Have you ever run a personality test with your team?

[Kristen Roth]

We all have individual personalities, which means misunderstandings at work are inevitable. Varied personalities mean varied work styles (do you like to work in silence or do you need some buzz around you?), different preferred methods of communication (want to be tapped on the shoulder or pinged in Slack?), and the list goes on!

At Atlassian, we like to say that our sixth and unofficial company value is “Seek first to understand.” It's a really great practice to establish, especially when it comes to understanding how to work best with your teammates. Our Jira Service Desk marketing team wanted to gain more insight into what makes each of their team members tick, so they ran personality tests!💡(Learn more about how they did it here.) 

What's your personality type and how does it affect you at work? Would you consider running a personality test with your team?

[Kat Warner]

The TechTime team completed and shared our results from https://www.playbuzz.com/georgiahuiz10/which-dictator-are-you?

A slightly more serious test we tried was https://mycreativetype.com/ where the number of makers and producers was not as high as we might expect from the developers!

[Kristen Roth]

Interesting, @Kat Warner! Thanks for sharing! 

[Deleted user]

https://www.16personalities.com/personality-types

[AriannaBurns]

I wish such "tests culture" was still popular among companies. I think that's a great tool for bringing the team together, making them know each other better. Is taking tests popular in your company/team? Apologies for bumping the old thread. Just curious.

[Savva Kort]

Yeah, we've done a couple of these with our team over the years. The first time was right after a rough project where communication kept breaking down—turns out half of us were direct "get it done" types and the other half needed more context and discussion first. Sharing the results actually cleared up a lot of the friction.

One thing that stuck with me was how much deeper it went than the usual MBTI stuff. We tried a free archetypes test based on Jung's ideas that showed not just one main type but a mix with primary, supporting, and even shadow sides. It explained why some people on the team naturally stepped up in crises while others shone in the planning phase. Made it easier to play to strengths instead of forcing everyone into the same mold.

Definitely worth trying if your team is up for it—helps turn those personality differences from annoyances into something useful.