Enhancing workplace productivity by understanding human temperament

Leaders who want great results from team members must be aware that understanding human temperament is crucial for enhancing workplace productivity and efficiency. They should be able to identify the temperament types of their team members and personalise or tailor their communication appropriately to each team member.

There are four main categories of human temperament. These are : Sanguines, Phlegmatic, Choleric and Melancholy. Leaders who spend time reading and understanding these basic temperament types have been shown to be able to better understand their team members, put up strategies that foster increased productivity within the team, have more solution oriented communication with each team member, create a balanced and more inclusive team, better align team members to appropriate roles  and eventually have better results with their teams.

According to research: Sanguines are very social people, they are usually very enthusiastic and energetic. They do well in dynamic, evolving as well as changing environments and excel in roles that are people facing and require lots of interaction coupled with creativity. Sanguines will do excellently well in sales, support roles, project management roles, scrum master roles, roles that require presentation and lots of other roles. Sanguines are usually the team members that keep the team spirit high as they will relate with all members and make it fun. They can make great team leads especially in support roles and they love that their contributions are acknowledged publicly. This gives them the boost needed to drive the next team task to completion.

Phlegmatics on the other hand are very reliable, stable, efficient, calm and extremely supportive. They are great team players and do well in roles that require lots of patience and consistency. They are great learners as well. Phlegmatics are for example those team members that ensure that documentation is properly done for products, they will ensure that knowledge sharing happens, they will ensure that all tasks are completed in good time and with great quality, they will also help other team members that need support and they will also ensure that onboarding of new team members happen seamlessly. They often volunteer to be mentors and they generally keep the entire team stable and calm. Phlegmatics also make great team leads as they are usually very polite to other team members. They fit well in roles such as software developer roles, UX/UI role, software tester role, IT architect role, scrum master roles and lots of others.

Cholerics have very dominant character traits. They love control as well as challenges and they almost always feel the need to lead and achieve goals. Cholerics are sometimes called “born-leaders” as they hardly feel fulfilled when they are not leading. Either they are given the leader title in a team or not, cholerics will indirectly place some leadership role on themselves in any team. They perform well in leadership roles although an extreme of this can sometimes look like “slave driving” to team members. They make very good project managers as they do very well with ensuring that all team members meet the deadline set for the project. They are great change agents and they can be a great addition to projects where people are sloppy and where there is delay.

Melancholies are the most quiet of all the basic human temperaments. They are introverts, thinkers and are usually quiet. They are usually not loud, maintain a basic and good relationship with others and spend more time focusing on their work. They are extremely detailed, analytical, organised as well as structured. They are great thinkers and they do excellently well when their tasks require thoughtfulness. They are very thorough, usually accurate as well as very thoughtful and precise. Melancholies are a must have in a Software or IT organisation as they can be great innovators. They do well in roles such as software development, solution engineering, test engineer roles, solution architect roles, requirements engineer roles, cyber security roles, technical writing roles and a lot of IT roles. They can also lead excellently as their skills and charisma will make it easy for other team members to listen to them.

In conclusion, having a rounded team where different human temperaments are represented should be what every leader aims to achieve as a weakness of one person in the team will be the strength of another. Leaders who have this understanding and work towards achieving it often create the best teams.

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