The Personality Types at Work and How They Make Decisions

Understanding personality types at work can significantly impact team dynamics and decision-making processes. Companies commonly use personality assessments, such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), to evaluate employees and steer their development. The Enneagram test is another valuable tool that provides insights into one's personality, decision-making, and emotional intelligence. This can help aid in personal and professional development, team building, and self-awareness.

“By the time you’re 30 years old, you’ve probably noticed there is a relationship between your strengths and weaknesses at work,” said executive coach Delynn Copley of the Copley Group in our recent interview.  “Everyone has a set of gifts and talents, and they are often directly related to how we get in our own way. The overuse of any strength can easily turn into a weakness.”

Delynn is an expert on the subject and spends her time developing leaders and executive teams. She believes that understanding your personality type can help you unlock your full potential. After all, "emotions drive decision-making and interpersonal relationships. Understanding personality is a useful way to think about how this happens, one that people can grasp easily.”

What Are The Nine Enneagram Types?

Our discussion centered around nine personality types, known as the Enneagram. This system categorizes personality into nine types, each with its own motivations, fears, and behavioral patterns. It groups you into one of three centers of intelligence - head, heart, and gut - based on your personality traits. “We have many sides to our personality, but we tend to rely more on one center than the others,” Delynn explained. “And stressful situations like team decision-making can bring out the problematic tendencies of our personality.” The nine personality types at work, as described by the Enneagram, include:

• The Reformer
• The Helper
• The Achiever
• The Individualist
• The Investigator
• The Loyalist
• The Enthusiast
• The Challenger
• The Peacemaker

Decision-Making Styles Of The Enneagram Types

The decision-making process varies depending on the personality types at work. However, each enneagram type can be categorized as making decisions through their head, heart, or gut.

Going With Your Gut

Personalities that go with their gut tend to be instinctive. They want to be in control and have authority, respect, and power. “Personalities in this category really don't like to be told what to do,” said Copley, “which has a clear implication for team decision-making.” This workplace personality likes to be in charge because they like to make decisions, and they're good at it. But to put it bluntly, they're often also control freaks.

The Reformer

The Reformer is driven by perfection and the desire for personal growth. They expect themselves and others to be their best at all times. But under stress, they start nitpicking. They don't like to decide with incomplete information, and their quest for perfection causes damaging delays.

The Challenger

The Challenger is strong and action-oriented. The good news is that you have a lot of forward momentum and are energized by vibrant debate. You are confident and decisive. However, in stressful times you may move so fast that you don't get proper input from others. This fast pace may result in you misinterpreting silence as agreement and running right over less forceful dissenters.

The Peacemaker

If you are a Peacemaker, you crave control because you want to ensure that everyone is happy. You bring people together, and synthesize perspectives across the team. But when stressed, you can be so hyper-focused on harmony that you may avoid conflict, gloss over important disagreements and make the wrong decision just to keep everyone happy.

Straight From The Heart  

Of all the personality types at work, the heart types are the most driven by how other people perceive them. “They care about what people see in them, and what impressions their decisions will make on other people,” said Copley. The good news is that this need for validation drives a quest for achievement and a desire for feedback. The bad news is that heart types can be driven by appearances instead of results.

The Helper

The Helper is extremely tuned into the morale of an organization. You are that bright-eyed co-worker who is always making direct, warm eye contact and involving everyone. The Helper knows how to read people and has high emotional intelligence. This is great, except when you are a leader who needs to make a decision that will affect people negatively. Preferring to be liked, you'd rather avoid hard but necessary decisions.

The Achiever

The Achiever is also focused on other team members, but you are also looking for admiration. You are self-confident and extremely success-oriented. This makes you methodical in decision-making, because you want to win. But you run into trouble when a decision reflects badly on you - you hide the bad news or distance yourself from the problems.

The Individualist

The Individualist tends to be highly creative, with a deep appreciation for beauty and aesthetics. They tend to be introspective with high levels of self-awareness. You like to work alone to design elegant solutions. You love to say, “I think there is a totally different way to look at this.” This is highly valuable for a team, but under stress you may disrupt discussion with a disdain for the mundane, demanding elegance over all else. This may make you appear self-absorbed.

It's All in Your Head

The head triad is driven by their focus on what is going to happen in the future. “They want to get things moving towards a better tomorrow," said Copley. They are always playing out future scenarios in their heads and want to be ready for what's coming one, two or ten steps ahead. But they can also ignore the here and now, becoming overly confident that their vision of the future is real.

The Investigator

Investigators play out mental scenarios and like to have a ton of data. Characteristically, you are the person on the team who will read not just the full report but the footnotes and references, too. You are highly analytical, objective and rational, but when stressed you get too hung up on research to make a decision, and have a blind spot for important emotional factors.

The Loyalist

The Loyalist thinks a lot about security and wants to know that the future will be OK. You have a lot of skepticism and you squelch this by working through scenarios extremely carefully (especially worst-case scenarios). You are a clairvoyant planner and very loyal, but your focus on obstacles can cause your team to dismiss your worries and miss your insights.

The Enthusiast

The fun-loving Enthusiast is all about finding joy in life and work. Their optimistic energy is contagious. Always bold and innovative, their peers would describe them as agents of change. They're a quick study and see opportunity everywhere. But Enthusiasts often struggle to meet deadlines. Additionally, under stress they blow off objections and shrug off problems, believing things will work out even when they probably won't.

Summing Up The Personality Types At Work

“The subtle biases of these different personality types happen because of where our attention is going,” Copley summarized. “Using the metaphor of a spotlight, if our attention is pointed intensely in one direction, then it's not pointed somewhere else.” That throws the rest of the world into shadow. The more stressed we are, the more intense the spotlight, and the deeper the shadows.

Research shows that teams make better decisions, but team decision-making can be challenging. Understanding personality types at work can help navigate these challenges. The next time your team makes a decision, keep the effects of personality in mind. Not sure exactly where you and your team members fall on the personality spectrum? Using Cloverpop to make and record your decisions will give you an easy, objective way to look back as individuals and as a group to see who falls where in the personality spectrum. It's sure to be enlightening to everyone on your team, and will help you make the most of your talents.