Welcome to your eCareerFit.com Feedback Report based on the Personal Style Inventory you completed. Its carefully designed questions measure the personality traits critical to effective performance as an individual contributor. Thousands of individuals from hundreds of organizations nationwide have taken the Personal Style Inventory over the past 10 years. The trait dimensions are well established, statistically reliable, and valid for individual work roles in a broad cross-section of industries.

 

Your Individual Feedback Report shows your results on 13 trait dimensions as a position between two contrasting ends, like Vigilant versus Optimistic or Empathetic versus Tough-Minded. Assuming you answered the questions candidly, your results reliably indicate your personal style on each dimension.

 

Because this inventory deals with personal style, you can't "fail" it. The traits have no "good" or "bad" sides, only stylistic differences like being right- or left-handed. Everyone has best-fit and worst-fit work roles. In any role a strength over-emphasized is a weakness and a weakness is a source of strength.

 

This Feedback Report has 3 parts that you can you can view by using links that appear at the top and bottom of each page:

 

Click Report for a graphic overview of your personal style on 13 trait dimensions critical to your effectiveness as an individual contributor. A compact diagram for each trait shows your position with a [block] symbol in one of 5 categories. The following example illustrates a result for Vigilant versus Optimistic personal style. (This is only an example, it isn't based on your response - your personal results are in the Report section.) Here the [block] symbol indicates a moderately Optimistic style:

OPTIMISTIC

Orientation to the Future

• A HIGHLY OPTIMISTIC style, much more inclined to look on the bright side, hope for the best, and expect positive outcomes than to anticipate problems and focus on what could go wrong.
   

• A STRONG PREFERENCE FOR CHANGE and a much greater affinity for new learning, change, and innovation than for familiarity, predictability, and routine.

Personal Working Style

• A STRONGLY WORK-CENTERED style. You expressed a much higher priority for work and career than for other features of your life, indicating that for you, work comes first and you adjust other parts of your life to accommodate your career.
   

• A STRUCTURED personal style, reflecting a stronger preference for structure, orderliness, and rule-following than for spontaneity, flexibility, and originality.
   

• A HIGHLY EMOTIONALLY RESILIENT personality. You are able to handle high levels of job stress and pressure, keep your composure in potentially frustrating circumstances, and recover quickly from setbacks.
   

• An INTRINSIC WORK MOTIVATION. You expressed a stronger, personal motivation from features of your work itself, such as challenge and variety, than from the money, promotion, or prestige that your work brings you.
   

• A HIGHLY TOUGH-MINDED STYLE OF DECISION-MAKING. Your answers reflect a much stronger preference for making decisions on a basis of dispassionate, objective analysis of facts and data than on a basis of feelings, values, and emotions.
   

• A MIX OF VISIONARY AND OPERATIONAL STYLES of work. You emphasize the organization’s long-term vision and strategic plan equally as much as you emphasize day-to-day goals, practical tactics, and tangible results.

Interpersonal Style

• A mix of INTROVERTED and EXTROVERTED styles. You are sometimes contemplative, quiet, and inward-oriented and sometimes gregarious, sociable, and outward-oriented. Overall, you register approximately equal preferences for dealing with other people and the world of action versus being by yourself and dealing with inner thoughts and feelings.
   

• An ASSERTIVE style of interaction, more motivated to impose your will and exert influence on others than to accommodate the needs of others, minimize conflict, and seek harmony.
   

• A BLEND OF INDEPENDENT AND COLLABORATIVE orientations. Overall, you consistently favor neither cooperative teamwork nor individual contribution, as you find both orientations equally appealing.
   

• A STRAIGHTFORWARD orientation in dealing with others. Your responses demonstrate a stronger preference for direct, frank communication than for diplomacy and impression-management.
   

• A STRONGLY CUSTOMER-FOCUSED orientation to your relationships at work, indicating a much stronger value on attending to customers’ needs, preferences, and requests than to task-related issues like productivity and efficiency.
   

Your scores indicate a HIGHLY OPTIMISTIC style, much more inclined to look on the bright side, hope for the best, and expect positive outcomes than to anticipate problems and focus on what could go wrong.

Strengths

• You generally look for the best in people and expect them to live up to your high hopes; your approach can be a "self-fulfilling prophecy" that encourages extraordinary performance by those around you.
   

• An unabashed optimist, you tend to foresee the best-case scenarios in projects and can easily identify potential benefits.

Weaknesses

• You can sometimes trust too much in the goodness of others and may allow people to take undue advantage of you. You may be blindsided by unanticipated problems.
   

• People may see you as naïve, idealistic, or unrealistic if you dwell too much on the positive or take too long to see roadblocks or difficulties.

Best-Fit Work Situations

• Your best work situations call for planning, creativity, imagination, and orientation toward the future.
   

• It is important for you to work around other people with upbeat, positive attitudes in an organizational culture attuned to improvement and with positive morale. 

Worst-Fit Work Situations

• Expect to have difficulty in work roles that require you to look for problems or defects or deal constantly with past mistakes and deficits, as in quality inspection, insurance claims, accident investigations, security, or audits.
   

• You may experience problems working closely with others who often complain or express cynicism, negativism, or pessimism.

Suggestions for Development

• In dealing with others, try to leaven your trusting, see-the-best approach with a little skepticism, if you haven't already learned to do this. Ask yourself occasionally if what you’re seeing is too good to be true or if there might be a downside.
   

• When you plan a new project, find someone to serve as "devil’s advocate" for you. This person can look for the problems and roadblocks that you might miss.

Your scores indicate a STRONG PREFERENCE FOR CHANGE and a much greater affinity for new learning, change, and innovation than for familiarity, predictability, and routine.

Strengths

• At home with change and innovation, co-workers may see you as someone committed to improving the status quo and as an advocate for continuous improvement.
   

• With your strong interests in new concepts and fresh ideas, you regularly envision new possibilities and enthusiastically embrace experimentation with them.

Weaknesses

• You quickly become bored with repetition and routine, and you may quickly lose interest in activities you have done on a regular basis. "Been there, done that" is an expression of your discomfort or even irritation.
   

• People may see you as too unconventional or unorthodox. You may be too quick to reject well-established ways of doing things, possibly even when they are better than the new way.

Best-Fit Work Situations

• You are at your best in work that often gives you new projects and challenges, like consulting, project design and planning, troubleshooting, and marketing.
   

• Ideally you work in a setting that requires continual new learning to solve problems that change on a regular basis. Lifelong learning is a concept to which you can relate.

Worst-Fit Work Situations

• You are likely to become quickly dissatisfied in work that calls for repeating the same procedure or routine over and over again.
   

• It would be demotivating for you to work in a work role that required you to apply the same skills and knowledge on a continuing basis, with an emphasis more on dependability and stability than on originality and change.

Suggestions for Development

• When you find yourself impatient with a routine procedure or established process, actively research its history and find out what made it worth changing to in the first place. Be sure you can justify proposed changes.
   

• When required to apply the same knowledge, skills, and abilities, look for opportunities to improve the efficiency, quality, and quantity of your work.

 

Your responses reflect a STRONGLY WORK-CENTERED style. You expressed a much higher priority for work and career than for other features of your life, indicating that for you, work comes first and you adjust other parts of your life to accommodate your career.

Strengths

• Your high priority on work motivates you to strive for peak performance; people at work can count on you to "go the extra mile" for your customers and your projects.
   

• You are willing to work extra hours and weekends, if necessary, to complete your tasks and projects on time.
   

• Because of your strong work ethic, you may be one of the select few who get the really tough assignments—and you probably handle them so well, you can expect more.

Weaknesses

• Your main weakness is that you over-emphasize your strength – commitment to work – which takes time and energy you might devote to family, friends, recreation, and non-work pursuits. You may be a "workaholic" (with a compulsion to work or anxiety about not working enough).
   
• You are likely to deal with stress and adversity through denial; you may even deny that you endure a great deal of stress to maintain your over-commitment to work.
   
• In an organization that rewards working "smart" rather than hard, your employer may see you as not being smart enough to find more efficient ways to do your work.

Best-Fit Work Situations

• Most organizations welcome work-centered people like you and will reward your commitment and willingness to work overtime or irregular hours, but if you are a "dyed-in-the-wool workaholic," a better work situation for you forces you to take time off, allowing you to renew yourself and avoid burnout.
   
• Your ideal job challenges you and takes full advantage of your capacity for hard work, and reinforces your work drive while encouraging you to get enough rest to avoid "burnout.".

Worst-Fit Work Situations

• While you are likely to perform well in many jobs, you become bored and unhappy in jobs that seem too easy or where you cannot distinguish yourself from others by your hard work—and for you, the list of such jobs is likely to be long.
   
• Beware of a job that pays for unlimited overtime; such a job encourages workaholism and a total encroachment on personal/family life by the job.

Suggestions for Development

• Seriously consider following the suggestions you probably hear often from those close to you: Take a few days off – and leave all of your work behind! You may need to sharpen the boundaries between work and personal life by setting limits on bringing work home or on vacation.
   
• Work smarter! You may have to learn to handle non-work commitments like you handle appointments at work: Put them on your calendar well ahead, manage your time, and follow through. Delegation may be a problem for you.

Your scores indicate a STRUCTURED personal style, reflecting a stronger preference for structure, orderliness, and rule-following than for spontaneity, flexibility, and originality.

Strengths

• You usually strive for order in your work and can be depended upon to stay organized, even under pressure of time.
   
• You usually value dependability and conscientiousness, both in yourself and others, and endeavor to follow through on your commitments in a timely way.
   
• Generally you try for predictability; you often plan ahead to avoid surprises for yourself and others.

Weaknesses

• You may sometimes be a bit of a perfectionist; you can become impatient with disorganization or inattention to detail and may quickly become irritated when things do not go according to plan.
   
• Some people you work with may, at times, see you as rigid and inflexible.
   
• Your motivation to achieve order may occasionally lead to a "rush to closure" in which you prematurely end deliberation of complex issues in favor of quick decisions.

Best-Fit Work Situations

• A work environment suited to your style has defined roles, well-established rules, and standard procedures, as in military, law enforcement, security, banking, financial services, and many manufacturing settings.
   
• Your ideal work culture emphasizes reliability, orderliness, and adherence to procedure.

Worst-Fit Work Situations

• Work that requires a high tolerance of ambiguity may prove difficult; you may experience stress in projects with unpredictable or varying timelines, budgets, standards, specifications, or customers.
   
• You may be uncomfortable in work that calls for constant creativity, flexibility, or change, as in advertising, marketing, public relations, counseling, social services, or organizational development.

Suggestions for Development

• Individuals with your personal style can sometimes be too regimented. You might consider asking for feedback about this, and, if confirmed, consider loosening up and going with the flow once in a while.
   
• If you get the chance, try working once in awhile on an ambiguous project with uncertain outcomes. Remember that if you wish to advance into higher-level positions, in most organizations the tasks will become more complex and unstructured, particularly in leadership and executive roles.

Your scores indicate that you have a HIGHLY EMOTIONALLY RESILIENT personality. You are able to handle high levels of job stress and pressure, keep your composure in potentially frustrating circumstances, and recover quickly from setbacks.

Strengths

• Your calm under pressure enables you to deal constructively with difficult situations that others might find upsetting and unsettling.
   
• A hardy, robust person, you quickly put disappointments and setbacks behind you and move on to the next challenge.
   
• Your emotional stamina allows you to withstand long-term stress on the job and keep an even keel in the face of daily trials and tribulations.

Weaknesses

• Being resilient under stress yourself, you may have trouble empathizing with emotionally reactive co-workers, and it may be difficult for you to identify with or and acknowledge the stress they experience.
   
• You may push yourself to work harder than is healthy or sustainable in the long term. It may be hard for you to acknowledge that even you have stress limits.
   
• As a way of coping with stress at work you may be "in denial" about stress and strain you and your co-workers experience; you may have trouble acknowledging and talking openly about negative emotions and distress.

Best-Fit Work Situations

• For a hardy person like yourself, an ideal work role has moderate to high levels of demand and challenge; you might become bored in a position that does not tax your abilities at least some of the time.
   
• You are likely to be most satisfied in an organization where most of your co-workers are also hardy and resilient.

Worst-Fit Work Situation

• In a high-pressure work role in an organization that demands self-discipline and discourages expressions of weakness, you might unknowingly push yourself beyond even your considerable tolerance for prolonged stress, and eventually experience "burnout."
   
• You can expect to become restless and unhappy in a tranquil, low-pressure position with few sources of excitement.

Suggestions for Development

• Consider asking for feedback from co-workers about whether you seem to be taking on too much work or "burning the candle at both ends" too often for your own good.
   
• Hardy, stress-resistant people can at times seem impatient, insensitive, or unsympathetic to co-workers who react more strongly to stress; if you believe this might apply to you, ask a trusted friend whether you need to be more supportive of co-workers experiencing stress.

Your scores indicate an INTRINSIC WORK MOTIVATION. You expressed a stronger personal motivation from features of your work itself, such as challenge and variety, than from the money, promotion, or prestige that your work brings you.

Strengths

• Challenges and difficult situations usually energize you and motivate you to find better methods or solutions.
   
• Interest in your work often motivates you to enhance your knowledge and skills, enabling you to take on greater challenges and more varied tasks; you are likely to become more expert over time.
   
• You do not need a lot of money or tangible rewards to be happy in your work.

Weaknesses

• Being so interested in your work makes you potentially vulnerable to those who would exploit you by under-compensating you or taking credit for your accomplishments.
   
• You may occasionally be so task-involved that you fail to notice hidden agendas, politics, and power relationships around you, which may limit what you receive from the organization.
   
• You may "blow off" some projects that others see as important, but that you don’t find interesting. You may not give them your attention or neglect them in favor of more challenging undertakings.

Best-Fit Work Situations

• For you, the best work situation is one that regularly engages your interest and involves projects you find challenging or that gives you the variety you desire.
   
• Your ideal career gives you a fair amount of autonomy in choosing personally meaningful projects and carrying them out in the way you regard as best. You are fairly well-suited to careers in research and development, consulting, design, entrepreneurship, and general business.

Worst-Fit Work Situations

• Work roles involving repetitive or seemingly meaningless tasks are undesirable or even aversive for you; you will not be happy in any role you find monotonous or uninteresting.
   
• Expect to be unsatisfied in a role with limited autonomy, close supervision, or prescribed routines.

Suggestions for Development

• It is important for you to be aware of your value to current and prospective employers, to clearly communicate that value, and to negotiate an equitable compensation package. You may want to get some help with this from a trusted friend.
   
• While politics and power may not appeal to you, it is still important for you to become sufficiently involved in them to assure that your own projects receive appropriate resources and that you get to do the kind of work you want to do.

 

Your scores indicate a HIGHLY TOUGH-MINDED STYLE OF DECISION-MAKING. Your answers reflect a much stronger preference for making decisions on a basis of dispassionate, objective analysis of facts and data than on a basis of feelings, values, and emotions.

Strengths

• You place a high value on logical analysis of the facts, and you are probably very adept at it.
   
• As you strive to be impartial and unbiased when appraising information and drawing conclusions, you are likely to excel at analyzing controversies or resolving disputes in organizations.
   
• Inherently objective, you respect measurable results and are skilled at analyzing data.

Weaknesses

• Your logical, unsentimental approach can come across to others as cold and unfeeling, not unlike the characters Mr. Spock and Data in “Star Trek”.
   
• You may miss subtle emotional cues in social interactions and organizational dynamics, and you may find it difficult to relate to people who are more emotionally expressive.
   
• When faced with strong expressions of emotion you may not know how to act. To some people, your reactions to situations may seem awkward or out-of-touch.

Best-Fit Work Situations

• You are at your best when dealing directly with data, computers, machinery and technology systems, numbers, and information.
   
• Your ideal career takes advantage of your logical-analytical skills and facility with data and measurement, as in information technology, science and engineering, economics, and statistics.

Worst-Fit Work Situations

• Jobs that call for dealing with interpersonal conflict and trying to achieve harmony among diverse constituencies will prove difficult and unsatisfying.
   
• Expect to have trouble with work that demands empathy or sensitivity to emotional cues as in counseling, tutoring, group facilitation, entertaining, or providing direct care.

Suggestions for Development

• Individuals with your tough-minded style can be insensitive. You might consider asking for feedback about this, and if confirmed, perhaps consider participating in some training in interpersonal skills.
   
• Try to gain more information about the impact of your decisions on the feelings and subjective responses of people affected by them before committing yourself or others in the organization to a course of action.
   
• One way to soften your "hard" decision-making style is to start "collecting data" about people’s feelings: Ask open-ended questions of others (especially concerning their emotional reactions), listen carefully, and take the answers into account in your decisions. In interpersonal exchanges with more emotionally expressive people, try expressing your own feelings to them.

Your scores reflect a MIX OF VISIONARY AND OPERATIONAL STYLES of work. You emphasize the organization’s long-term vision and strategic plan equally as much as you emphasize day-to-day goals, practical tactics, and tangible results.

Strengths

• As someone who understands long-term strategy and the day-to-day results needed to realize it, you have the ability to explain to operations-oriented co-workers how their roles contribute to the mission and the ability to explain practical realities to co-workers who take a "big-picture" approach.
   
• Comfortable with long-term strategy, you have the capacity to put together plans and systems that help carry out the organization’s mission.
   
• Because you value goal-setting and step-by-step accomplishment, you are able to stay in touch with the details of daily operations, and you can work "hands-on" as necessary to move things along.

Weaknesses

• With your occasional emphasis on practical results, you may at times be impatient with visionary leaders whose plans seem to ignore reality, and you may come across as unsupportive.
   
• Because you value strategy and vision, you may question or criticize operational decisions when you don’t see their connection with the larger plan.
   
• If you alternate between operations-oriented and vision-oriented styles, co-workers may see you as inconsistent, especially if you unpredictably get "hung" on seemingly trivial details.

Best-Fit Work Situations

• Your mix of visionary and operational styles makes you a potentially valuable contributor to a project team or work group with responsibility for both planning and implementing complex projects.
   
• Your ideal work situation calls on your capacity to explain the organizational vision in operational terms and to bring a practical "reality-check" to strategic plans.

Worst-Fit Work Situations

• You may be uncomfortable in positions that keep your focus mainly on day-to-day operations or that require constant attention to detail, as in inspection, editing, accounting, purchasing, or contracts.
   
• It may be unsatisfying for you to work in a role focused primarily on planning or on abstract concepts too far removed from operations for occasional "hands-on" work.

Suggestions for Development

• If your style tends to switch back and forth between visionary and operational and you aren’t sure why, it may be worthwhile to take notes on the particular situations in which you tend to favor one or the other and to work toward deliberately choosing a style that fits best.
   
• As someone who can use either a visionary or operational work style, it may be helpful to ask for feedback from co-workers on how well you match your style to the demands of the situation.

 

Your responses indicate a MIX of INTROVERTED and EXTROVERTED styles. You are sometimes contemplative, quiet, and inward-oriented and sometimes gregarious, sociable, and outward-oriented. Overall, you register approximately equal preferences for dealing with other people and the world of action versus being by yourself and dealing with inner thoughts and feelings.

Strengths

• You are comfortable interacting with people one-to-one or in groups, and you adapt easily to most work situations that involve dealing with others.
   
• You probably have the ability to approach problems equally well through interactive discussions or through individual reflection and analysis.
   
• When necessary, you can work effectively by yourself and can focus on tasks that require concentration and sustained attention.

Weaknesses

• Interacting with people all day long without time by yourself can be a strain.
   
• You may be uncomfortable dealing with large groups of strangers, and you may find it draining to make many new acquaintances all at once.
   
• You may get restless and distracted when you work by yourself for too long; extended solitude can be difficult or even stressful for you.

Best-Fit Work Situations

• Your ideal work situation involves a varied mix of interactive and individual tasks, as in occupations like project engineering, financial planning, market research, compensation and benefits, or sales management.
   
• It is important for you to work in a setting that enables you to talk easily with people during the day as well as to work on solitary tasks without distraction.

Worst-Fit Work Situations

• While you may enjoy solitary tasks at times, you probably find it unsatisfying to work in an isolated setting by yourself for long periods.
   
• Your style may be unsuited to work that involves more or less continuous interaction with others with little or no time alone, as in customer service and retail sales.

Suggestions for Development

• With a personal style that blends extraversion and introversion, a developmental challenge is to widen your range of adaptability by sharpening your skills in both directions. Depending on what those around you see as your opportunities to improve, you might work on greater tolerance of sustained individual concentration or greater tolerance of prolonged periods of social interaction.
   
• For some who mix both extroverted and introverted styles, the preferred style depends on the situation. If your style is situational, a key step in self-development is to identify clearly the situations in which you take an extroverted approach – for example by "talking through" problems with others – and those in which you use an introverted style – for example by "thinking through" problems by yourself.

Your responses indicate an ASSERTIVE style of interaction, more motivated to impose your will and exert influence on others than to accommodate the needs of others, minimize conflict, and seek harmony.

Strengths

• Your assertive style usually enables you to seize the initiative and take charge of events; you prefer to address problems in a direct manner.
   
• Personally rather persuasive, many times you can influence others who initially disagree with you to come around to your way of thinking.
   
• As someone who likes taking the lead, you have leadership potential; you feel comfortable motivating a group to achieve important goals.

Weaknesses

• To some people you may seem a bit overbearing or outspoken; your assertive style might make some people avoid you or try to undermine your efforts.
   
• You may, at times, put your own needs ahead of others and perhaps alienate some of the people you work with by ignoring or discounting them.

Best-Fit Work Situations

• You are better suited to work that involves persuasion, selling, negotiating, supervision, or enforcement.
   
• Your personal style makes you a candidate for leadership positions at various levels, including supervision, management, and executive roles.

Worst-Fit Work Situations

• You may be less happy in a job that requires you to subordinate your own interests to a larger group, to frequently support group consensus, or to always follow someone else’s lead.
   
• You may have difficulty in a service job that requires you to focus mainly on understanding and satisfying others’ needs, as in customer service, human services, or social work.

Suggestions for Development

• Assertive individuals like you can sometimes drift into an overbearing or controlling influence style without being aware of it. Consider seeking feedback about how you are coming across to the people you are leading, managing, directing, or advising.
   
• You may be a better talker than listener; consider seeking feedback on your listening skills and be prepared to learn that they may need some work.
   
• As a fairly forceful personality, you may need to focus more on understanding the concerns and preferences of those you work with and seeking greater balance in meeting their needs as well as your own.

Your scores indicate an interpersonal style that represents a BLEND OF INDEPENDENT AND COLLABORATIVE orientations. Overall, you consistently favor neither cooperative teamwork nor individual contribution, as you find both orientations equally appealing.

Strengths

• As someone capable of working both cooperatively and independently, you can adapt with relative ease to situations that call for teamwork, individual effort, or a mixture of both.
   
• Able to fit comfortably into a variety of work situations, you might, at times, step forward to take an active role in helping a group operate smoothly, and at other times you might work on your own with little need for involvement by co-workers.
   
• Willing to take credit for independent accomplishments, you are also comfortable "sharing the spotlight" and acknowledging your teammates’ contributions to successful collaborations.

Weaknesses

• When it’s time for teamwork, co-workers may occasionally see you as a half-hearted "team player" or lukewarm in your commitment to a cooperative effort.
   
• In situations that call for self-reliance, you may, at times, appear uncertain of your direction and perhaps overly dependent on input or approval from others.

Best-Fit Work Situations

• You are probably at your best in work settings that call for alternating between solo and cooperative efforts through multiple projects.
   
• Your style is likely to fit well in management teams or project teams that expect members to collaborate with peers while at the same time moving forward on individual initiatives.

Worst-Fit Work Situations

• You may be dissatisfied in a work role that requires exclusive concentration on solitary efforts.
   
• As a member of a co-located work team that works interactively all day long, as in some manufacturing plants, you may find it difficult to stay in "team player mode" that much of the time.

Suggestions for Development

• If you hesitate to commit yourself to a group effort, or if you tend to hold back from full involvement in collaborative projects, you may want to consider pushing yourself to develop more teamwork skills to increase your comfort when you need to use them.
   
• You probably will not find out whether co-workers doubt your ability to work independently unless you ask them for feedback; it may be helpful to ask someone you trust whether people see you as someone they can depend on for individual assignments.

Your scores indicate a STRAIGHTFORWARD orientation in dealing with others. Your responses demonstrate a stronger preference for direct, frank communication than for diplomacy and impression-management.

Strengths

• Your preference for candid communication generally makes it easy for others to know you and what you stand for. Future impressions of you in the workplace are likely to agree with first impressions.
   
• The value you place on being straightforward typically makes you a good source of feedback for others who may seek you out for "straight talk" and telling it like it is.
   
• Because you usually try to communicate your feelings and beliefs accurately to others, you probably have a clearer and more accurate self-image than most people.
   
• Typically consistent from one situation to another in what you communicate, you are likely to be viewed similarly by most co-workers.

Weaknesses

• Your candor can occasionally unsettle other people. You may come across as somewhat blunt or insensitive, and you may sometimes annoy others by speaking too directly.
   
• If you disregard the importance of appearances and convention, you risk being seen as politically naïve, which may have adverse consequences in some work situations.
   
• You may occasionally be too open about your shortcomings and weaknesses, which some people may see as a weakness itself.

Best-Fit Work Situations

• You are more comfortable in a work culture that values candid self-expression, open communication, and unpretentious interpersonal style.
   
• Your ideal work situation is a relatively informal work unit that de-emphasizes organizational politics, authority, and rank, and places little value on appearances.

Worst Fit Work Situations

• With your value on frankness, you may be uncomfortable working in organizations where advancement depends on the image you project, especially situations calling for gamesmanship, political savvy, and adjusting the way you present yourself depending on the situation.
   
• Expect to experience some stress in positions that require you to communicate messages about which you hold private doubts or which are at variance with your own beliefs and values.

Suggestions for Development

• Ask someone close to you for feedback about whether you are offending some people by speaking too bluntly or acting disrespectfully, and if you are, work on identifying situations where you can practice being more tactful and discreet.
   
• Many who value candid self-expression also dislike formal business situations where one has to play a role, follow a script, or even adhere to a formal dress code. Consider whether you need to pay more attention to the way you present yourself and how you are received in such situations.

Your scores reflect a STRONGLY CUSTOMER-FOCUSED orientation to your relationships at work, indicating a much stronger value on attending to customers' needs, preferences, and requests than to task-related issues like productivity and efficiency.

Strengths

• Your priority on relationships at work motivates you to attend to the needs of your customers, many of whom may ask for you personally.
   
• With your focus on your customers, you are probably very adept at identifying and understanding customers’ needs, sometimes even before they are voiced.
   
• Being attuned as you are to the concerns of customers, you probably are capable of identifying ways to improve existing products and services, and you may be good at thinking of ideas for new products and services.

Weaknesses

• At times, you may expend too much of your time and energy satisfying a single customer, and you may even commit more resources to the relationship than is wise.
   
• In your enthusiasm to meet customers’ needs, you may sometimes get into trouble with co-workers by taking the customer’s side or criticizing teammates’ interactions with your customers.
   
• You might allow your efforts to satisfy customers interfere with the timely completion of other work important to your organization’s productivity.

Best-Fit Work Situations

• You will find greatest satisfaction in a career that allows you to build personal relationships with customers. You probably enjoy working directly with customers on projects that meet their needs and make them satisfied, as in financial services, teaching, training, sales, consulting, architecture, and design.
   
• Your ideal work environment is an organization with a culture that places a high value on customer relationships and on work processes that support them.

Worst-Fit Work Situations

• With your priority on customer satisfaction, you may find it difficult to work in jobs that give you little or no direct contact with customers, as in programming and systems analysis, the production side of manufacturing, or science and engineering roles.
   
• You are likely to experience stress in a service organization that allocates scarce resources and must disappoint some clients or fails to address their needs responsively.

Suggestions for Development

• Although you may hesitate to "toot your own horn" about it, your priority on customer relationships can be an important asset to your organization. Consider whether it might be helpful to emphasize this trait more strongly to your boss or prospective employer.
   
• Examine periodically whether your strong value on customer focus leads you to neglect other requirements of your work related to efficiency and productivity.