staffers' work efforts. While not necessarily poor workers,
people with overly-relaxed personalities often prefer to work at their own pace without constraints of time lines, which can
lead to frustrations unless appropriately managed.
Problem-Solving
Analytical personality types have the ability to problem-solve in an organized manner. They might accomplish this
through leading brainstorming sessions, developing decision trees or workflow charts or creating detailed project plans.
Indecisive personality types often throw a wrench in the works when they're unable to make a decision or choose a course
of action, and it results in stalled work projects. This can be difficult in group work situations in which one person meeting
deadlines is crucial to another person carrying out related tasks and responsibilities.
Interpersonal Relations
Extroverted personality types are comfortable engaging with colleagues and clients, and are often able to work out minor
differences and create workable compromises. Neurotic personality types, however, are more likely to be disagreeable in
nature. These individuals often do better in work environments or positions in which they have limited contact with
clients, customers and co-workers.

Why Personality Matters in the Workplace
Building and cultivating relationships is an integral part of any career strategy. Whether you are a job seeker,
manager or entrepreneur, you are in the relationship business. When it comes to building relationships you
must start with self knowledge, and that starts with personality.
The study of personality is fundamentally about asking: Who am I? I know it sounds clich, but before you can
effectively reach outward to others, you have to be able to look inward. The study of personality provides some
great insights into how to do this.
Personality can be tough to define; from the four temperaments of Hippocrates (choleric, melancholic,
sanguine, and phlegmatic) to Freuds theory of the unconscious there have been countless attempts at nailing
down this highly abstract thing we call personality.
According to personality expert, Professor John Mayer, personality is the organized, developing, system within
the individual that represents the collective action of that individuals major psychological subsystems. In
laymans terms, I like to think of personality as that inherent driver of how we act. Its that natural disposition we
fall back on when all those other forces of the outside world are accounted for.
A great way to describe personality is to use a popular model called the Big Five.
The five factor model, more popularly known as the Big Five, is one of the most researched models of
personality. The model provides a great overview of everyday personality and how it relates to the workplace.
Compared to other models, the Big Five enjoys a fairly high level of academic consensus as well as empirical
support. The theory being that there are five major trait categories that describe our personality. According to
the Big Five, we all consistently fall somewhere along each of the following five continuums that I like to
remember as OCEAN.
* Openness to Experience: At the open end, individuals are highly interested in experiencing new things and
are flexible in their thinking, where at the opposite end, individuals are more closed minded and rigid in how
they approach new experiences.
* Conscientiousness: Those who are high in conscientiousness tend to be diligent and dutiful in the way the
approach work and life. Individuals who are lower on the conscientiousness scale tend to be big picture
thinkers and less interested in the details of how things get done.
* Extraversion/Introversion: Probably the most recognizable personality trait is extroversion because its easy
to see. Extraverts are socially assertive and gain energy from performing for and interacting with others.
Introverts draw energy from reflection and tend to prefer working alone or in small groups.
* Agreeableness: This scale looks at the level of friendliness versus hostility that someone tends to display
when interacting with others. Those high in agreeableness are more trusting and modest whereas those low in
agreeableness are more suspicious and oppositional.
* Neuroticism (Emotional Stability): Those who are highly neurotic tend to be less stable and frequently
demonstrate negative emotions. Those who are more emotionally stable are generally pleasant and tend to be
resistant to stress.

When thinking about and observing personality I always caution people to keep two things in mind: behavior
and intent.
Behavior vs. Personality: Behavior is what we observe in others as bystanders. We all learn about others and
make attributions based on what we see. However, personality is not the only driver of behavior, there are
always external forces operating to influence how we behave. Thus, we have to be careful about the
attributions we make based on limited observations within certain contexts.
It is important to remember that we all have the ability to act counter to our preferences, which his often
referred to as acting out of character. When trying to get a sense of someone, look for consistent behaviors as
opposed to unusual behaviors.
Intent and Personality: A frequent complaint I hear from clients is that one of their colleagues is intentionally
holding back and not asserting himself. In their mind, this person is actively going against the grain. The issue
is not that the person is trying to be different than you; he/she is actually different from you! Understanding
individual differences is critical in managing teams. Diversity of personality is often a key component to building
a successful team. The trick is to understand how to harness the power of personality differences for success.
Understanding your own personality and the personalities of those around you is critical to success. Keep in
mind personality is only one of many drivers of behavior, but it is one that is consistent over time. There are
numerous personality assessments out there on the market, most of which are about as useful as taking the
latest Cosmo quiz. Look for those that have some foundation in or strong overlap with the Big Five.


http://www.personalityresearch.org/papers/neubert.html

THE FIVE PERSONALITY TYPES YOU
HAVE TO WORK WITH
This plays an important role in our ability to strategize about what the other side is likely to do in a negotiation
and to make sense of why the people we work with act as they do.
The most common way we do this is by imagining ourselves in someone elses position.
But the problem with simulating other peoples behavior by imagining what we would do is that there are
systematic ways that other people differ from us. These differences lead to errors in our predictions about how
other people will act.
One of the most obvious ways that people differ is in their core personality characteristics. Personality reflects
relatively stable differences in the goals that people are motivated to pursue. If you understand the core
dimensions of personality, then you can use that information to assess the characteristics of the people you
work with.When you know their personality profile, you can make better predictions about what they will
do.
A great place to start is with what personality psychologists call the Big Five personality characteristics.
These traits reflect the most prominent ways that people differ from each other.
The Big Five traits are:
1. EXTROVERSION
Extroversion reflects the degree to which people like to be the center of attention in social situations. Extroverts
want that spotlight shown on them, while introverts shun the spotlight (though they typically have many friends
and like engaging in smaller interactions).
2. AGREEABLENESS
Agreebleness reflects how much people want others to like them. People with agreeable personalities really
want others to like them, while disagreeable people do not necessarily care whether others like them.
Agreeable people have difficulty delivering bad news, giving criticism, and standing up for themselves to others.
3. CONSCIENTIOUSNESS
Conscientious people are driven to complete the tasks they start and to follow rules. We often notice
conscientious people, because they are likely to finish the tasks we give them. It is easy to undervalue the
people low in conscientiousness, because they need a lot of supervision. However, those low in
conscientiousness may try creative solutions to problems, because they do not feel the need to follow rules.
4. OPENNESS TO EXPERIENCE
Openness reflects peoples willingness to consider new ideas. People who are open will try new ideas on for
size, while those closed to experience will typically reject new ideas just because they are new.
5. EMOTIONAL STABILITY.
Emotional stability reflects the amount of energy flowing through the motivational system. That energy reflects
itself in the emotional reactions that people have to successes and failures. Emotionally stable individuals are
stoic. They are unfazed by circumstances. Emotionally unstable individuals experience significant highs and
lows in their lives. This instability can cause difficulties in the workplace when people get angry or upset at
others.
HOW TO WORK WITH THESE PERSONALITY TRAITS
To become better at understanding the people around you, start with these five dimensions. Watch their
behavior, and get to know how they differ. Use that understanding to begin to predict how these individuals will
react differently to situations than you would have. You can also use this knowledge of their personality to find
tasks and settings in which your co-workers are likely to excel.
One thing you should note about these dimensions is that most people fall in between these extremes. That is,
there are few pure introverts or extroverts. Instead, people have a combination of both traits in them. That is
one reason to be wary of personality tests (like the MBTI) that categorize people along a set of dimensions.
Those tests will make you believe that people are more extreme in their personality traits than they really are.
Finally, these five dimensions are just the most prominent of many that influence the way people act in the
workplace. Learn about other key traits like Narcissism, Need for Cognition, and Need for Closure. There are
many great resources out there (including my own e-book Habits of Leadership). The more you learn, the more
effectively you can work with others.
http://www.ropella.com/index.php/toolbox/articles/understanding_workplace_personalities1
http://wagepoint.com/blog/eight-common-workplace-personality-types