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Personality at Work

Orbis UK is an affiliate of Orbis International, a global charity that brings people together to fight avoidable blindness. With their network of partners we mentor, train and inspire local teams to fight blindness in their own communities. Orbis believe that no one should live a life of unnecessary blindness, simply because of where they were born.

Background

Colleagues who joined during the pandemic have never met the team in person, so team bonding is important especially in the Fundraising and Comms team who initially flagged the need for this training. Placing groups strategically in breakout rooms, with SMT members in each group. This session should be a fun, where staff can contribute and share personal preferences of working in a safe and inclusive environment.

Need

The aim of this training is to foster a harmonious and supportive work environment for all. This is an opportunity for our team to understand about different personality types and working efficiently / collaborating well and using our differences as strengths.

Staff to understand about different personality types and appreciate   working with different personalities is a good thing. Accept different is just different – not wrong. Better collaboration across and within teams. Staff should feel able to openly communicate with colleagues and know each other better after the session. Team should feel able to speak up when necessary.

Activity

We designed and delivered a two hour session on Personality at Work for over 30 people in the team. This involved prework of all particpants completing our online work styles questionnaire. This is a short, 3-5 minutes, questionnaire regarding people;s reactions to work situations. The output is a one page summary of the implications of work driven by different work styles.

The cirtual session was very engaging and had everyone involved at every step in the training.

Outcomes

The key outcomes were:

  1. Shared language on work styles.
  2. Greater understanding of the impact of personality on different aspects of work.
  3. Possible actions to self manage the impact of personality.

Participant feedback

“Very interesting, thank you.”

“I’ve got some great actions to implement.”

“I need to adapt my style to the situation and the person, thank you.”

Client comment

“The feedback was good.”