At WorkStyle, we use the science of organisational psychology to accurately measure yours and your colleague’s personality to give you a unique, in-depth and insightful insight into how your team works best. We also turn research into fun features that are designed to increase psychological safety within teams, the hallmark of the most effective teams in the world.
Hypothesis
Our hypothesis is that teams who understand each other’s personalities, working styles & values will be more effective and happier in the long term.
Scientific Research
There has been a growing amount of research as to how personality can affect the effectiveness of teams in an occupational setting.
For instance, this study has shown that when a team is comprised of different personalities, they are actually more effective, and outperformed, those teams that were comprised of mainly the same personality type.
It has also been shown that teams higher in certain personality traits, such as extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness and emotional stability, were more viable and worked better together.
Finally, teams tend to form ‘collective personalities’, where the whole team begins to behave in ways that best support that ‘collective personality’ trait. Research has shown, from the Big-5, all traits of collective personalities show increased team effectiveness, but that extraversion, emotional stability and openness to experience are the collective personalities that increase team effectiveness the most.
Essentially, the type, collectiveness and diversity of every personality in every team plays a fundamental role in the effectiveness of that team.
We here at WorkStyle, hypothesised that ‘the more a team understands each other’s personalities, the more effective they will be’. We then began to create a tool so that you too can understand your own and your colleague’s personality to boost your team’s effectiveness.
Case Studies
Evidence for the investment in understanding and valuing your employees personality leading to increased team effectiveness has been shown in organisations both small and large from the tech world to the oil world.
Our favourite case study is that of how Google sought to discover what makes an effective team. Over the course of a 2 year study they discovered what the highest performing teams shared in common one very specific trait, a high degree of psychological safety.
A transparent approach in sharing one’s personality, work style preferences and values within teams greatly elevates psychological safety within teams.
Take another example, Kuda, a conglomerate in the oil industry. When Kuda was hit in 1999 by the global collapse of oil prices, they made a goal to change many of their strategies and values.
One thing they invested in was to understand their employees personality, and promote a cohesive and successful working environment. Kuda hired a consultant who worked with the company to allow all the employees to understand each other’s personalities, the value of their working style and the unique contributions they made.
Over the course of the four years of promoting and investing in cohesiveness and personality, Kuda industries went from making annual sales of $40 million to $70 million.
The Big 5 Personality Test
The Big-5 was the first personality test we introduced at WorkStyle. It is the framework in which many psychologists define personality and therefore, we felt this was an essential feature to include within our tool.
The Big-5 measures your personality using five personality traits, namely: extroversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, conscientiousness and neuroticism. There is lots of evidence that suggests that the big-five personality types play a huge factor in both individual success, and team success.
For instance, results from this research study has shown that the big-five personality traits can predict job performance across a number of factors, such as training proficiency. Similar studies have also shown that the big-five factors are strongly related to career success.
Research shows that a teams performance is affected by the types, and diversity, of the big-5 personality traits in that team and further published studies have shown that the big-five personality types in a team can have an affect on team satisfaction.
Jungian Type Indicator
We have also included the Jungian Type Indicator as part of the WorkStyle tool.
Closely relating to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the Jungian scale measures personality across four preferences. Whether you prefer to interact with the outside world as an extrovert, or an introvert. Whether you process information with a sensing preference, or an intuitive preference. Whether you prefer to make decisions by thinking or feeling and finally, whether you go about things using a judging preference or a perceiving preference.
These preferences can then be ‘added’ together to place you into one of 16 personality types. There is research to suggest that engineering companies that use personality tests, such as the Myer-Briggs test, have reduced employee turnover; which therefore increases the teams effectiveness.
As the Myer-Briggs scale is based on the Jungian theory, this evidence provided us with good confidence in using the Jungian Scale to increase team effectiveness.
DiSC
This test measures personality across four scales: Dominance, influence, Steadiness and Conscientiousness.
There is evidence to suggest that when a company invests into understanding DiSC personality traits, it improved their communication and cohesion between their employees, and their productivity increased by a staggering $30 million dollars over four years.
This supports why we decided to include the DiSC assessment in our tool; we firmly believe that if you learn to understand your colleagues scores on the dominance, influence, steadiness and conscientious scales, your teams effectiveness will increase.
Similarly, further research has shown that companies that use personality tests, such as the DiSC assessment, have reduced employee turnover; which greatly increases the team’s long term effectiveness.
In addition to the aforementioned personality tests in WorkStyle you will find another 6 personality tests that you can take and add to your profile.
You will also find new and exciting features that are designed to increase the effectiveness of your team, based on the latest research from the world of organisational psychology. These are fun and effective features that will improve the psychological safety and culture within your team.