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What type of worker are you?

It takes all kinds to make a workplace run smoothly. Where do you fit in?

4. The Solver

Vinai Dithajohn/AP Images for Seven Towns/File
Contestants are seen at work during the World Rubik’s Cube Championship 2011 at Baiyoke Sky Hotel in Bangkok.The Solver is the rarest worker type, and includes a high proportion of CEOs and business owners among its ranks.

  • By Anne Kreamer Contributor

Solvers (13 percent) are the rarest of the four types. They have an inner strength that comes from their sense of personal mastery. Compared with the three other categories, there are twice as many Solvers in top management – owners, CEOs, and other senior executives. They identify themselves as introspective and as people who do their best work under stress and are comfortable speaking up. Solvers consider themselves creative, and are significantly more satisfied with their lives than any other group. They’re also, on average, between five and nine years older than members of the other groups – indicating that we may grow into better emotional management as we age.

Rather than merely reacting to personal events over which they feel little measure of control, these people are problem-solvers – confident in their abilities to get the job done. And they are comfortable expressing emotion as well as observing emotion in others. Solvers are great at thinking under pressure, understanding that work situations and conflicts are inherently complex, never binary. But once Solvers arrive at a decision, they rarely have second thoughts, and can appear aloof and removed from others’ concerns or issues.

Want to know what worker type or types you are? Take the WEEP mini-survey at http://www.annekreamer.com/personalsurvey/survey to see where you fall.

– Anne Kreamer is a former television executive and the author of two books about the changing American workplace. She is a frequent blogger on HarvardBusinessReview.org and NextAvenue.org, and her work has appeared in Time, the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Martha Stewart Living, and many more.  

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

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If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

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