Personality Types Versus Traits

Personality types are measured by the MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator). It is used to help individuals and organizations understand different behaviour combinations and their similarities/differences.

While useful for explaining various behaviours, personality types is highly susceptible to differing moods and day-to-day life and work situations.

Organizations needing to more accurately and comprehensively understand personality are directed to seeking trait based assessments of personality types. Traits are enduring characteristics that remain more constant over one’s adult life. There are seven key traits that are most important in understanding one’s strengths, work orientations, motivating factors, and communication style:

Assertiveness – the ability to lead, follow or facilitate, based on one’s natural risk orientation and level of need to exercise control over others/situations;
Sociability – the ability to be task focused and analytical, people oriented and relationship focused – or a bit of both, based on one’s level of need to interact with and/or influence others;
Pace – the ability to multi-task and handle fast paced activities, or take a more methodical, step-by-step approach, based on one’s openness to change and level of need for system and predictability in their environment;
Detail Orientation – the ability to be very “hands-on” with most activities, or to delegate and take a “big picture” approach i.e. to be strategic or operational, based on one’s level of need for structure and orderliness;
Behavioral Adaptability – the ability to modify one’s behaviors to interact with a wide range of individuals and maintain those behavioral modifications for an extended period of time, or just a short period of time;
Emotiveness – the ability to be sensitive and empathetic versus logical and rational – or some of both, based on one’s level of need to express emotion;
Creativity – the ability to be original – “think outside the box” or to maintain a more conservative / practical approach, based on one’s natural level of inventiveness.

Assessing Employee Personality Traits

The Organizational Performance Pro.fileTM (OPP) is a Personality Traits Based Assessment process that provides employers and employees with rich and accurate insights into an individual’s: potential (career development and succession planning); team orientation and team contribution style; leadership or management style; problem-solving orientation; ability to change and initiate change; risk orientation for important decision-making situations; etc.

To learn more about how the Organizational Performance Pro.fileTM (OPP) can help you understand employee behavior and the difference between personality and behavioral type, please Contact Us.