Personality defines people. It is an important aspect, whether in daily life, school or college environment and especially the work environment. Personality is a diverse and dynamic matter, so it greatly influences the workplace environment and interactions among employees. Then, personality becomes one of the crucial factors for a company to decide which employee should hire. Many companies use personality assessments or personality tests to measure a person’s personality types. Personality at work covers a person’s mental abilities, traits, natural reflexes, and individual characteristics. Workplace personality is crucial because it can predict how an employee interacts and behaves with one another, how they will fulfill their responsibilities, and how they will adapt to the company.
In essence, personality becomes an important point in a workplace. However, there are 6 more reasons to consider as to why a company should consider understanding personality in the workplace. This article will explain the 6 importance of personality in the workplace.
Effective Communication
Firstly, by understanding the employee’s personality, hopefully, effective communication was built. Because, sometimes, it needs a higher level of understanding to communicate properly. Have you ever explained something to your colleagues manager or other people in the workplace, but they just can’t seem to accept or get the point you’re trying to convey? Maybe, it’s not because you’re bad at communicating – but the person’s perspective and way of processing information is just different from the way you do.
So, understanding various personality dimensions at a workplace can help you understand how your colleagues, managers, or juniors at work process information. As there are various models of personality and dimensions of personality, sometimes it’s wise for us to also consider our personality traits. Did we speak too directly for someone who is cautious? Or did we not choose our word wisely? There are many ways how a conversation can end up offensive, creating an awkward air in the office environment. In other words, understanding personality can help you approach the person the right way without them feeling offended and also increase employee engagement.
Conflict Resolution
Workplace personality types are not the only ones. This means, personality types can clash anytime, even when they’re working towards one common goal. In one work environment, conflicts often happen and are unavoidable. However, as one adage says, conflict often happens because we are unprepared. We can avoid small conflicts or reduce big conflicts to smaller conflicts by understanding very well our team’s personality dimension and personality model. In a team, there are usually agreeable people, conscientious people, or even conflictable people. Understand their model of personality, understand their cognitive abilities, and analytical thinking, consider giving positive lights, and let each employee have their personality style. Here, having an effective leadership style no matter your position will also help.
Collaboration Improvement
Again, due to various personality types, there might be unavoidable conflicts, but on the positive side, with various personality dimensions, there will be a higher chance of collaboration improvement. As there are incompatibilities between colleagues, a chance of new innovative and creative ideas being created under one improved collaboration are likely to happen. Broad dimensions of personality mean broad personality characteristics, and even broader concepts of idea created by how each processes information. Employee-manager collaboration can also be fabricated by trying to understand employees’ personality traits and individual differences.
Burnout Prevention
Understanding employee personalities means understanding the person behind the personality. Sometimes, you can find your colleagues juniors, or even seniors losing their performance, not performing like how they always used to perform, or in other words, low-performance level. Regarding this, you want to reach out a helping hand by understanding their core personality. Find out what’s wrong, try giving positive light and reinforcement, and hopefully, their performance level will bounce back to the way it used to be. Understanding that emotional stability is important is also part of emotional intelligence and can be used to uplift motivation and prevent further emotional disbalance from happening. Employee motivation is also an important thing to watch out for!
Team Cohesion
Personality is one of the crucial roles in team building. By combining the life experiences of each member and considering their personalities, things can work out well and the team can achieve more if a team is built based on complementary personalities, rather than clashing personalities. The key here is to understand the different personalities each team members have and learn each team member’s POV. The manager can also strategically assign tasks and roles easily that can align with each team member’s strengths and preferences. This will motivate the employee to contribute more and create a harmonious work environment
Turnover Reduction
Employee fit assessment can be used to increase retention rates. When the employees feel understood and valued in the workplace, then they are less likely to leave. Not only that, utilizing personality tests and personality assessments can also help a company to identify the right person suitable for the position.
In Conclusion,
Well, these are a few examples for companies, managers, employees, and even yourself to consider starting understanding personality in a workplace. Not only does it broaden your own perspective, it also helps position employees with the right job description perfectly, and can keep employees happy. It can also reduce miscommunication, burnout, and turnovers. Let’s understand personality more, and see how much difference it brings to your workplace.