For every business one of their key assets is the staff that they employ. It’s important to know your team, their strengths, and weaknesses, and how you work best together. Letting people’s strengths flourish while making sure their weaknesses won’t hold them back is just all round good for business. The right personality in the right position can make a huge contribution to your success. Sometimes we can mistake a missed opportunity for a failing in a team member, poor performance as a result of laziness or incompetence, when potentially that individual could perform much better if they had a more suited role. There many surveys and questionnaires designed to help employers assess their staff and measure how that affects their business.
At Scruffy Dug we have all taken the Myers Briggs test, which determines personality types and offers insight into how each type works (there are many sites where you can take the test for free, we used www.16personalitytypes.com ). From how different personalities approach certain tasks to what type of activity they are likely to excel in to how they are likely to interact, the results cover a wide range of areas, personal and professional – often with unnerving accuracy. Although there were a few points in each of our results that didn’t quit hit the mark, and many points that weren’t anything we didn’t already know…or at least suspect, the test was nonetheless useful. In many cases it confirmed what we already knew about the areas we perform best in, and sometimes it’s just nice to know you’re on the right track. It also allowed us to get a glimpse inside each other’s heads, helping us establish how to interact with each other effectively.
Although I wouldn’t advise basing all personnel decisions on a survey it’s always a worthwhile exercise. It’s good to take a step back and look at the skills you have available, it gives you a basis for structuring your business and it’s a good jumping off point for getting the most from your team. It can also be a fun exercise and a good ice-breaker when team building or performing quarterly reviews.
With the results being just as candid on negative as they are on positive character traits there’s always the chance of a chuckle…and possibly the odd awkward moment if a colleague claims, “what? I’m nothing like that!”
