About the Author
Jayne is a B2B tech copywriter and the editorial director here at Truity. When she’s not writing to a deadline, she’s geeking out about personality psychology and conspiracy theories. Jayne is a true ambivert, barely an INTJ, and an Enneagram One. She lives with her husband and daughters in the UK. Find Jayne at White Rose Copywriting.
In an ideal world, every employee would finish every item on his to-do list without any problems or stress. Back in the real world, the sheer number of things to do is dizzying and there’s only a finite amount of time to get them done. This means that time management—the art of using your time productively, based on the day’s priorities—is one of the most important skills your employees can have.
When people talk about pre-hire personality tests, they usually mean questionnaires like the Myers Briggs Inventory, the Big Five or the DISC profile. A test, like a numeracy or literacy test, has a right or wrong answer so you can pass or fail it. A personality questionnaire, on the other hand, helps the employer figure out if your strengths and weaknesses match up with the job requirements. You can’t actually flunk or ace a personality test—it simply shows if you’re a good fit for the job.
Shyness is not the same as introversion, although the two personality traits sometimes overlap. An Introvert needs time alone to recharge after busy work periods and gets mentally drained after spending a lot of time with others. A shy person is much more anxious about the social interaction itself.
Being a woman sucks when it comes to income. The median salary for American women is about 85 percent of men’s, which means a woman would have to work an extra 39 days to earn what a man did in 2018. These numbers are pretty incendiary. Even if you’re not shocked, they’re going to leave a nasty taste in the mouth.
So you were hired for your dream job (or so you thought). Only now, you’ve realized that it’s not what you expected it to be. Maybe you were a bit idealistic about the industry and thought the work would be more meaningful than it actually is. Or maybe the working environment doesn’t play to your strengths—you prefer independent work when everything’s based around teams, or there are just too many rules to follow. Now you feel let down and restless, and you’re wondering whether your expectations were just too high.
Ideally, everyone would get up, drive to work with a big grin on their faces, and feel just as fulfilled in the workplace as they do in the evenings and weekends. Sadly, that's not the reality for most of us. So many people are in jobs they don't hate exactly, but they don't love either because they haven't found the one big thing they want to do with their lives.
And the reason they haven't found the one big thing is because they didn't ask the right soul-searching questions before they chose their current career, and chose a direction they regret as a result.
As a manager, it’s easy to put your direct reports into boxes. There’s the creative one, the empathetic one, the one who likes autonomy and the one who like clear boundaries and set routines. There’s also another special breed of worker in the world, and that’s the person who has borderline manic levels of productivity yet spends a lot of the time kicking back and doing...well nothing. Someone who is lazy and a hard worker, all at the same time.
How do you manage someone when you’re never quite sure where they’re at? Here are some tips.
Fake it 'til you make it. Act as if you are exuberant and outgoing. Get out there and network. Open a sales conversation, give public speeches, make a big new circle of friends. Greet everyone with engaging small talk and give a firm handshake. Paste on a grin and don’t ever let on that inside, you’ve got panic-levels of anxiety and your heart has just dropped to the floor.
Why?
Every well-constructed team should have a mix of personalities. Some people like to take the lead and work well with very little supervision. Others need a little extra help but are generally happy to follow the guidelines and detailed planning the manager has set for them. And then there are those who are not inclined to follow the rules at all. If you're in the latter group, you might be a powerhouse of generating ideas, and you might be among the most productive people in your department, but you just have to have flexibility in the way you do things.
Why is that, for some people, forgiving themselves is like water off a duck's back—they apologize, vow to do better and just move on with their lives? Yet for others, there's so much shame attached to a perceived wrongdoing that it's almost impossible for them to forgive and make peace with themselves?
THE FINE PRINT:
Myers-Briggs® and MBTI® are registered trademarks of the MBTI Trust, Inc., which has no affiliation with this site. Truity offers a free personality test based on Myers and Briggs' types, but does not offer the official MBTI® assessment. For more information on the Myers Briggs Type Indicator® assessment, please go here.
The Five Love Languages® is a registered trademark of The Moody Bible Institute of Chicago, which has no affiliation with this site. You can find more information about the five love languages here.