Workplace personality types and how they can work together

PR pros often work on teams or with clients—and that means they must be skillful interpreters of human behavior. Knowing your personality type can help build a stronger team.

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“What’s your type?” may seem like an awkward question for the office, but in the right context, it can be an especially helpful one.

Knowing our personality type helps us appreciate our own strengths and identify ways to work smarter. They’re shorthand for describing your unique style at work: how you solve problems, what motivates you and how you do your best work.

The power of personality types in the workplace shines when it’s time to work with others. Knowing your own tendencies allows you to communicate effectively, work efficiently with others and use everyone’s strengths to their best advantage. One measure of personality that can help communicators know themselves is the Myers-Briggs personality test.

This particular personality test assigns each person a four-letter type (like INFP) and focuses on four dimensions of personality: energy source, cognitive style, values and self-management. Each dimension has two styles—one at each end of a spectrum—and each person falls closer to one end or the other.

As an introductory primer, here’s how the dimensions and styles break down, and how they apply to the workplace:

Energy source: extroverted or introverted?

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