How to Understand Your Colleague’s Personality for Better Collaboration
Personality is the main factor in the workplace – understanding not only how your own personality influences your actions and the decisions you make, but also how the personalities of the people you interact with affect their behavior and your attitude towards them … But some of us are better at reading and reacting to personality than others.
This post was originally published on Fast Company .
University of New Hampshire psychologist John D. Mayer calls this ability personal intelligence . Mayer, author of Personal Intelligence, has studied personality for many years, developing a test that allows people to measure and better understand their personal intelligence.
“If we can understand what’s going on in our personalities, we can make better choices,” says Mayer. “Personal intelligence is a kind of guidance system that can say, ‘How does my system work and who am I? »How does this person’s system function and who are they? “
Mayer told us about the elements of personal intelligence and its importance in the workplace .
Think beyond introverts and extroverts
Often the conversation about personality focuses on whether people are introverted or extroverted. But while this characteristic can tell you a lot about yourself and others, it is only one piece of the puzzle. No matter how introverted or extroverted you are, Mayer says, you can have varying degrees of personal intelligence. “It doesn’t matter if you are an introvert or an extrovert, just like when you play poker, it doesn’t matter what hand you have, but rather how well you play that hand over time,” says Mayer.
He talks about the ability to recognize more subtle differences in the personalities of people, which can tell you a lot about individuals. For example, people differ in how much they “seek excitement”. Recognizing this quality of the people you manage or work with can help you better understand how they make decisions. “Some people like to take more risks, while others are extremely careful,” says Mayer.
Think about how people might react
A mental model is an explanation of the thought process that a person uses when moving around the world. Everyone’s mental model is different because they are based on different experiences from the past. When you try to understand other people’s mental models, you are trying to understand why they behave the way they do. We all do this to a certain extent.
For example, you may know not to joke in front of your partner as if you were joking with a coworker because you understand that your partner will not take the joke in the same way. Being an accurate reader of how people’s personalities affect your interactions with them means taking a step back and asking, “Where is this person from that makes him or her think that way?”
“We need to understand very well what drives us and what models we are using,” says Mayer. ” Understanding the mental models through which people look at things is a very deep way of understanding personality.”
What is the first thing you notice about people?
When you meet someone for the first time, what personality traits do you usually notice first? Some people know if the other person is cold or warm; others judge them by whether they are competent or incompetent or social or withdrawn. Becoming aware of personality traits that you usually notice, and then allowing yourself to think beyond those traits, is one way to better appreciate and respond to personality. “I don’t know if we can improve personal intelligence,” says Mayer. “But we can certainly better understand people and ourselves. “
A good place to start is to think of people in terms of the Big Five personality traits:
- Extroversion: How talkative, energetic, and assertive a person can be.
- Benevolence: How helpful, kind, or affectionate is this person?
- Conscientiousness: how organized and plan-oriented a person can be.
- Neuroticism: How tense or sullen compared to emotionally stable is this person?
- Openness to new ideas: how inventive, open-minded and perceptive a person is.
Improving Personal Intelligence Can Make Your Workplace Happier
Mayer’s research has shown that people who are better able to understand and respond to people’s personalities tend to be happier in the workplace. “We found that at work, people with higher personal intelligence are happier and more likely to appear pleasant and useful to more people,” Mayer says.
But understanding the different aspects of human personality is not an easy task. Meyer and his colleagues are now evaluating the data and trying to figure out what specific qualities might be predictors of people’s personal intelligence, and vice versa. “People are very complicated,” says Mayer. “Basically we all make mistakes in this, but some of us make more mistakes than others. We all run the risk of being in the wrong situation because of our personality. “
The Science of Recognizing Your Colleagues’ Identities | Fast Company