Miscommunications at work are unfortunately common. We’ve all been there. You’re instructed to complete a project with Pam, Judy, and Tom and while all of you have the same goal, you have very different personalities. Why does this matter? Because in order to accomplish your common goal you have to understand each other, and in order to understand each other you have to not only be aware of the varying personalities within your group, but of your own personality as well. When you take a personality assessment you learn about the facets of who you are and how you communicate, and when you share these personality traits with others, especially your coworkers, you empower the entire team to communicate with you better. Understand the characteristics of your personality and allow your teammates to do the same to foster better communication at work and be a part of a well-functioning team.
The Basics of Personality Assessment
Personality assessments are designed to inform you about who you are and the individual traits that make up your personality. When you understand these traits, you can better understand aspects about yourself that have a lot to do with the way you work, including how you respond to and communicate information. Self-awareness is beneficial, but understanding traits about your co-workers is helpful too. When you understand the differences between your personality traits from those of the people in your team, you open up a world of communication that allows your team to work together efficiently.
The pace of business has pressured companies to develop new methods, products, markets, and partnerships more quickly than ever before. The key tool used for leveraging resources is the creation of an effective team. Teams are formed with the idea of bringing together various sets of skills and perspectives in order to create value. The challenge is that these differences often get in the way of realizing the full value of the team. Often, the biggest challenge is the behavioral differences that each individual brings. When personality clashes occur within the team, a disruptive situation can result in dramatically reducing productivity.
However, if you are aware of these challenges, you can quickly address them to create a foundation of understanding, allowing the team to function at their highest level. High-performing teams are usually comprised of team members with a high level of self-awareness, who use that awareness to understand their fellow team members better. They use this information to adapt to the needs of the other team members and flex their behaviors to support the overall team objectives.
How Personality Assessments Foster Communication and Teamwork
Businesses run because of the individuals who work within them. Whether these businesses run successfully depends on how those individuals work together to accomplish a common goal. It’s called teamwork. How does teamwork happen? Communication, and while it sounds simple, many companies struggle with it. Good communication begins with understanding. When employees fail to understand one another they fail to communicate effectively.
There are a multitude of personalities within one workplace, and not one employee is exactly the same as any other, but it is their ability to understand these various personality characteristics, specifically their Naturally Observable Characteristics, that will be the guide to a successfully running team. When employees understand each other’s personality differences and similarities, it allows them to communicate successfully.
At Sheppard Partners, we believe that clear communication is a key element of successful teams. To help individuals and teams better understand each other we developed NocNocK, our mobile factor analysis tool that easily distinguishes four Naturally Occuring Characteristics (NOC) – Directive, Expressive, Considerate, and Systematic.
NocNock empowers workers with the knowledge of how to communicate with their team in the way that is the best fit for their unique personality. NocNock makes miscommunications at work a problem of the past so that you and your team can accomplish your goals together no matter how different your personalities are. Use personality assessment and empower your team to deeply understand one another and communicate efficiently and effectively.
