How What Is My Working Style? works

How it is scored

This test is based on research on teams. Studies find that teams do better when they have clear goals and roles (Hackman, 2002), when members communicate, back each other up, and adapt (Salas and others, 2005), when members feel safe to speak up (Edmondson, 1999), and when talking turns are shared evenly and members read each other well (Woolley and others, 2010). The idea that people tend to add different things to a team goes back to the team role work of Belbin (1981). Research on that approach shows mixed evidence for its published inventory, so we use the idea only as a starting point for talking about how people work (Aritzeta and others, 2007). The five styles and their names in this test are our own.

Part 1 has 20 sentences, four for each style. Each one gives 0 to 4 points to its style. Part 2 has 20 pairs of choices. Every style is paired with every other style twice, and the choice you pick gives 3.1 points to its style. Every style can earn the same total, so the scores compare fairly.

Each style score runs from 0 to 100. Your main style is your highest score. Most people use more than one style, so look at all five.

PersonalitySite.com wrote all of these questions and descriptions. They are not copied from any other test.

What it cannot tell you

This test is for learning about yourself and your team. It is not a diagnosis. Do not use it to hire, fire, promote, rank, assign pay, or judge people, and do not use it to decide who is a good fit for a job. It has not been tested for those uses, and using it that way could be unfair and, in some places, illegal.

How you work changes with the task, the team, and your role. A person can lead with ideas in one team and with planning in another. Your style is what you tend to do, not what you are able to do.

This version has not yet been tested with a large group of people, so we do not yet know how accurate it is. If two styles are close, you probably use both about equally.

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