Have you ever wondered why some people can turn out to be so irritating? How people approach things very differently. Or at times do you wonder how their minds work? If only you understood where they were coming from, working together could be much easier. Bottom line is that personality plays a big part in how we view others, gather information, tackle problems, and even organize our lives. The many personalities can hugely affect the productivity the workplace. A team that includes a broad range of personality types is often better to function well. Here are some ways in which personality can affect productivity at the workplace.
- The outgoing versus the reflective thinker personalities.
Some people prefer to solve their problems by talking them through. They need others company, and are happy to work in open, plain and noisy situations. The buzz of life gives them energy, and they thrive at the centre of attention. On the other end, there are the workers that prefer to think things through and thoroughly before indulging in any discussion. They cherish privacy and like the quiet. Usually at the workplace they prefer an office of their own.
These extreme personalities often can cause each other problems. With the extroverts worrying that the introverts don’t talk much and wonder what they think. Introverts just wish that extraverts would think first and talk when they have worked out their ideas. People behave differently in different contexts but most of them have a leaning towards either introversion or extraversion and this affects the preferred way or ways of doing things.
- The attention-to-detail versus the big picture colleagues
There is the category of personalities that is so deeply involved in the details of a problem over the big picture. Then there is the other category that has a good overview of what is going on and a vision of what need to be achieved but they hate the detail. The attention-to-detail categories of personalities are sensors: meaning their feet are firmly on the ground, living in the present, and they do things sequentially and make changes incrementally. By contrast the big picture people have strong intuitive-that is they have more imagination; take information from many different sources and use this to envision the future.
The dynamics of these personalities at the workplace is that naturally, the intuitive-s believes that the sensors are lacking creativity and imagination while the sensors think the intuitive-s have their heads in the clouds.
- The analytical group versus the people based solutions
Scientists and mathematicians approach problem solving by deducing from first principles-start somewhere and work logically towards a correct solution. Provided the logic is good the answer must be right. But will people accept it? ‘Thinkers’ who work this way do the logic first and sell the solution to others later. Most, but not all, scientists and engineers are strongly analytical.
The ‘feeling’ method is to consider what kind of solution people want and go from there. Those using this approach solve problems as though they were a part of it while analysts are able to be much more detached. One is objective the other subjective. The dynamics of these at the workplace is that the analysts think subjective problem solvers are illogical. The clergy and those in social work are often strongly ‘feeling’ problem solvers. They may find analysts cold and unfeeling. If you’re in an academic department where you are supposed to be logical, but your approach is different, that will cause problems, and vice versa.
If you analyse yourself against these dimensions, some you will say ‘that’s me!’ Others might decide to just behave differently in different situations. Perhaps you are stuck between one type of behavior and another. Knowing yourself better can help you to understand your strengths and weaknesses-which will tremendously improve relationships at the workplace.
Source : Ethiojobs