Work It Podcast: Do you know your personality type and how it affects your work?

Are you an individualist or a peacemaker? Perhaps you thrive in motivating people. Experts say understanding personality traits makes a big difference in work relationships. Tiffany Ang and Gerald Tan find out more by taking a test.

Take the Big 5 Personality Test or RIASEC profiling tool if you want to know more.

Here's an excerpt from the podcast:

Tiffany Ang:
Let's talk about how we can better collaborate or maybe avoid conflict with our team members. Because, let's say, for example, you're in a very small team, and maybe many people in this team, let's say four out of five people in this team are extroverts, and they are not very great with details.

And then you have that one person who is more introverted, maybe prefers a bit more structure in meetings and everything ... Automatically, I'm thinking that one person would be honestly suffering, right? 

Gerald Tan:
Oh no. That one person will feel pretty out of place, because the dominant culture, the dominant styles of working, is very different from what he or she is used to.

Tiffany:
So how then would you best advise a person like this to work as part of this team? You can't fully avoid conflicts, but how can you maybe reduce the frequency of it?

Gerald:
So for example, even recognising that it's difficult for that person, that's already a very good step - recognising that you're different, but different doesn't mean bad. So, understanding that, okay, maybe we are more like this. The way we are doing work is, let's say, less detailed, but this person really values details a lot.

What I mean is, for example, slowing down the extrovertedness and the idea generation and really just saying that, "Okay, we need to put some of these points down. And we need to put a plan in place so that our whole team can benefit from it." And then what the person who's on his or her own to also step up and maybe use their strengths of planning to help to say, "Okay, this is what I think needs to go into the plan. What we need to do is this and that, this and that."