Productivity Tips for any Personality Type
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
1 like•213 views
Have you ever wondered why the latest productivity tips never seem to work for you? Are you mystified by your office neighbor’s neat desk? (Or maybe you’re the one with the neat desk and can’t understand why everyone else is such a slob!) Maybe you need to understand your personality and work style before you can be at your most productive. Most productivity tips take a one-size-fits-all approach, but people aren’t like that. This session will look at how your personality affects your work style and how you can take advantage of your unique strengths to be more effective at your job. We’ll also discuss ways different personalities can work together. We’ll talk a little about some productivity tools and software but the main focus is on understanding your work style.
Recommended
Recommended
More Related Content
What's hot
Similar to Productivity Tips for any Personality Type
Similar to Productivity Tips for any Personality Type (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Productivity Tips for any Personality Type
- 1. Productivity Tips for any Personality Type Linda Gilmore, editor Department of Agricultural Communications and Education Kansas State University ACE 2016, Memphis, Tennessee
- 2. Introduction • What do your past job experiences tell you about your work style? • Do you prefer a regular set of tasks or do you like variety? • Do you need someone telling you what to do next, or do you prefer more self-direction? • Do you thrive in an open office setting or do you (like WKRP in Cincinnati’s Les Nessman) need walls?
- 3. Introduction • What have you learned about your personality? – Are you task oriented or people oriented? – Do you function best with a clear plan or do you prefer to wing it? – How do you feel about spreadsheets? – Do you thrive in a crowd or do you need more alone time to be most effective? • Personality tests can help you gather this knowledge and use it in the workplace.
- 4. One Approach to Personality Extraversion •Focused on the outer world of people and activities. Where you focus your attention and get energy Introversion •Focused on the inner world of ideas and experiences. Sensing •Focus on information based on specific facts and what is actually happening. How you prefer to perceive information INtuition •Preference for the “big picture.” Focused on relationships and connections between facts. Thinking •Prefer decisions based on the logical consequences of choice or action. How you prefer to make decisions Feeling •Decide based on what is important to self and others. Judging • Prefers a planned, orderly approach to life. How you orient yourself to the outer world Perceiving • Prefers a flexible approach.
- 5. Other Personality Tests • The Big Five • DiSC • The Enneagram (9 personality traits) • Gallup’s EP10/Clifton Strengths Finder • Carson Tate’s Productivity Styles Each of these tests can help you understand more about yourself and how you work with others.
- 6. My desk:
- 7. The Point • No matter what your personality type, you can be effective and productive at your job. • My example: – Keep a flexible to-do list (on paper) by my computer – Use my calendar and reminders – Keep current project in front of me on my desk – Keep running project notes in Evernote – Close my door to shut out distractions sometimes – I switch tasks when what I’m doing gets boring • Now – what about you?
- 9. Working with Others • But what about those people you work with? – Recognize that different work styles make a stronger team – Take advantage of your colleagues’ strengths • Your logical, analytical colleague can help with reaching goals and analyzing data. • The organized, detail-oriented person on your team will help keep everyone on deadline. • The supportive, expressive colleague will be good at building relationships and communicating with others. • The big-picture visionary on your team can help you stay energized and encourage new ways of looking at problems.
- 10. Differences at Work • Your team completes a significant project and some of the team wants to go out after work to celebrate. You kind of want to, but you know at the end of the day you’re usually ready for some alone time. What do you do? • You have a great idea and can’t wait to share it at your next team meeting. But some people in your group always focus on why your ideas won’t work. How can you get the naysayers to listen and be on your side?
- 11. • Have questions, want resources? You can email me at lindagi@ksu.edu or call me (after ACE) at 785-532-1153.
Editor's Notes
- Opening attention getter: Which Harry Potter character do you most identify with: Harry? Ron? Hermione? They each had a unique way of approaching a problem, based on personality and life experiences. (Like Hermione, my first instinct is to go to the library – whether virtual or physical) But most of the time, they ultimately had to work together to solve problems. And that’s true for most of our workplaces. You and your colleagues may have different approaches to a problem; together, you can solve the problem more effectively than if you have to do it on your own. But it takes time to understand different work styles. How you work is based on a lot of things – including your personality, your life experiences, and how you respond to the workplace culture around you. So we’re going to take a little time today to talk about understanding yourself and how you work most effectively – alone and with others.
- Introduce myself and tell a little bit about my journey. I’m not a productivity expert, but I am someone who has spent some time figuring out my personality and work style and what I need to work best. I won’t focus on a lot of tools, but I hope this will help you figure out what kind of tools will help you the most. My past job experiences: (don’t spend too much time on this part) Clifton News – not much money, but I enjoyed the variety and challenges. Presbyterian Manor – the job has value (not demeaning), but I learned the system in about 6 weeks and then I was bored for the next two years. Graduate assistant and assistant director of the Huck Boyd Institute for Community Journalism – I learned a lot of new things and started feeling like I’d found out what I wanted to be when I grew up (at the age of 37!) Reporter and copy editor at the Junction City Daily Union – I put that journalism training into practice and enjoyed it. But I didn’t enjoy the revolving door on the managing editor’s office and the craziness that ensued. I do not work well with someone standing over me and yelling at me on deadline. Editor for K-State Research and Extension – I get to do a job I enjoy, with variety and meaning, with people I respect and who respect me. I’ve learned that I like jobs that have some meaning – I’m doing something worthwhile – and I like variety in my work. I enjoy being self-directed and having some control over my work environment. I like having an actual office, with windows and a door.
- I’ve also learned how my personality affects how I work. There are a variety of personality tests out there. I don’t want to promote a specific one, but I have found several of them useful. The point is that they have helped me understand some things about how I work. It’s also helped me understand better how I work with others and how others work differently.
- This is the place to bring in info from ALI and my Myers-Briggs profile. Have any of you taken the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator? I’m pretty much the classic INFP. I gather energy from being alone and reflecting on things. I’m not especially shy, but being around a lot of people for an extended time is exhausting. I love coming to ACE and I enjoy doing presentations, but then I need to recharge. My husband is more analytical – he gathers data and makes spreadsheets. I gather data, but I don’t put it into spreadsheets. I make connections between facts and I keep a lot of notes (in Evernote, where my brain lives), but a spreadsheet does not usually help me pull things together. I make decisions based more on relationships and how I think it will make people feel than on logic and cold, hard facts. I hated grading papers when I taught news & feature writing because I didn’t want to be too hard on the students. I eventually started using a rubric and that helped me be more objective. And I’m OK with some ambiguity and flexibility. I’ve always been able to see the shades of gray in situations. In high school, when all my friends were complaining about how awful their parents were, I kind of understood where the parents were coming from. I got along great with my parents. I find repetitive tasks boring, but sometimes those kind of tasks are part of my job. I’ve learned to focus and get them done and out of the way (sometimes).
- There are other personality and work style assessments. Here are a few I’ve taken: Big Five – OCEAN model of personality (Openness to experience/intellect; Conscientiousness; Extraversion; Agreeableness; Neuroticism) (I’m more open to new ideas, somewhat disorganized, introverted, agreeable, and calm) My note: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s10/nl/299655223/afe4ee51-0d1c-4b55-bd68-0c51f606c676/ DiSC model – Dominance or Drive, Influence or Inspiring, Steadiness or supportive, Conscientiousness or Cautious (I’m more Supportive) Enneagram -- Type 1: The Reformer. The rational, idealistic type. Type 2: The Helper. The caring, nurturing type. Type 3: The Motivator. The adaptable, success-oriented type. Type 4: The Artist. The intuitive, reserved type. Type 5: The Thinker. The perceptive, cerebral type. Type 6: The Skeptic. The committed, security-oriented type. Type 7: The Generalist. The enthusiastic, productive type. Type 8: The Leader. The powerful, aggressive type. Type 9: The Peacemaker. The easygoing, accommodating type. (me) EP10/Clifton Strengths Finder – focuses on strengths (knowledge-seeker, delegator, creative thinker, relationship-builder, confident) Carson Tate’s Productivity Styles: Prioritizer; Planner; Arranger (me); Visualizer Each of these tests looks at different strengths or aptitudes or personality traits. They each have their own benefits. I love taking these kind of tests so I’ve taken them all. They pretty consistently identify me as somewhat introverted, more concerned with relationships than with rules, and more invested in everyone getting along and helping people succeed.
- My to-do list, my calendar, current projects, publications to be printed soon (the yellow paper), various pens, other project files
- I’ve worked with all kinds of people who had different work styles and they were all productive and effective. From my own experience, I know I’ve tried different productivity tips and tools and then beat myself up when they just didn’t seem to work for me. As I’ve come to understand myself better, I’ve been able to quit being so hard on myself and embrace my own work style. So this isn’t about adding more to your to-do list, or trying the latest productivity hack. It’s not about piling on guilt. I want to help you figure out how to develop your own productivity hacks – to discover what works best for how you work and then put it into practice. I’ve learned that because I’m a perceiver (INFP), I need to keep some things in front of me to stay on task. If something isn’t where I can see it, it might as well not exist. But I can work around that by keeping things where I can see them. I have to clean my desk from time to time because I’m not always good about putting things away when I’m done with them, but it is helpful. I also use a simple to-do list for the week. Each day I make note of things I know I need to work on. That way I can avoid the problem of staring at my computer wondering what I need to work on next. I also use Evernote – a lot! I tried using a spreadsheet, but it didn’t really work for me. I need room to write my notes. So I keep a running note on each project. I also use it to organize other things and I’ve found it really helpful. I’m an introvert but I also like to know what’s going on around me. I work in an office suite and usually leave my door open. But if I need to focus, I shut my door over to help me shut out distractions. And I give myself permission to take a break or switch tasks. If I get stuck on something, I work on something else for a while. Hand out a couple of personality and work style quizzes and encourage participants to do them.
- Now, about those people you work with ….
- This Harvard Business Review article is pretty helpful: https://hbr.org/2015/04/differing-work-styles-can-help-team-performance It draws on Carson Tate’s categories of work styles.
- Here are a couple of scenarios that most of us experience in our work. We have a mix of social extroverts and quieter introverts. We have people who often have big ideas, but maybe don’t always think through the ramifications. We also have people who find reasons why something won’t work, no matter how simple the project. Let’s talk about these scenarios and take into consideration how different personalities and work styles might see these situations differently. So what do you think about all this? How have you used your own understanding of yourself to be more productive and work better with your team?
- Hand out resource sheet.