How Your Personality Affects Your Work

Personality can have a powerful effect on our attitudes and approach toward work: how we assimilate information, treat deadlines, interact with colleagues, and more. Although no one falls into any one personality category, we all tend to have an overall “type.” Knowing that type can help us work more efficiently, effectively, and harmoniously. Take a look at these four common personality types.

Type A

You are a workaholic: energetic, competitive, hardworking, positive, and goal-oriented. A natural leader, you’re happy to step up and take charge. Because your self-worth is tied to achievement, you never waste time. However, you can become impatient and short-tempered—even with yourself—when deadlines are missed, or when you must wait in a line.

Helpful advice: Try to multitask less, calm your temper when things go south, and stop feeling the need to make work the most important thing in life. Choose to rest, reset, and develop more patience with yourself and others.

Amiable
You are easygoing, friendly, supportive, reliable, industrious and loyal. A people pleaser, you always try to keep the peace at work. You weigh important decisions carefully and are a great team member. Some potential drawbacks: you tend to avoid conflict and say yes to jobs, despite being swamped.

Helpful advice: rather than always agreeing with others, challenge yourself to state your point of view. Don’t take on new projects when you’re overwhelmed. You and your coworkers will benefit from those decisions.

Extrovert
You are enthusiastic, assertive, approachable and fun-loving. Positive and upbeat by nature, you relish being on a team and strive to convince others of the upside of ideas or projects. You gain energy by socializing. Drawbacks extroverts may face include impulsiveness, disorganization, and a tendency to take unrealistic risks.

Helpful advice: Don’t seek to impress people—strive for authentic connections with them. Become more self-reflective by slowing down and practicing mindfulness.

Perfectionist  

You are logical, detail-oriented, organized, and utterly reliable. You enjoy working alone. Your work is always top-quality—because you ensure that every detail is correct. You’re the person likely to catch a tiny mistake that can set a project back. However, you can be overly critical of yourself if you make a mistake.

Helpful advice: Know that “perfect” is impossible. Aim for work well done. Recognize that completing a project is more important than doing it perfectly. Don’t be so hard on yourself, and allow yourself to delegate when necessary.