Know Your Workplace Personality

It's pretty amazing that a workplace can function considering the makeup of the personnel. Whether you are in an office, a factory, or in the field chances are you work with a group of individuals that vary greatly in their personalities. The personality people are born with, their upbringing, their cultural background, and their life experiences all contribute to quite an eclectic group. How do you deal with so many different characters? The key is to know your own personality.

When it comes to dealing with others it is impossible to communicate effectively without knowing yourself. Yes you may be able to get your thoughts across. Yes you may be able to demand certain actions from people. Yes you may even be known as a leader. But you are never going to truly communicate, encourage, inspire, or motivate without knowing your own personality.

Understanding who you are and why you operate the way you do gives you a sense of self awareness. You begin to realize why some people react to you in a positive way and why some respond negatively. You learn to appreciate why you have advanced in your career or why you have remained in the same position. You become a grounded individual.

Without recognizing your own personality you can potentially drive people away and begin despising your job. For instance, a young man was asked a while back to take a personality test. His response: "Why would I take a personality test?"

"To learn more about who you are and the way you communicate" the inquirer stated.

"I don't need some test to tell me who I am. I already know!" he said arrogantly.

What the gentleman didn't realize is that his lack of self assessment was leading to his isolation in the workplace. His refusal to understand who he was, his strengths and limitations, was impeding his desire to be an effective coworker. He wasn't liked and didn't even know it.

While in some respects personalities are quite complex in other ways they are very simple. Many personality models group people into four different categories. Each psychologist or lecturer has a different description but they are all essentially the same principle. People have a dominant or core personality that is assertive, emotional, peaceful, or playful.

Right now you may be thinking about where your coworkers fall in the personality categories. Stop! There is plenty of time to label everyone else. The first thing to do is figure yourself out. There are many tests you can take by simply surfing the internet. An effective site to use is humanmetrics.com. Take the Jung Typology Test.

Knowing yourself is important. Take the time to figure it out. It isn't always pleasant, but it is essential.