The ‘everything precise’ and ‘everything’s stupid’ colleague
You get straight to work, while your colleague always puts off particularly annoying work? The woman in the office next door plans the entire day, but you prefer to decide flexibly? Every person is different and that shows in how they work in the office. But even if we usually like the colleagues who are more similar to us, every working type has their advantages and disadvantages.
The perfectionist
“Good is not good enough.” That’s the perfectionist’s motto. All tasks are carried out precisely and conscientiously in an orderly manner and you can rely on someone with a perfectionist disposition one hundred percent. On the other hand, this person often wastes their time by painstakingly working on irrelevant details. In order to get ahead professionally, the perfectionist needs to relax a little and learn to live with mistakes. Because he who dares, wins.
The curious creative
The curious and creative type is interested in everything and gets easily excited about new ideas. They also often like to try out unusual approaches and will surprise you with amazing solutions. But their interest in constantly new things handicaps them in their daily work. They often get bogged down and now and again they overlook deadlines – especially with short ones. In order to not drown in their own sea of ideas, the curious person should learn to clearly define their tasks and priorities – and stick to them.
The planning organiser
If you have a planning organiser in your team, you can assume that any tasks assigned to them will be completed by the deadline. Because this type of worker organises their entire day and usually actually makes this plan a reality. However, this makes them quite inflexible. Unpredicted things make them nervous and hold them up, because they have to restructure their entire day. For the sake of their own careers, the organiser has to learn not to plan for their entire time in advance. Because if they make their plans a bit more flexible, they have a contingency for the unexpected and can keep working without a problem.
The slow coach
The slow coach is usually a stranger to stress and hectic. They manage to stay relaxed even in the biggest chaos, they maintain an overview and apportion their energy well. However, they often tend to postpone especially annoying tasks again and again. But ultimately, they always end up under time pressure this way or they don’t finish their work on time. To prevent them from postponing their own success, the slow coach should learn to work in a more structured way and to set priorities. It usually helps them to set official deadlines and to divide larger tasks into smaller milestones.
The do-it-right-away person
These types don’t know the meaning of the word planning. If they see that there’s something to do, they get to work straight away. They bring drive to the team and spur others on. However, they find it hard to switch off sometimes, to delegate tasks and to check with others first. To keep climbing the career ladder, they should take a break now and again. A little bit of planning and some concentration on the bigger picture doesn’t hurt either. If they weigh up the consequences before decisions or actions and make a rough play, they'll be more successful.
The pessimist
The pessimist thinks about everything three times before they start. They consider various approaches and all possible consequences. This means that they recognise problems early on and plan their solutions in advance. If the worst case scenario happens, the pessimist has prepared all the necessary possible actions to take. But anyone who only sees the negative side of things and obsesses over various different outcomes, ultimately never makes a decision.
Seeing everything in a negative light discourages and if you go too far, you'll only see problems and not solutions. To get back on track to success, the pessimist should get together with the do-it-right-away type. A little bit of action without a lot of planning will show them that getting things done at work can also happen without too much thinking.