How to Effectively Manage Different Personalities in the Workplace
Each day, we have to manage different personalities in the office. Some personality types are easy to work with. While others may be a little more challenging.
Typically, you can maintain positive working relationships with most people. However, if you’re managing a large team, this can be difficult since your employee’s personality types may not always align and can cause conflict.
You may need to adjust your management style based on your employee’s personality types to provide the most positive and fulfilling work experience.
Read on to learn about workplace personality types and strategies for managing a team with competing personalities.
Importance of Workplace Personality Types
The first step is understanding workplace personality types. A workplace personality type is a way of organizing employees to create an effective management style based on their job needs.
Since every employee is different, understanding your employee’s personalities is crucial to know. As a manager, it can inform your development plans around their work style to help them become highly effective at their job.
This leads to employees enjoying their position at your company and higher retention rates at your organization.
You might be thinking, ‘Where do I start?’ The most important step is to evaluate your team about what personality characteristics they have.
You collect this information by observing how they complete tasks and handle projects or asking them questions about their work styles to understand their work personality better.
Now that you’ve identified characteristic traits of your employees, you need to identify which personality type these attributes fit into, so you understand their work style.
Examples of Workplace Personality Types:
The five common personality types that you may find in the workplace are: the perfectionist, the driver, the organizer, the achiever and the over-thinker.
1. The Perfectionist
The Perfectionist completes projects with strong attention to detail to ensure zero mistakes. However, their focus on the details can lead to a longer completion time for a deliverable which can be detrimental for projects with a short turnaround time.
2. The Driver
A Driver is an ambitious member of your team. They aim to learn new skills and take on projects that help them grow to higher positions in your organization. Sometimes their desire to succeed can negatively affect team members by the Driver bulldozing coworker’s projects.
3. The Organizer
Organizers are very methodical and organized in how they complete projects. They need structure in their work routine and rarely change their processes. When their schedule is disrupted, they will feel uneasy and stressed at work.
4. The Achiever
The Achiever is an energetic team member who always tries to accomplish the most projects possible. They often push the team to take on more projects. Although their enthusiasm comes from a good place, their eagerness for their team to take on projects can be crossing a line for some of their colleagues.
5. The Overthinker
Overthinkers are anxious about the work they create since they worry about mistakes or stress over delivering positive results. Overall, they tend not to have a lot of confidence in the work they complete and need constant reassurance.
How to Manage Different Personality Types in the Workplace:
Managing different personality types is not as difficult as it seems. Some common tips to on how to best handle various personality types include:
- Recognize your team’s differences
- Play to the strength of coworkers
- Prioritize shared goals and projects
- Don’t take conflicts personally
Recognizing your teams’ differences and playing up their strengths is essential.
In a large project, this can look like delegating tasks based on your team member’s strengths and what fits best with their personality type.
For example, using the personality types outlined above, a Driver’s characteristics would be best used if there is a new project since they like to learn new skills and want to grow in their career
You can always unite your team towards a similar purpose, such as aiming towards the same outcome in a team project. This can be an excellent way to avoid conflicts among team members with differing personalities and help build teamwork skills.
There are a lot of different personalities that exist in the office. We know there need to be various characters to get unique perspectives on initiatives to stand out from competitors.
Ready to mix it up? Addison Group has over 20 years of experience filling roles with top-tier candidates in multiple industries that value your organization’s bottom line and fit in your organization’s culture.
Contact us today!
