Working With Different Personality Types – Type-A and Type-B Personality Traits

Making it work with our friends, colleagues, managers, spouses, and even car donors who ALL have different personalities!

Have you ever wondered what personalities are all about? How they contribute to the success of your work and relationships?

My work at Kars4Kids involves working in many different arenas with many different personalities. I’ve been involved with training in new customer service reps, donors’ separation anxiety from their vehicle (that they so generously donated to us), manning the phones, contributing ideas for better service and helping improve our systems, and worked with brand new potential car donors who needed a full education on what Kars4Kids is all about.

Now, I work in the online marketing arena where I get to reach out to people from across the United States sharing with them our story and what latest project we’re working on. I reach out to people who are attracted to us via social media and I am always in the mode of educating myself in the world of SEO aka Search Engine Optimization.

Being more of a deep and zany guy I started thinking about all the different personalities that I work with. There’s the boss, the various managers around the organization, my co-workers, my trainees, the post person, older people, and younger people.

Reflecting on each person and their unique personality, their work and life experience there is so much to learn, adapt for myself, teach others and even things to stay away from.

People have different backgrounds, success stories in their relationships and professional lives. There are people who are hurting and there are people who are very focused on getting their jobs done. People get discouraged from a day that they could have done better, and there are people who are celebrating every small success.

Personalities are complex. There is nature versus nurture that many of us have heard about. I sometimes feel that each company should have its own shrink, its own psychology department; a safe place where an employee can talk and figure things out. They can learn how to better their relationships in the office, communicate with their colleagues, managers and ultimately their boss.

I recently read two really cute and funny articles on buzzfeed.com (a great place to read just whatever is on the average person’s mind; from the most random to the most relevant news to be shared) by Chelsea Marshall and Matthew Perpetua. The articles were simple; “25 Surefire Ways to Annoy Your Type-A Friends” and a quiz to see where you fit in. I immediately was attracted to the headlines and thought of sharing them with you, my audience. You see we all have jobs in one way or another. We all have relationships some work out easier than others.

This got me thinking am I a Type-A or a Type-B personality. I even saw on simplypsycholgy.org that there is even a Type-C personality. Maybe I’m a mixture of all 3 or just one or two. Now with that in mind how does this affect how I connect and communicate and work efficiently together with everyone I work with?

The key is to understand ourselves, and once we start understanding ourselves better we have the opportunity to all the success awaiting us. At home, on the street, and in the office where many of us spend most of our lives.

Some references for more research:
http://elitedaily.com/life/motivation/the-25-things-that-people-with-type-a-personalities-do/
http://www.buzzfeed.com/spenceralthouse/26-side-effects-of-having-a-type-a-personality
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/digital-leaders/201201/working-type-personality
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/communication-success/201401/communication-success-different-personality-types