As 2020 draws to a close, we are all reflecting on all the changes that have happened this year.

Remote working is becoming a permanent shift and post pandemic more people are favouring working from home at least 2-3 days a week going forward. Some individuals have found that they have been more productive and achieved a better work-life balance as they are not spending time commuting and have more time for their families and hobbies. For others, they feel that they have been working much longer hours and that the lines between work and home have been blurred.

Companies have been put into a position to quickly set up technology support for their staff, adapt to the virtual word and keep teams motivated as some individuals battle the isolation and loneliness that can be one of the downsides of working remotely. Wellbeing and resilience coaching have been high on the agenda and organisations are increasingly looking into how to support their employees in this challenging business context. They have had to adapt and focus on how to create high performing teams virtually, become more inclusive, manage talent, increase employee engagement, deal with change and restructure process and manage stakeholder relationships.

We have also seen how this year has pushed us to adapt our behaviours and investigate what influences the way we behave. What did we have to consciously manage about our personality at work during times of high stress and pressures? Why is it necessary to do so? What qualities will be useful as we move into 2021?

At Advise Tree, we use personality as part of development and coaching. Personality has many parts to it. We use Lumina Spark which has 3 levels of personality:

• Trait –  what we like
• Behaviour – what we do
• Maladaptive – how we behave under pressure

With our psychometric tool, we explore what part of your character trait will benefit most from developing. During these times of uncertainty and changes, we are very likely to go into our maladaptive/overextended state and learning how to tune our behaviours up or down can help us to cope better.

Below we can see how our personality changes when we are under pressure: