Every member of a team has their own unique personality traits, skills, work style, and way of thinking. Each of those differences among teammates is something to celebrate as they are precisely what help teams stay innovative and achieve results. Team building personality tests are an innovative way to grow closer as a team.
One option for team building, personality tests build profiles of team members. You can use those to bridge understanding and improve how teams work together. They can also highlight the strengths and weaknesses of your group. Having a stronger idea of communication styles and skills allows your team to build deeper connections. Outside of the surface-level “what did you do this weekend,” team personality tests spark discussions that allow teammates to feel seen, supported, and united!
Types Of Team Personality Tests
Here we will explore twelve online options for personality test team building that can benefit your remote team! There are no wrong answers, both in your test selection and on the tests themselves.
1. Character Strengths Survey
The Character Strengths Survey is a 100-question quiz that has quiz takers select an answer ranging from “very much like me” to “very much unlike me.” With the results of the survey, users obtain a score for their “signature strengths, middle strengths, and areas of improvement.”
The tiered results allow you and your team to see not only each teammate’s strengths but also where they may need to lean on others for help as they continue developing a particular muscle – fantastic to build comfort being vulnerable in your team.
2. The Enneagram
The Enneagram is a commonly discussed test so the name may sound familiar. The test can be taken in about 15 minutes or so, with only 7 pages of questions (each page with a handful).
Phrases you will rate are things like “I see the positive in every situation” or “I am not afraid to tell someone when I think they are wrong.” Ultimately, the Enneagram test is assessing how well an individual aligns with the nine common personality types, providing a rating and description for each.
Each personality type in the Enneagram has a set of dominant behaviors, motivations, and fears. Once you discover your enneagram, you (and your team) will be able to better understand your strengths and weaknesses.
Your dominant behavior, which is the number from 1-9 that you’re assigned at the end of the test, is also called your Basic Behavior. It’s who you are at your core. According to Enneagram theory, your Basic Behavior is strongly influenced by your environment and personal experiences.
The Enneagram recognizes that people don’t always act in line with their basic behavior, however, which is why each Enneagram number has Wings. Your Wing describes your Adjacent Type – things that influence your personality, but do not dominate it.
For example, you could be an Enneagram 3 with a 2 wing, meaning your dominant personality is that of “The Achiever” and you have a strong sense of caring for others too. Each wing is determined by the numbers chronologically adjacent to it. So an Enneagram 3 could have either a 2 or a 3 wing, but not a 4,5,6, etc.
3. Myers-Briggs
Also known as the 16 personality types test, you may have heard of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). The test assigns users a four-letter acronym that demonstrates their tendency across four categories: introversion or extraversion, sensing or intuition, thinking or feeling, and judging or perceiving – in that order.
Once assigned your acronym, the test gives a thorough description of your personal tendencies as they relate to the acronym. Myers-Briggs types can highlight employees who will collaborate best with each other, employees that might prefer more individualized work, and more – all very valuable insights to strengthening your team and the bonds within it.
Carl Jung, a psychologist, created this team personality test. His theory was that humans experience the world with four psychological functions: sensation, intuition, feeling and thinking. These four functions affect a person’s work style, how they relax and rejuvenate, their strengths and weaknesses, and more.
It was Isabel Myers and Katharine Briggs who would later format these four psychological functions into sixteen personality types, one of which will be your test result. Your personality type describes if you are extroverted or introverted, how you process information, how you make decisions, and how you go about doing things.
4. DiSC
You might start noticing a trend with the various team personality tests as many of them have similarities. As we have seen with previous examples, the DiSC Assessment test assesses users across different categories (dominance, influence, steadiness, and conscientiousness) by asking questions related to various social situations and how the test-taker perceives those situations.
The test results highlight your team members’ interpersonal style, which can help you build a more impactful relationship with them and it can help other teammates understand each other better.
5. High 5 Test
The High 5 Test provides test takers with 100 prompts, which they rate on a scale of “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.” An example of a prompt users will be asked is “I believe the best way to achieve success is by focusing on one thing,” which the user will then either agree or disagree with based on the provided scale.
After completing the 100-prompt test, your team will be given results that spotlight their top five dominant traits. Other tests have given test-takers both highs and lows, like the Character Strengths Survey, but this test just shows the five strongest traits each person has.
This allows your team to find their similarities and differences quite easily when they share their results while highlighting teammates that have strengths that differ from their own – extremely impactful when they work together in the future.
6. 5-Minute Personality Test
Just like it says in the name, you can take this test in only five minutes! Though brief, the test is still very effective. Within the test, there are ten lines of prompts to fill out. Each line has four words/phrases that test takers will rate on a scale of 1-4, four being the phrase that aligns with them best, under four letter categories.
At the end of the test, users will add up the points they have under each letter, and their strongest letter represents their personality. The next page of the test reveals the traits associated with each letter.
7. The 5 Love Languages Quiz
Though the test may seem like one best suited for personal relationships, think of the test instead as the Appreciation Language Quiz. Everyone likes to be appreciated in different ways, and if your team can understand each other’s preferences, they can celebrate each other much more effectively.
Some people may really appreciate a high-five or handshake after a job-well-done, while others may feel special receiving a thoughtful message. Though some explanation of your intentions with the quiz may be needed, it could be just what your team needs to feel more recognized by their colleagues.
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8. The Color Code
You guessed it! This team personality test assigns test takers with a color that best aligns with their personality and a description of what that color means. The Color Code test examines the why and how of your actions.
The first section of this two-part test is “Strengths and Limitations.” Within that section, users are prompted to select the trait that best describes them among a list of four, across 30 prompts. Next, users move on to the “Situations” section. This brings up 15 situations and asks how you would have responded as a child, out of four choices.
Each test taker then scores a color, either red, blue, white, or yellow.They’ll also get an explanation of what that color represents.
9. Career Values Assessment
The Career Values Assessment is another brief test, averaging about 12 minutes start to finish, specifically meant for the work place.
The test has 20 online questions test takers answer, all related to different aspects of work to identify where users stand among six different underlying work values. They’ll be presented with prompts like “in my ideal job, it is important that…” With that prompt especially, some example responses could be “…I make use of my abilities” or “…I would receive recognition for the work I do.”
After completing the 20 prompts, team members receive scores for each of the six work value clusters. In addition, they will also receive a list of different jobs that align with those values, which could be a fun discussion point for everyone.
10. Caliper Profile
The Caliper Profile measures a person’s compatibility with a particular role. This is a great way for organizations to assess potential new hires and employees who are up for a promotion. Test takers answer multiple choice, true or false, and a degree of agreement scale in this team personality test. Most questions ask you to choose the answer that most closely aligns with your views.
This team personality test looks at the positive and negative qualities a candidate might have to gain insight into how they may perform in their new role. You can also customize this test to look for specific traits that are important to a role or responsibility.
11. Eysenck Personality Inventory
The Eysenck Personality Inventory assesses a team members’ personality by measuring neuroticism vs. stability and extroversion vs. introversion. The results include three main scores: “E” (extroversion level), “N” (neuroticism level), and “lie,” which measures how honestly a person is answering. The full test has 100 questions, but there is a simple version with only 57 yes or no questions.
12. Revised NEO Personality Inventory
The Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) assesses the Big-5 personality traits: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.
Furthermore, each of the five traits has six subcategories. For example, neuroticism consists of anxiety, hostility, depression, self-consciousness, impulsiveness, and vulnerability to stress.
The subcategories for extraversion are warmth, gregariousness, assertiveness, activity, excitement seeking, and positive emotion. There are 240 prompts within this team personality test, and the entire thing takes about 30-40 minutes to complete.
Why Personality Tests Are Good for Team Building
Personality tests are good for team building for a few reasons. First, they help you learn more about each other. The more you know about your teammates, the better you can assign responsibilities and have realistic expectations for each other. Secondly, they can smooth the virtual onboarding and transition process for new employees and current team members.
Taking a team personality test also gives you and your teammates a chance to get together over video chat and talk about your results. Depending on how large your team is, this could take a few hours to a day or two.
If you and your teammates have a difficult time understanding your results, you might want to consider bringing in a professional. There are independent third-party personality test administrators who would be happy to join in on your call and explain everyone’s results in detail. This will give everyone a deep, complete understanding.
20 Common Team Personality Test Questions
- Do you like meeting new people?
- Do you like helping people out?
- How do you respond when you are blamed for something you didn’t do?
- How long does it take you to calm down when you’ve been angry?
- Do you help people only if you think you’d get something in return?
- Do you set up long term goals?
- Are you easily fazed?
- How often do you go out into a social environment or a public place?
- Do you get disappointed easily?
- Are you considerate of other people’s feelings?
- Are you always busy?
- Do you like solving complex problems?
- Do you make people feel welcome?
- Is your go-to reaction in a problem to cheat your way out of it?
- Do you feel overwhelmed often?
- How often do you travel?
- Do you prefer familiarity over unfamiliarity?
- Are you generally passionate about social causes?
- Do you like being pushy?
- Do you tend to always see the good in people, no matter what the circumstance is?
How Do Team Personality Tests Help You Learn More About People?
Team personality tests assess how you make decisions, what motivates you, what angers you, what you need to feel happy, what makes you feel anxious, what makes you feel secure and much more.
This kind of insight into the people you work with will help you find roles that are perfect for each person in your group. Furthermore, it can help aid in conflict resolution. For example, if you know a certain personality type needs personal space when upset and another person needs reassurance, you help facilitate a situation where each person has what they need.
How Much Value Should You Place on a Personality Test?
Personality tests can be an excellent indicator of what makes a person tick, but it’s important to remember that they require 100% honest answers in order to be accurate. If someone takes the test and strategically selects answers in hopes of getting the desired result, their personality type will not accurately reflect who they are.
It’s also difficult to boil anyone down to a single personality type. People are complex! We recommend taking people’s test results into consideration when interacting, but not basing your entire perception of them on one test result!
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Exactly what traits does a team personality test measure?
A personality test can measure a variety of different things depending on the subject of the test. They can assess what a person values in the workplace or how they like to communicate with their co-workers.
2. Can a team personality test uncover a mental illness?
Not likely. Team personality tests aren’t medical questionnaires and focus on assigning someone one of several pre-determined test results. They are not meant to be used in clinical citations or to diagnose a mental illness.
3. How long does it take to complete a team personality test?
It depends on the length and complexity of the test. Some can be as quick as ten minutes while others can be about an hour if there is discussion time post-assessment!
4. Should I use personality tests in hiring?
It’s up to you! Most personality tests assess a person’s communication style, conflict resolution style, or general temperament. A personality test can help you determine if someone is a good culture fit for your team.
Which Personality Test Is Right For My Team?
While you can’t really go wrong in your choice of a team building personality test, there may be some that can answer specific questions more than others. Are you trying to discover more about colleagues work styles to help employees work better together? Are you trying to learn more about people’s personalities or interests? Different tests, like those mentioned above, can answer those questions!
Each test will give you and your team valuable insight into one another. Conducting a team assessment is a great way to create bonds. It also shows your team you care to understand and will give you better employee appreciation to understand what makes everyone unique.
Beyond that, your team will feel closer with each other in a couple of ways. Now, they know more about each other and have bonded over learning about themselves. That enhances team culture and improves the work they do together.
Team building personality tests can do wonders to continue improving your work environment. No matter your departmental level, everyone can benefit by learning more about their co-workers!
Anecia is a Nashville-based writer who believes in the power of team building. She writes a variety of content focused on creative corporate team building ideas, to help teams become more dynamic, unified, and successful.
