The value of understanding personality types for building successful teams

M.Phil. (Personal and Professional Leadership)in the workplace often cannot work together effectively towards optimal performance. Employees often experience relationship problems in the workplace. Not many realise that a lack of understanding of personality contribute to these problems. Through this study, the objective was to investigate whether a basic understanding of personality types is a factor that can significantly improve workplace relationships in teams and therefore improve effective teamwork and team performance in companies. The motivation for this study was to make a contribution towards helping teams function more effectively, specifically by improving workplace relationships through applying an understanding of personality types in teams. The empirical research method used in this study was a mixed method approach of quantitative and qualitative research. Quantitative research was done through a survey questionnaire that was completed by a sample of respondents (n=183) from companies in the financial industry. This was supplemented by qualitative research by means of focused group interviews (n=16) with team leaders and managers of the survey participants. While the results were not found to be typical of the broader population, enough evidence were found to suggest that employees in the workplace realise the need for working together better in their teams, and seeing the value that personality profiling can bring towards achieving this reality