Noses out of joint

One of the great benefits of personality profiling is this... it gives managers an indication of vital areas in their staff such as behaviour under pressure and current stress levels. This case study shows it going further as an effective tool to get into normally difficult conversations about preferred ways of working and interaction with colleagues - which resulted in a more cohesive team, improved communications and eventually better customer care.

Sally-Anne is HR Director at a college in the south of England and became impressed with the accuracy of personality profiling after we domonstrated it on her and her assistant.

She rang us one day to say she wanted to profile the two other people in her department and needed the result in time for a teambuilding away day - in two days time! Fortunately, the questionnaire can be done online so the staff completed the information we needed and returned their responses, enabling us to prepare their reports in plenty of time.

One of the staff showed significant levels of stress, which she was unable to explain - but helped Sally-Anne identify it as a particular project she was working on, and take suitable action to help relieve the stress.

The other individual was more interesting. Her report did not reveal anything that raised any particular alarm bells, but did expose two aspects that helped Sally-Anne enormously. The lady in question had a knack of putting everyone's nose out of joint, and it was a cause for concern. She demonstrated no understanding of why people might make mistakes when they are completing forms, etc and expected everybody to do everything that she has to deal with, without error.

The report highlighted two aspects of her personality which, taken together, were the reasons why this was happening. She is a perfectionist and comes across as cold and unfeeling. The report was just what Sally-Anne needed to discuss with the staff member how she appears to other people, and to raise her awareness of the problems that she causes for other members of staff.

Sally-Anne said: "It was a good prompt to undertake difficult conversations about preferred ways of working and interaction with colleagues, which resulted in a more cohesive team and has already improved communication and, hopefully, long term will impact positively on customer care."

As a result of the profiles, the two team members were able to consider (with facilitation) how their different personalities impacted on team working, customer care, communication and understanding the corporate mission.

Personaility profiling is highly effective as a personnel assessment tool for measuring essential work-related aspects of an individual's personality including: 

  • Strengths and weaknesses
  • People skills
  • Learning style
  • Sales and management potential