Your Personality, Your Power: Understanding and Adapting Your Work Style

Your personality is a powerful factor that shapes how you approach tasks, interact with others, and handle challenges at work. Understanding it—and how it aligns with your role—can make a significant difference in your success and well-being.

Let’s start by asking yourself these questions about your work:

What kind of tasks or environments drain you? Do you thrive in fast-paced, high-energy settings, or do you prefer focused, independent work?
How do you want to be led? Do you enjoy complete autonomy, or do you feel more secure with structured guidance and regular feedback?
What irritates or stresses you at work? Are overly collaborative environments overwhelming, or does working in isolation leave you feeling disconnected?
How do you recover from challenges? After a stressful day or a mistake (we’ve all been there), do you need time to recalibrate, or can you move on quickly?

Why Understanding Personality Matters at Work

Your personality is more than just your preferences; it’s your natural way of thinking, reacting, and behaving. By understanding it, you can:

- Match your strengths to the right tasks to improve productivity and performance.

- Navigate challenges more effectively by recognizing potential stressors.

- Have stronger workplace relationships by understanding how others operate and how you work best.

- Create a healthier, more collaborative workplace, boosting overall well-being.

Profiling tools such as WorkPlace Big Five™ provide valuable insights into personality. These tools don’t label traits as “good” or “bad”; instead, they help identify areas where individuals are most comfortable, which tasks energize or drain them, and how they respond to various situations.

“WorkPlace Big 5 assessment is a highly effective tool for me in working with clients to understand personality traits in the workplace. … The outcome is that we have more effective collaboration and performance, and this is key to helping teams build Psychologically Safe environments where they thrive, and leaders make more informed decisions.“ - Phil Bush, Trainer, coach & facilitator, The Inspired Solution

Diving Deeper Into Personality: The Big Five Model

The Big Five model is one of the most reliable frameworks for understanding personality. It identifies five core “supertraits,” each of which falls on a spectrum:

Need for Stability (N): How do you respond to stress and emotional challenges?
Extraversion (E): How much energy and preference for social interactions in the workplace? Are you energized by social interactions?
Originality (O): How open are you to new ideas and approaches? Do you prefer constant change? Or do you like stability?
Accommodation (A): Do you accommodate or adapt to the thoughts, needs, and perspectives of others, or are you more dominant and vocalize your own views?
Consolidation (C): Do you find it natural and easy to focus on both immediate and long- term goals? Or do you prioritize one over the other?

Most of us land somewhere in the middle of these traits, balancing behaviors across situations. Importantly, there are no “right” or “wrong” traits—only tendencies that can help us better understand ourselves.

For example:

- If you score high on Extraversion (E+), you might thrive in roles with frequent interaction but feel drained during solitary tasks.

- If you score high on Consolidation (C+), structured, goal-driven tasks might be your strength, but spontaneous projects could be frustrating.

How Personality Fuels Workplace Success

If your role at work doesn’t align with your personality profile, you might feel more stressed, drained, or uninspired. This is because your tasks drain you faster than ones that would align with your profile. But by understanding your personality, you can identify roles and tasks that energize you and create better dynamics with those around you.

Understanding your personality helps you:

Align with your natural preferences: Structure your tasks to match your strengths.
Develop strategies for challenges: Manage tasks or environments that feel draining.
Improve communication: Work effectively with colleagues who have different personality profiles.

When we understand ourselves and those around us, we can make smarter choices about our roles, tasks, and collaborations. This leads to better productivity, stronger relationships, and a greater sense of fulfillment at work.

Your personality isn’t just who you are—it’s your power. Embrace it, and let it fuel your success.