Personality Profiles: Building Better Teams Through Understanding Differences

linnearader
Apr 9
9 min read

Introduction: The Power of Personality Differences

Have you ever wondered why you click instantly with some colleagues while others leave you scratching your head in confusion? Have you ever wondered why you can easily communicate with some people while with others it’s like you’re speaking different languages? Or why certain team members excel at tasks that make others want to run for the hills? The answer often lies in understanding personality profiles.

When I first asked Google how many personality assessment tools exist, I was shocked to discover there are over 2,500 different options! From the well-known Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and DiSC to frameworks like Enneagram, Strengths Finder, and Real Colors, the abundance of personality typing systems points to something fundamental: understanding human differences matters deeply in how we work together.

What Are Personality Profiles?

helps us navigate working relationships with greater awareness and effectiveness

But what exactly is a personality profile? At its core, it's "a comprehensive evaluation that analyzes and describes an individual's psychological characteristics, behavioral tendencies, and emotional attributes, providing insight into their unique traits, preferences, and how they interact with the world." The key word here is "snapshot" – these profiles capture tendencies at a moment in time, not permanent or unchangeable traits.

Personality profiles can be used in several areas: life or career coaching, building teams, developing leaders, hiring decisions and so much more. Each assessment evaluates differing factors to help each of us understand ourselves and each other.

While different assessment tools use varying frameworks – colors, letters, numbers, or animal types – they all aim to accomplish the same thing: creating a map of human differences that helps us navigate working relationships with greater awareness and effectiveness. When used thoughtfully, these tools don't box people in; they open doors to deeper understanding and collaboration.

In this post, we'll explore how personality profiling works and practical ways to apply these insights in workplace settings – from improving team communication to resolving conflicts and developing more effective leadership approaches.

Let’s discuss how understanding personality styles and profiles can actually help within organizations.

Adapting Your Communication Style

How can you adapt yourself to better communicate with others with different personalities?

Observe and listen actively, meaning take a step back or a few minutes to understand what others are saying, but even more how they are reacting. Match their energy, focus on their interests and goals, and be flexible and clear in your communication. This can include:

1. Active Listening and Observing:

Pay attention to how THEY communicate. Observe their body language, how they say things (their tone), and how they seem to select their words.
Hear their priorities. What do they need or want and how do they like to receive information?
Utilize active listening. Ask questions, don’t listen to respond but listen to understand.

2. Match Their Energy:

Mirror their communication style. If they are direct, be direct. If they are more relaxed, take a more conversational approach.

3. Focus on Their Interests and Goals:

Manage your message to meet THEIR needs. Remember, they are not you. You need to adapt your message to make sure their goals and concerns met.
Use examples and stories that mean something to them. Your message will mean far more to them if you utilize their interests and experiences as examples.

4. Be Flexible and Clear in Your Communication:

Use simple and understandable language. Be mindful of utilizing technical terms or jargon and only utilize if they fully understand it.
Utilize different communication methods. Would they be more comfortable with an in-person meeting, email, or phone call?
Watch body language. Your body language can have a substantial impact on how your message is received and their body language can provide clues as to how your message is being received.

While these recommendations can be utilized effectively in peer-to-peer communication, they will also help make sure a leader can more effectively communicate with their team. Beyond these communication ideas, the following are more practical tips aimed at assisting leaders who manage teams filled with varying personality types.

Effective Day-to-Day Management of Different Personalities

Public recognition works great for some people and some people want to sink into a hole rather than be acknowledged publicly.

Customized management - Some team members need/want daily or even more often, check-ins to ensure managerial satisfaction. But on the other hand, many would prefer weekly or less check-ins. The difference could be a feeling of micromanagement to those preferring fewer discussions or lack of care/responsibility to those preferring frequent conversations. Make sure you customize yourself to meet the needs of each member of your team.
Feedback matched with Personality – Feedback will be easier/harder to accept depending on the receiver’s personality. For example, direct communicators appreciate straightforward feedback, while others may need a more supportive approach with positive feedback being balanced feedback about improvement areas.
Task Assignment – Each person has their own strengths. While everyone needs a “stretch” project from time to time, focusing primarily about matching the most capable person to each task. Match projects to natural strengths: detail-oriented types for quality assurance, creative types for brainstorming, analytical types for problem-solving, and relationship-focused types for client interaction.
Create work environments that work for everyone - When possible, allow for both collaborative spaces and individual spaces to accommodate different working preferences.
Recognize accomplishments differently – Public recognition works great for some people and some people want to sink into a hole rather than be acknowledged publicly. Understand your team member’s personalities and recognize according to their needs rather than what you like to do.

Building Stronger Team Dynamics

Beyond communication improvements and day to day individual management then comes ways that teams can grow and become more effective. By respecting and understanding the different personality types, teams will interact in a more positive way. Ways to improve team dynamics include:

Ensure meeting participation is balanced – When managing meetings, determine a structure that works for you and your team to ensure members take turns during meetings. This will ensure all voices are heard, from your soft-spoken introverts to your outgoing extroverts and everyone in between.
Form personality partnerships – Employees with different personality types have different strengths and weaknesses. Pairing these employees together can create a unique balance and improve the effectiveness of the team.
Understand other personality styles – Whatever personality assessment your organization or team utilizes, take the time to understand it as fully as possible. Work to be able to recognize the various personality styles. Understand how to best communicate with others and recognize misunderstandings before they start.
Establish team communication guidelines - Create agreed-upon ways information will be communicated so each person can process in their own ways and ensure understanding.

Resolving Conflicts Through Personality Understanding

Solutions don't have to have a winner and a loser.

Conflict will inevitably occur within interpersonal relationships whether on a personal or professional level. Understanding personality differences can also help resolve these conflicts and build understanding in how and why they occur. Techniques to overcome conflict include:

Don’t take disagreements personally – Consider that conflicts are style differences rather than personal deficiencies.
Meet personality needs – When attempting to de-escalate situations or resolve conflict understand that different personalities may be involved. Some personalities may need time to process or cool down, while others may need resolution right away. Additionally, people with different personalities also have unique needs that tend to frame their position in conflict.
Ask "why" – When conflict occurs, ask team members to explain why something matters to them. This will uncover their perspective and the values and priorities behind it.
Look for complementary solutions – Solutions don’t have to have a winner and a loser. Venture to determine solutions that complement the differing personalities rather than requiring compromise.

Personality-Based Professional Development

Professional development can also be made more effective through understanding personality differences. When finding and selecting professional development opportunities keep these tips in mind:

Select personalized opportunities – Locate professional development opportunities that build on the natural strengths of different personality types. Additionally, help individual team members build upon their less dominate skills through “stretch” opportunities.
Utilize mentors – Individuals can expand their perspectives and communication styles by being matched with mentors that have different personality styles.
Match your coaching style to your team’s needs – Understand what your team members need from coaching. All won’t react to the same type of coaching in the same way.
Face limitations head on - Different personality types have different areas in which they are naturally weak. Identifying those weaknesses and devising ways to address them will be most successful.

All these approaches from communication, day-to-day and team management, conflict and professional development will help teams work together better and allow everyone involved to be more successful individually and as a team.

Real Colors: A Framework for Understanding Differences

We could dive into the 2,500 different personality tests that exist to take this conversation to the next level, but that would be highly time-consuming and would get pretty boring. Instead, we are going to focus on Real Colors because I’m certified in it. I’ve taken several other personality assessments, and each one is interesting and has its own merits. I don’t know if there’s any BEST, it’s just determining which type of assessment works best for you.

Why did I pick Real Colors to be certified in? Real Colors is based on the great history of philosophy all the way back to Hippocrates. When I was trained, I didn’t realize that most of the assessments are based on philosophic principles that have literally been around for thousands of years.

Through the ages, there have been many researchers whose work is closely related to Hippocrates’ theories. Carl Jung, Katharine Briggs, Isabel Briggs-Myers, and David Keirsey to name a few. While things have drastically changed since the times of Hippocrates, the principles are the same; people are different and there are distinctly different behavior types.

Developed in 1993, Real Colors has four distinct behavior types that tie to colors: Gold, Green, Blue, and Orange. The thing I find most helpful with Real Colors is the focus on understanding that while every person has a primary color or colors, they are truly all the colors at some level. Another portion that I greatly appreciate is that with Real Colors you focus on understanding all the colors and recognizing where and how they appear in others.

While some assessments focus only on understanding yourself, Real Colors focuses both on yourself and your team. This really helps build teams, enhance communications, and decreases conflict across organizations.

So, what do these Gold, Green, Blue, and Orange colors mean?

Strong Gold personalities are highly organized, loyal, dependable, and time conscious. They enjoy working efficiently and making (and checking things off their) lists.
Strong Green personalities are highly analytical, logical, cool, calm, collected, and tend to be perfectionists. They research topics to fully understand all sides of an issue.
Strong Blue personalities are empathetic, sincere, tactful, and creative. They care about people and communicate carefully, ensuring all involved understand.
Strong Orange personalities are energetic, creative, flexible, and imaginative. They thrive in taking risks, working with change, and figuring out new ways to do things.

Remember, all of us are a bit of every color. We have primary and secondary colors (those we are most like, most of the time), but can demonstrate parts of other colors during various times in our lives or different situations as they arise.

Real-World Success: The Road Construction Team Story

My first full workshop on my own with Real Colors was amazing. When you do something new for the first time, you can be a little nervous, but I was lucky to be doing the workshop with individuals I was wonderfully comfortable with.

These 13 road construction guys LOVED the workshop. They understood the concepts better than I could have dreamed. On breaks and after the workshop, they kept talking about it. I was like a kid at Christmas. My brain was screaming and doing cartwheels. They GOT it. They heard it. As someone training other people, this is like the icing on the cake, it’s the greatest feeling.

When the workshop was over, they wanted ALL their co-workers to do a workshop. They knew if everyone understood Real Colors like they did, they could build a better team, understand each other better and work together better.

It was wonderful to hear them talk about Lucas, who must be green because he thinks about conversations far longer than the others and will come back a day or week later and bring up the topic with a unique perspective. They used to think he just couldn’t make up his mind, but now they see he really just kept analyzing the situation and came to a different conclusion with more information.

Or when they realized that Doug who hates sitting still, is an amazingly quick operator and can figure out the neatest way to do things. He’s orange. Task him with problem solving and you’ll be highly productive.

A few months later, we did the workshop again with all their co-workers and they were right, the group was engaged and learned how to work together better.

Moral of the story, personality profiles are real and meaningful. By understanding ourselves, as well as those around us better, we can better understand each other, communicate, and build more productive relationships. Utilizing the approaches mentioned, together with a personality assessment provides the opportunities for success.

Taking Action: Next Steps With Personality Profiles

Build your team. Build your relationships. Build your understanding of each other.

Learning more about personality similarities and differences isn’t just fun and interesting. As you can see, these profiles and the associated knowledge are powerful tools. Now that you have all this insight, what are you going to do with it?

This week, take at least one action to move forward:

Schedule a personality assessment for your team. If you’re intrigued by Real Colors, I’m happy to help, give me a call.

Contact Me

Look at one of your team members or co-workers who works differently than you do. Utilize some of the techniques shared here and adapt your communication style to improve the ways you work together.
Look at a recent conflict that happened within your team. Think about the strategies and techniques we’ve gone over and plan how you could handle the conflict better in the future.

Build your team. Build your relationships. Build your understanding of each other. Remember that the goal is to grow and learn, building understanding and appreciation of our differences.

I'd love to hear how these approaches work for you! Share your experiences in the comments below or reach out directly to discuss how personality profile workshops might benefit your organization.

And, as always, carry social kindness with you everywhere you go. The world needs you and your positive mindset!