“It’s like there’s 2 of me – ‘home’ me and ‘work’ me. And I’m not sure the 2 of them really get along….”
Maybe you don’t really feel like you at work, or you just occasionally see flashes of “real you” before they get squashed again by ‘work you’.
Or worse, maybe you feel like you are someone completely different when you step into the office?
If the effort of being ‘work you’ in the office is starting to take its toll on you, then why not take some time to think about how the ‘real you’ would show up at work, and use this to create a work life that plays to your strengths, and one works with your personality rather than against it?
We all have certain strengths and skills that we bring to our working lives – things we are naturally good at as well as things that we have learnt over our careers. We are often very good at figuring out how to use our skills at work, but not so good at thinking about how our personalities can influence how we perform at work.
Taking the time to explore our personality, and how this interacts with our work requirements means we can create roles that we are more fulfilled in, more productive in and generally happier in.
Below I’ve listed out a few areas where you can start to think about your personality and how to use it to create a better working environment for yourself. So grab a cup of tea, and think about:
Where do you do your best work?
Do you need familiarity and routine, or do you prefer working in lots of different locations? Think about how you could get more of what works for you in your current role, and what difference that could make to how you feel.
What do you love doing?
Think about the tasks that make you lose track of time. What do you love that others seem to hate? Could you flex your job to do more of what you love, for example, swapping a couple of tasks with others or being proactive and offering to take on things you love doing?
Are you a people person?
Think about how you work around people. Do you need lots of hustle and bustle around you, or would you quite happily work on your own at home? If you frequently work in teams, look at the role you play, and consider what role you’d like to be playing.
Can you manage your manager?
Be proactive in working with (and not just for) your managers. Think about how you like to be managed, and then think how you can incorporate this into how you work. Also consider the managers or team leaders you work most frequently for, and how they like to work. How can you manage this so that you what you need, along with the best outcome for them?
Recharging your batteries
It’s not just at work that we need to consider our personalities – thinking about how we actually spend our down time can make a massive difference to how we recover from the working week.
For me, I need to ensure that my non working time includes some alone time. As an introvert, being around people all the time (even my kids!) drains me, and so I need a bit of time with just my own thoughts to recharge my batteries.
What do you need to feel good in yourself – time alone or time with others? Time focusing on a specific hobby, or time spent in a less structured, more free flow way?
It can take the time to build a working life that is in sync with your personality and your natural strengths but the benefits to how you feel can be immense.
What are you going to do today to start working in a way that works with your personality?
A great way of figuring out your personality type, and helping you see how to use your strengths in a work environment is to use DiSC, a psychometric assessment tool. It’s one I use with all my clients, with often scarily accurate results! If you’d to learn more about DiSC profiling, then please click here to send me a message.
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