Harnessing Diversity: The Power of Personalities in Team Success

Companies put in a lot of effort to ensure inclusion and diversity when making hiring decisions. Equal opportunity is a motto for all. The intent is to build teams with people having diverse backgrounds with different experiences so each team is well equipped to cover all possible grounds. However, in majority of situations, we forget that these people also might have different personalities and working styles.

Team dynamics is key to maintain a team morale which in turn is a recipe for success. Unfortunately with all the crunched timelines and long work days, it cant be denied that learning a co-worker's personality type and working style may not hit the top 5 in your priority list. In my experience in Consulting, you jump from case to case every few months, which does not give enough time to get familiar with teammates’ personalities – maintaining a healthy speed to output gains higher preference.

However, we are only human and we catch some traits in our co-workers – mostly habits that are more prominently exhibited during the limited interactions during team meetings or brainstorming sessions and we build our assumptions around that. And albeit, without full information we are bound to make false impressions about people which may lead to difficulties and awkwardness in work environment.

I am sure we all have taken different Personality Tests to identify our own traits but it does not help unless we communicate it to the other people on the team or get to know what ticks the others. Knowing personality traits of your coworkers can make your experience on a project much smoother. It can also help you navigate around uncomfortable and awkward situations when you are better equipped rather than shooting in the dark.

Once you know key traits and working styles of people, you might not be taken by surprise by certain behavioural patterns that might be alien to you. A very simple example being the time of the day when someone is most productive may vary; while one might like working late in the night, someone else might prefer starting at sunrise. It would be really awkward if these two work together in a team as they are most likely to send each other updates and text alerts at incoherent times. Now this might feel really annoying and invasive if they aren’t aware of their working styles leading to both of them not quite eager to work with each other. Such teams are bound to fail as there is no collaboration and little respect between team members. Now imagine both of them talk to each other on the first day of the project and discuss their work preferences, life is a lot easier. Now they know that even if they text them at odd hours, they will respond only when they start their day so expectations as set accordingly. Also both of them can easily plan their days so they can work on collaborative pieces needing both of them at the same time during the overlapping hours of their workday. Clearly, such an arrangement is conducive to both and we don’t have a toxic relationship built between two good resources.

Building a healthy team dynamic should be very essential to ensure we reap the full benefits of the diverse hiring norms and it is not very hard, provided the right intent is there. I have worked with co-workers from different geographies, industries, native backgrounds and languages over my 8 years of professional life so far and I have felt more at ease working in teams where leaders spent time upfront knowing working styles and tried to accommodate where reasonable.

1.?Connect Beyond Icebreakers: Ice breaking sessions are a good way to get to know team members but you need a formal setup to understand work preference and personality traits that might affect your day-to-day work

2.?Equal voice for Extroverts and Introverts: Identify extroverts and introverts within the team and deal accordingly. While extroverts will happily drop ideas without hesitation, highly important to give the nudge to the introverts who might be sitting on the good ideas but not share unless asked

3.?Set Clear Team Norms: Define team norms at the start of the project – working styles (day/night), preferred start and end time to accommodate team meetings, time blocks each one has for personal activities (gym, chores, appointments, etc.)

4.?Respect Diverse Personalities: Keep an open mind to co-workers who might be at the opposite personality spectrum – you don’t need to like everyone on the team, but you need to respect each one and work towards the common goal

5.?Collective Responsibility for Dynamics: This is a team effort and maintaining the team dynamics should not be the onus of the leadership only – If you notice things are not going well and team morals feels low, don’t hesitate to request a team meeting to just discuss ways to improve the situation rather than dragging along

Hope next time you are starting on a new project, you will take out some time to get to know your co-workers a bit better, not just if they are fun to hang out with but how to make working with them a fun ride.

#TeamDynamics #DiversityAndInclusion #WorkplaceHarmony #CollaborationMatters #EffectiveTeams #UnderstandingCoworkers