What Are Work Styles & How to Find Yours

Success in a work environment is often achieved through collaboration. Whether it's creative projects, startups, or a traditional corporate environment, it's inevitable that there will be differences in work styles between employees. Rather than having differences lead to conflicts that can hamper productivity and success, it's possible to overcome differences in work styles and build a stronger team. Understanding your team’s preferred work styles isn't as difficult as it sounds, and will ultimately help you in the long run.

Work styles involve the methods, attitudes, behaviors that an employee prioritizes as their preference for communication style and productivity in the workplace. An employee's work style can impact everything from emails, in person communication and overall output. 

Benefits of knowing your work style:

Reflecting on your work style has benefits not just for yourself, but for colleagues, managers and the company too, for example: 

1. Higher productivity: Knowing your work style will help you improve your output and time management, ultimately improving productivity. 

2. Better teamwork: If your role requires you to often collaborate or work in teams, utilizing the strengths of your and others’ work styles allows teams to work more cohesively. Not only does individual work style impact team projects; preferences in teamwork style might differ greatly to how you work alone. Understanding these will allow team dynamics to quickly settle. 

3. Suitable career paths: Your work style is ultimately how you prioritize communication and your attitudes towards outcomes at work. A reason you might be unhappy with your job could be because your work style conflicts with your career choice. Reflecting on points of contention with your current job, or acknowledging the strengths and weaknesses of your work style will help you plan a career that suits your work style. 

Now that you know the importance of understanding your work style, here’s an overview of the different types of work styles for you to reflect on. Look at the examples of work styles and think about how it relates to you – it's possible that you might fit more than one type of work style! 

✨ Leader: 

Those with a leader work style like to take initiative, push their ideas or be the first to start a discussion relating to a project. There can be designated leaders, like managers – who are acknowledged as leaders by everyone. If you have a leadership work style, you might enjoy motivating your team, setting goals and influencing team direction. However, those whose' preferred working style is that of a leader might also overstep boundaries, dominate projects or become too obsessed with their own ideas, ignoring others. 

✨ Doer: 

If your work style is the doer, you’ll be task-oriented and focused on achieving goals or outcomes assigned to you. Doers will often easily get on with the other different types of work styles, as their priority is completing the project, not being the favorite or stand-out member. However, doers like to avoid conflict, which means that their ideas or suggestions might go unmentioned. 

✨ Logical: 

The logical work style has the work ethic of the doer, but will want to think things over first before getting started. Logical work style behaviors include thinking of possible challenges ahead and using data, analytics or other strategies to improve efficiency. However, although those with a logical work style seem prepared, they often lack nuance in their communication style and don’t anticipate things not going according to their predictions. 

✨ Supportive: 

Those with a supportive work style like to maintain a positive atmosphere within their work environment. The communication styles of supportvies at work will involve more than just check ins on progress and goals, they will often check in on well-being and understanding everyone better. Supportive work styles have no problem getting on with work; however their communication and teamwork style might not be for everyone, as other work styles might not have such an emotional connection to their team or workplace. 

✨ Detail-oriented: 

Having a detail-oriented work style means that tasks and information will be well reviewed and understood. Detail-oriented workers like to make plans, identify challenges and think of the project from all angles – these details can help with assigning tasks to the most appropriate people. Those with a detail-oriented work style will take extra time to review their tasks before getting started; however, their slow start will not hold the team back. Detail-oriented workers might get too caught up on a particular detail, and might not prioritize communicating non-specifics.

✨ Idea-oriented: 

Idea-oriented work styles like to think of the goal output of the project before they begin. Idea-oriented people can visualize the big picture, and use it to plan alongside leaders and detail-oriented colleagues. Idea-oriented work styles help motivate the team by reminding them of their progress and help maintain enthusiasm within the group. However, idea-oriented people might struggle with small details and require guidance to complete tasks within reason.

Here are more tips on how to identify your work style:

✅ Learn your preferred way of communication: 

Think of your communication style in the workplace, in terms of emails, internal communications, with colleagues, in teams and during meetings. What do you prioritize, in terms of expression, length and details you include? Think about how you communicate non-verbally also, with facial expressions, hand gestures, eye contact and listening skills. 

✅ Imagine working with a team: 

Imagine working on a team project – what position do you visualize yourself in? Are you taking control like a leader would, mind mapping everyone's ideas like detail oriented work styles or waiting for plans to be made so you can start on your tasks, like a doer? Also think of the project throughout its course to help you identify your work style – do you want to check in with others often, or are you happy to just do your tasks?

✅ Think about how you plan your to-do list:

Work styles are about priorities in the workplace, so reflecting on how you plan to-do tasks will help you figure out your work style. Those with a more straightforward work style like the doer, detail-oriented or logical workers will most likely have a chronological plan which is task-related. Supportive, idea-oriented and leader work styles will include more teamwork related priorities, as well as goals and check-ins for the team. 

✅ Consider what you enjoy doing: 

The easiest way to identify your work style would be reflecting on likes and dislikes. Think of hobbies, work projects or jobs you had that you really enjoyed and reflect on the task type, your duties and the environment it was in. This way, you can easily rule out the work styles which are polar opposite to your personality and interests.

✅ Know how you deal with conflicts:

Conflicts are a natural part of teamwork; imagining yourself in a difficult conflict with colleagues will help you identify your work style. Whether you work through it, avoid communicating about it, or check-in with everyone personally, conflict resolution ultimately is an intrinsic part of your communication style. 

✅ Try out personality tests: 

If you can see yourself in more than one type of work style, trying a work style or personality test will help you see things objectively. There are pros and cons to every type of work style, and sometimes we don’t want to admit that the downsides apply to us. There are plenty of personality tests or work style quizzes, however we recommend one of these: 

• MBTI: one of the most comprehensive personality tests, MBTI has a whole section on work styles, as well as examples of well-known people with the same personality type as yours!
• Revised NEO personality inventory: Also known as the “Big 5” personality test, this test measures your personality on scales of extroversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, openness and conscientiousness, with results indicating what type of roles you’re suited for.
• Winslow Personality Profile: this test is used by HR in hiring processes, with results showing what workplace “trait group” you suit.

Although personality tests won’t categorize you into one of the well-known work styles, they will give you an indication of which work style you suit, based on fundamental aspects of personality. 

--- Originally written by Bronte McNamara ---