Expert Advice - July 2007

Curious About What Makes Your Co-workers Tick?

Their Psychological Type Might Be The Answer

by Pamela Hollister

Personality type training, utilized by organizations around the globe, has become an essential tool for assessing personality differences and using those differences to improve individual and team performance.

Focusing on someone’s strengths and giving recognition for performance is critical to success. The new Gallup study found that when managers focused on employees’ strengths, 61 percent of the employees were engaged in their work and only 1 percent were actively disengaged – complaining about their jobs, sniping at their coworkers and bad-mouthing the company.

Gallup asked employees to name, in their own words, the most important factor in maintaining a sense of comfort and well-being at work. Responses were varied, but the most common had to do with communication and interpersonal dynamics among workers:

• Open Communication – 14 percent

• Respect – 11 percent

• Positive relationships with coworkers – 9 percent

• Teamwork – 6 percent

• Trust – 6 percent

Employees are likely to feel the greatest motivation to perform when in a workplace environment designed to foster open, respectful and positive relationships among coworkers.

Communications and Personality Type – Extravert versus Introvert

Communication is central to our life. Understanding, appreciating and accommodating personality differences in communication style can bring major success to our effectiveness as a supervisor, trainer, leader and team member. People have different preferences for assimilating and evaluating information and in how they orient themselves to the world around them. By developing awareness, understanding and appreciation of communication differences, we will reap the benefit in our relationships with others.

Extraverts are energized by lively, enthusiastic discussions and rapid-paced conversation, and often they interrupt as they elaborate on and process thoughts. Introverts are energized by quiet, slow-paced conversations with space for reflection, taking time as they build thoughts and ideas internally. The extravert’s reaction sometimes is that the introvert is not providing input that energizes the extravert.

Introverts share information after it has been carefully processed and evaluated. When an extravert is in the “thinking out loud” mode, they may not give the input the full evaluation it merits. This can cause difficulties for both types as extraverts may miss valuable contributions by introverts, and introverts may take what extraverts say too seriously and make decisions based on the input.

Some professions are type-specific with a majority percentage of one personality type represented within the organization. When employees are made aware of other personality types and their strengths, improved communication and relationships are the result. As a tool for increasing staff satisfaction and stimulating team communication resulting in improved productivity, personality-type training is the solution.

Pamela Hollister
Pamela Hollister is author of The PEOPLE Process, a training package that teaches how to easily understand and apply personality type.