The organization is full of people with a diverse range of personalities, unique traits and behaviours. Knowing and understanding the various personality types, understanding their likes and dislikes, offers many benefits when managing employees.
Each employee with their own unique personality type approaches their job differently, including how they interact with coworkers, how they approach a task, how they resolve a problem, and how they cope with stress.
For example, the classic “Social Styles” model by Robert and Dorothy Bolton identifies the four basic personality types in the workplace: the Driver, the Analytical, the Amiable, and the Expressive.
The Driver
The Driver tends to be very goals and results-oriented. They tend to be very decisive in making decisions, like taking risks, and dislike long-drawn-out periods of inaction. They are often ambitious, work quickly and prefer to work independently, and are often very organized.
Because the Drivers are the type of people to ‘get things done and done fast’, they are sometimes not very detail-oriented. And because of their impatience and low tolerance for workplace attitudes they consider to be ‘distractions’, they can be seen as insensitive, unsympathetic, harsh, and proud.
The Analytical
The Analytical as the name suggests are technical specialists who are task-oriented. They are often extremely organized and pay immaculate attention to detail, are precise, and rarely make mistakes. They prefer to work in an organized fashion with proper structure and processes, work slowly and precisely, and while they prefer to work by themselves, they will ask specific questions or collect data to understand the problem or tasks given to them.
However, their attention to detail can sometimes become their weakness. They can sometimes obsess over the details or with gathering more data that they may over-analyze the task and become indecisive.
The Amiable
The Amiable are often the most liked people in the office. They are often a great team player, loyal and dependable, easy going and want everyone to ‘just get along’.
On the other hand, they have a tendency to avoid conflict especially if their opinion may differ from that of others and therefore create ‘conflict’, weak in goal setting and self-direction, and may take criticism more personally.
The Expressive
The Expressive, more often than not, are the company ‘jokesters’. They tend to be energetic, optimistic, love to have fun, and are ‘the big thinkers’. They are outgoing, charismatic, and very persuasive.
Their enthusiasm and their ‘go BIG” mindset may cause them to sometimes lose sight of what can be realistically done. They may also take on more tasks than they can handle due to their enthusiasm, but due to their poor planning and goal-setting, may become overwhelmed and disorganized.
Personality Tests are nothing new, the most well-known ones being The Myers Briggs Type Indicator and the DiSC. Employers such as Facebook, Google, Amtrak and Kroger have used personality assessments during the hiring process to determine whether a job candidate is a good fit for a specific role or the culture of the company, and gain insights into a person’s working style or easily compare different candidates.
But are personality tests a good way to assess job candidates and employees? If companies such as Facebook and Google use some form of personality testing within their organization, surely there is some benefit to them?
While there are those who speak favourably of such tests, like Anthony Abbatiello, leader of the global leadership and succession at Russell Reynolds Associates, who believes that “personality tests can offer invaluable insights on external candidates, providing objective and scientifically valid explanations of individuals’ thinking style, behavioural tendencies, values and motivations”, there has been criticism at the flaws of these tests.
In an article by The Economist, Kathleen E. Murphy, a coach at Gallup Certified StrengthsFinder, stated that she “believes a personality test can help to inform your hiring decision. However, if the company hasn’t defined the types of personality it wants, she warns that knowing a candidate’s personality information can be problematic.” She further states that and that “judging someone based on their personality without having criteria about whether it will fit into your organisation is pointless. ...Worse, the data will likely be arbitrary and not actionable.”
Additionally, James Baron, a professor of management at the Yale School of Management, shares that “personality tests often don’t have demonstrable predictive validity” and that “picking individuals who can be effective on teams, which may require a different emphasis than just on personality.”
In summary, while there seems to be no clear consensus among industry experts, and while there certainly are flaws even in the most popular personality tests, there are underlying benefits to such assessments. Supervisors, especially, can have a deeper understanding of their team and therefore, how to best approach and manage people in them. Personality Tests can also be a fun and creative team-building activity that focuses on how to approach workplace conflicts, interpersonal relationships, and possibly improve teamwork.
If you’re interested in learning about other ways to assess potential candidates during the hiring phase, head on over to the article “Look Beyond CVs to Win the War For Talent”.