How to use personality tests to build a productive team

Five major dimensions of personality traits are:

• Openness to experience
• Conscientiousness
• Extroversion
• Agreeableness
• Neuroticism

The Big Five is a system that maps which traits go together in people's descriptions of one another. This model is useful in describing personality differences. For example, people who have high agreeableness are more likely to cooperate with group decisions, and those who are low in this trait are more competitive.

The DiSC personality and behavioral assessment focuses on four different traits:

• Dominance
• Influence
• Steadiness
• Conscientiousness

Generally, a person will have one trait that is stronger than the other three. These assessments help you to understand your own style and how you react to different traits.

The Keirsey Temperament Sorter is based on the Keirsey Temperament Theory. It suggests there are four basic temperament groups:

• Artisans
• Guardians
• Rationals
• Idealists

Each group contains four subgroups. The report includes information on how people communicate with each temperament, how they rebel, what makes them proud, and preferred leadership styles.

This assessment was created in the 1950s and is based on perception. It consists of four main perspectives:

• Motivation
• Self-perception
• Social perception
• Mindset

By knowing how these perspectives influence one another, a person can better understand their emotions and actions, and gain insight into how to work with others.

• Make it part of onboarding. Personality assessments can help new hires learn their own work style and how to work well with other styles.
• Use tools to find personality types, such as Crystal Knows, Good&Co, or WealthDynamics.
• Strive for a range of personalities within each team as they have a balancing effect during projects.
• Rotate roles based on project stages. Certain personality traits will lead better during specific phases.
• Know your own style to increase collaboration and communication.