Group Personality Tests—Do They Support Stronger Teams?

Group personality tests may tell you how members of your team work—but do they actually help them work better?

Many leaders turn to team personality tests for team-building, collaboration, and conflict resolution. But too often, these assessments stop at self-awareness, leaving people with labels instead of a deeper understanding of how to work together. 

For your teams to truly thrive, you need more than a collection of personality profiles. You need a framework for applying those insights to facilitate more effective teams. That’s where the HBDI® comes in. By identifying how people think, process information, and solve problems, the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument® helps teams move beyond static labels to improve communication, decision-making, and performance in a real, actionable way.

Let’s explore how different assessments stack up—and what actually moves teams forward.

10 Reasons to Use Personality Tests for Teams

If you’re looking into personality tests for work teams, chances are there’s a specific problem you’re trying to solve. Maybe you’re integrating new teams after an acquisition, dealing with a culture clash, or trying to break down silos. Leaders often explore workplace personality assessments at key moments of change.

Mergers and Acquisitions

When two companies merge, teams with different cultures, leadership styles, and decision-making approaches must align quickly. Without a clear understanding of how employees think and collaborate, misalignment can slow progress. Team personality tests can help leaders bridge differences, improve integration, and reduce turnover. Westpac, for example, used the HBDI® during a major acquisition to assemble a balanced “merger management team,” who ultimately led a successful transition.

Leadership Transitions

A new leader means new expectations and ways of working, which can create uncertainty and resistance within a team. Leaders may use personality assessments to understand how their teams process information, make decisions, and communicate, making it easier to build trust and alignment early on.

Team Restructuring

When teams shift, roles change, and reporting lines move, employees often struggle with uncertainty and miscommunication. Leaders often look to personality assessments to bring the right people together and design teams for higher effectiveness.

Scaling Rapidly or After High-Growth Hiring

As companies grow quickly, leaders must ensure new hires integrate smoothly and existing teams stay aligned. Without a clear framework for collaboration, miscommunication and inefficiencies can emerge. Team personality tests can help teams adapt faster, maintain cohesion, and accelerate performance. AND Digital used the HBDI® to build a new team and guide communication, decision-making, and problem-solving processes from the start.

Addressing Team Dysfunction and Conflict

Miscommunication, conflicting work styles, and lack of alignment can create friction that slows teams down. Leaders can use team personality assessments to surface differences, establish common ground, and turn tension into productive collaboration, supporting more effective teams.

Bringing People Back to the Office

Returning to in-person or hybrid work requires teams to adjust to new routines, communication patterns, and expectations. Without support, engagement and productivity can decline. Personality assessments can provide valuable insights into human behaviors that can help leaders understand what teams need during return to office transitions  to stay engaged and effective.

Leadership Development and Succession Planning

Effective leadership requires self-awareness, adaptability, and strong interpersonal skills. Leaders use personality tests to help emerging managers understand their decision-making tendencies, communication strengths, and areas for growth. Equipped with this knowledge, you can design leadership development programs tailored to each person’s needs.

Adapting to Industry Disruptions 

Market shifts, new technologies, and unexpected challenges demand quick thinking and strong collaboration. Leaders may use team personality tests to identify strengths and weaknesses across teams, ensuring they can respond to change effectively and drive innovation. Organizations that embrace diverse thinking styles stay more agile in evolving industries.

Enhancing Cross-Functional Collaboration

When departments operate in silos, projects slow down, communication gaps widen, and priorities become misaligned. Leaders sometimes use personality assessments to help teams understand different work styles, enhance communication across teams, and streamline collaboration. 

Brainstorming and Creative Problem-Solving

When teams lack a structured way to collaborate, brainstorming can become unfocused, repetitive, or dominated by a few voices. Leaders may use personality assessments to identify how different team members approach innovation, from big-picture ideation to structured execution.

Most Popular Personality Tests for Work Teams

There’s no shortage of personality tests marketed for team building, but they may not be well suited for your specific challenges. Here’s how some of the most commonly used assessments compare.

The HBDI®: The Science of Thinking Preferences

Based on Whole Brain® Thinking, the HBDI® isn’t technically a personality test as it assesses thinking preferences instead. This difference allows teams to recognize and apply cognitive diversity, improving problem-solving, collaboration, and decision-making in a way that’s more practical and adaptable for the workplace.

DiSC Assessment: Behavior Insights for Team Collaboration

The DiSC assessment is widely used to help teams understand behavior and communication styles, breaking people into four broad categories: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness. While useful for understanding your team’s personality traits, the big difference when considering the DiSC vs. HBDI® is that it doesn’t provide a comprehensive framework for applying the results of the assessment.

Predictive Index: Workplace Behaviors for Better Team Fit

Often used in hiring and team structuring, the Predictive Index (PI) helps employers assess behavioral tendencies and determine role alignment within a team. While this can be helpful for identifying natural work preferences, the PI is more focused on selection and placement rather than improving team collaboration or adaptability.

CliftonStrengths: Identifying and Developing Talents

Designed to help employees understand and develop their strengths, CliftonStrengths encourages self-awareness and personal growth by identifying each team member’s top talent areas. While useful for career development, it’s not structured to address team-level dynamics, decision-making, or communication.

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI): Identifying Team Personality Types

The MBTI sorts team members into 16 personality types, based on preferences like introversion vs. extraversion and thinking vs. feeling. Though popular, MBTI is primarily a self-awareness tool, and its application for team-building is limited, as it doesn’t provide a structured way to improve group collaboration or decision-making.

Birkman Assessment: Combining Personality and Behavior

The Birkman Method combines personality traits with workplace behaviors, offering insights into core motivations, interests, and strengths. While this can be valuable for leadership development and coaching, the Birkman Method is most helpful for structuring teams and allocating the right tasks to the right people.

Choosing the Right Assessment for Your Team: What Sets the HBDI® Apart

Most assessments provide interesting insights into personality traits and work styles, but they often stop there—leaving leaders and their teams without a clear path for moving forward.

Unlike traditional personality tests for teams, the HBDI® doesn’t just describe who people are—it provides a strategy for working better together. If you’re ready to move beyond static personality typing, Whole Brain® Thinking gives your teams the tools to think smarter and perform at their best. 

Fixed Personality Labels vs. Flexible Thinking Styles

Most team personality tests put employees into categories, which can reinforce rigid work styles rather than helping people adapt and collaborate better. The HBDI® is different: It provides a science-backed framework for cognitive flexibility, helping teams apply what they learn from the results of individual team members’ assessments to work better together.

Simple Self-Awareness vs. Practical Team Application

Workplace personality tests, like MBTI or DiSC, help individuals understand their own traits and work styles, but they don’t always provide teams with actionable ways to collaborate more effectively. The HBDI® moves beyond self-awareness by giving teams a shared framework for communication, decision-making, and conflict resolution. Instead of just knowing how they differ, team members learn how to flex their thinking, adapt to diverse work styles, and work together more seamlessly. This leads to stronger collaboration, fewer misunderstandings, and better alignment on goals.

Personality-Based Grouping vs. Cognitive Diversity

Traditional assessments often group people into fixed personality types, which can unintentionally create silos, reinforce stereotypes, or limit how team members view each other’s capabilities. The HBDI® focuses on cognitive diversity, helping teams understand and apply different ways of thinking. 

Take the HBDI® as the Better Alternative to Group Personality Testing

If you want to build a high-performing team, you need more than a group personality test that labels your employees as “Dreamers” and “Masterminds”. You need a framework that helps your teams think more effectively and work together more seamlessly. That’s where the HBDI® and Whole Brain® Thinking come in.

It starts with your team taking the HBDI® assessment to uncover how each member processes information and approaches decision-making. But the real impact comes when you apply Whole Brain® Thinking, using these insights to improve communication, problem-solving, and leadership in real time.