hands up if you’ve ever found that you
either work or study better in some
spaces than in others Oh most of you and
when in group work have you ever found
that you would have preferred to work
somewhere else and where different to
the space selected by your colleagues
half of you well that’s because we’re
all unique we’re all individual and we
all have very different spatial needs no
it’s been 25 years a quarter of a
century since I was lost at Surrey
University which i think is probably
before kirsten you were born and I
graduated here in environmental
psychology and since then I’ve applied
what I learned here along with my own
research to help design in workplaces
particularly offices that help people
enhance their individual and the
organizational performance and that’s
what I want to talk to you about today I
many moons ago when my sons were younger
and cuter
they’re teenagers now we would go to the
zoo on Sunday afternoons and I remember
there was one zoo in particular that
really really impressed me their animal
enclosures were meticulously designed to
cater for the specific needs of each and
every species of animal at that zoo and
as a consequence the animals were
comfortable they were healthy and they
were certainly flourishing as was
evident by their successful breeding
program and the next day a gloomy Monday
morning I went into our city offices and
I looked around at the a modernist
layout and design and I just thought had
I’ve been such a uniform space cater for
all my unique
wonderful colleagues and I know we’re
all the same species but with very
different animals we differ in our
culture we differ in our motivations we
differ in our generations and we also
differ in personality outside of the
office we choose the spaces that make us
feel more comfortable we choose the
spaces that help the task in hand and we
also choose the spaces that just reflect
our mood and personality so personality
is key it’s coming up again and again so
how many of you have ever taken a
personality test before joining an
organization a few of you it’s not
uncommon in the big wide world but Wi-Fi
memory is really sad is that once we’ve
taken that personality test and then
we’ve joined the organization and then
we start work they put us all in the
same standard one size fits all space
and it just seems absurd to me because
person keeps jumping because personality
is so important in the workplace I did a
little bit of research and I explored
how we can enhance collaboration in the
work space and the first thing I learned
just from the literature review is that
the most successful teams the most
collaborative teams and most productive
teams are the ones with a rich mix of
personality types so we need those
different personality types in the
workplace and that just make the
question well how do we how do we
measure how do we evaluate personality
and actually there are lots of different
personality theories and there are
certainly many many different
personality traits and in the 1930s
psychologists all ported over they found
18,000 descriptors of personality traits
18,000 and since then as psychologists
have been trying to boil it down to a
more manageable number
and as a consequence I use five
personality traits in my research I use
the Big Five inventory or ocean scale
which was developed by Berkeley
University and you can see them here so
the first one is openness our open are
we to new ideas how creative are we are
artistic are we compared to people who
might be just a little bit more
conservative and traditional then we
have conscientiousness these are the
people to plan ahead they keep to time
they’re very diligent their word is
their bond compared to maybe their
colleagues who might have a more less a
fair approach to timekeeping and
planning but those people it’ll be
easier to get on with and then we have
our extroverts these are our social
animals they like spending time with
other people they know risk takers
they’re thrill-seekers and they don’t
mind speaking off-the-cuff hands up if
you’re a bit of an extrovert mimimi
on the other hand we have the introverts
now the introverts they prefer the
quieter life they prefer their own
company they tend to think things
through more things over and look at the
detail before speaking out in company so
any introverts stand on your desk on
your tables we won’t do that one today
and then we have agreeable Ness so the
more agreeable people they have more
empathy for their colleagues and they
tend to make good team players in
contrast we have the less agreeable the
more challenging people who tend to
prefer to work alone and finally we have
neuroticism which is quite harsh word
but or nervousness the apprehensive
people the anxious people compared to
their colleagues you might be a little
bit more emotionally stable and easy
going but I would say that we just need
a little bit of anxiety
to help us get things done now this is
my profile and two things you’ll notice
in particular the first is that I’m
slightly extroverted but I’m highly
neurotic now that means I love giving
presentations like this but I don’t
offer worry about it and I worry about
giving them and I worry about what
people will think about them and the
other thing you’ll notice on my profile
is that I’m disagreeable which obviously
I disagree with okay so this is my
wife’s profile and what we notice
straight away is we’re at opposite ends
of the personality scales this has its
challenges particularly at tardiness
but nevertheless we balance each other
out we support each other and didn’t I
just say that the most successful teams
are the ones with a mix of personality
types and that applies to the home as
well as the workplace now when I talk to
my colleagues about how important
personality is in the workplace they
just say Nigel Nigel you we just want to
save money and we just want to make
money we haven’t got time for
personality most of them do at least
recognize that we’ve entered the
coronary economic sector we’ve entered
the court in economic sector we have
entered the age of innovation and
creativity in the workplace is paramount
for the economic survival of those
companies but you think about creativity
you think about companies who will bring
in new products and new services to the
market you not only need just the big
ideas people the creatives we need
researchers we need analysts we need
lawyers we need project managers and
those people tend to be a bit more
introverted they tend to be highly
conscientious and maybe a little bit
less anxious and likewise we might need
people to help us get those products to
market so we knew sales and marketing
and again those people tend to be
a little bit more extroverted and a
little bit more agreeable so you can see
how even in the creative industries we
need this rich mix of personality types
to be successful so let me switch back
to talking about office design and over
those 25 years I’ve noticed two common
mistakes in office design and the first
one ironically is we’re probably
spending too much time focusing on
creativity and collaboration we’re
seeing a lot of offices which are
stimulating buzzy noisy colorful and
they tend to be accompanied by slides
and beanbags and games areas and this is
great for the introverts Susan came in
in her book quite the power of the
introvert in TED talk she said we are
designing offices for the extrovert
ideal so great for them but the
introverts they find those spaces over
stimulating and those spaces lead to
stress due to absenteeism and loss of
productivity so not so good and the
second design mistake I see is chasing
desk densities particularly in the UK
we’ve seen C’s and C’s of desks in
densely packed offices deep plan offices
with very few facilities for the staff
and whilst that might seem a little bit
underwhelming actually they’re noisy
they’re dense they can perceive be
perceived as overcrowded so again our
introverts find those spaces over
stimulating and again their productivity
is lost so what do our introverts like
oh sorry another slice this is actually
a stock but this is actually a stock
photo and this one is a real one and
that the stock photos not as bad as some
of the spaces I’m visited in in real
life and I’ve been working with a
company recently and they had one metre
death they were rolling out one
meter desks side by side by side for all
of their staff and this wasn’t a contact
center this was a company who were
having important conversations where
clients on the phone it was over dense
it didn’t work so what do the introverts
like so they like karma more subdued
karma spaces they like spaces where they
can go and retreat with a little bit of
solitude spaces where they can chill
where they can relax and where they can
focus and where they can have
confidential calls but also what our
researchers found is that the in the
extroverts are spending less time in the
office and when in the office they’re
spending less time at their desk so it
seems to me that we’re designing all
these wonderful stimulating spaces for
the people who aren’t even there and the
same applies to our creatives we found
that the highly creative people spend
more time at home than their colleagues
and we think the reason behind this is
when you look at the creative process
yes we all have to come together we
brainstorm we exchange knowledge but
also creativity includes bouts of
they tend to say that in today’s solar
activity it might be walking or jogging
in the park or amongst nature and in
fact other research has shown that
nature helps energizes and can help us
come up with those original ideas and
the whole field of research on that also
people have said they have their most
creative ideas in the shower or in the
bath and that’s not surprising when you
think Archimedes had his Eureka moment
in the bath so we also looked at the
Preferences of other personality types
not just introverts and extroverts we
found our neurotics when they have
meetings they like to have private
meetings confidential meetings in closed
rooms and formal spaces with lots of
documents and notes taken we found that
our agreeable people they like to have
big town hall meetings where everyone’s
invited and it’s all inclusive and then
they’ll follow up those inclusive
meetings with one two ones with
individuals and are conscientious people
we found with them that they’d rather
not have meetings in social spaces
breakout spaces cafes the pub whatever
because they just don’t consider them to
be proper work settings so choose the
space to suit the personality types so
how do we design for different
personality types well fortunately a lot
of jobs attract specific personalities
so if we go in and profile the
department we might find for example
that they’re highly introverted maybe
highly conscientious maybe slightly
neurotic and for a group of people like
that which might be researching analysts
and any review amongst the audience we
might say let’s start with a quiet
subdued calming environment but even
those people will need time to
occasionally go and make noise with
sociable make private calls and so on so
we need to provide other spaces for them
and likewise or in contrast we might
find that
our department our team or maybe more
extraverted maybe they’re more score
high on the openness scale maybe there’s
anxious and for those people could be a
sales and marketing team we might
provide a stimulating and buzzy base
zone based environment but even those
people need time to go to places to
chill and relax and take time out but if
you remember I said earlier actually the
best teams are the ones with a mix of
personality type so how do we design for
those well then we just have to provide
a whole range a whole host of different
work settings that they can choose from
and we have to empower those people to
be able to get up and go through those
spaces and use them as and when benefits
them if we provide these spaces people
will migrate towards the ones that make
them feel comfortable make them more
productive enhances their well-being
because let’s not forget that not just
the biggest cost but the biggest asset
of any organization is its people and
it’s just force economy to be saving a
little bit of money by skimping on space
by reducing the facilities by providing
these a modulus one size fits all
environment just because they’re easy to
manage and easy to operate
we need to tailor our spaces for
different personality types in the
workplace zoo we want all of our animals
to flourish in the design and
construction industry we need to
acknowledge and embrace uniqueness and
individuality and design for it what I
want you to do as people about to go out
into the big wild world is to not only
select the organizations but also the
spaces that match your personality and
that way I think you will find that you
are more comfortable more productive
happier with a better quality of work
life [Applause]