Personality at a distance: the practical lesson from Fast Company

Remote work removes much of the information that an office supplies automatically. You cannot see that a colleague is deeply focused. A short pause in a video call might mean careful thought, doubt or a poor connection. And a message without an exclamation mark feels efficient to one person and unusually cold to another.

In December 2020, Fast Company published A practical guide to working remotely with all 16 personality types, written by Atlassian and Jonathan Thompson. The article uses the sixteen MBTI types to make such differences discussable. Its central idea remains relevant: when the shared workplace disappears, a team needs a more deliberate understanding of how colleagues process information, seek contact and make decisions.

The practical value is not in predicting what every four-letter type needs. It appears when a recognisable description becomes a testable working agreement.

Remote work exposes hidden preferences

An office informally absorbs many differences. A colleague can stay behind after a meeting. Someone who reads a message as too blunt later hears the friendly intention over coffee. A manager notices that a team member has been interrupted all morning and delays a question.

Remote collaboration removes those corrections. Personal preferences therefore have more influence on the work:

• How much social contact helps you feel connected?
• Do you want the conclusion or the background first?
• Do you think out loud or formulate after time alone?
• Does a fixed plan provide calm, or do you need room for new information?

This is the strongest part of the Fast Company guide. In remote work, personality is not a topic beside the real work. It shapes the channel you choose, the context you include and how quickly you interpret silence as a problem.

Sixteen types are a starting point, not a remote control

Fast Company presents MBTI as an efficient way to organise sixteen recognisable working styles. Four letters are easy to remember. They can open a conversation that would otherwise remain vague.

The risk appears when the type also ends the conversation. Two people with the same code can have different habits, roles and needs. Someone may enjoy thinking out loud in a trusted team and prefer writing first in a new one. A colleague can value frequent contact while also needing uninterrupted blocks for complex work.

There is also a measurement problem. MBTI divides preferences into categories, while many personality characteristics are continuously distributed. Two nearly identical scores can therefore fall on opposite sides of a letter boundary. Our comparison of Big Five, MBTI and DISC explains why four letters can work as conversation language but not as a hard prediction.

Treat type advice as a hypothesis: this might help; is it true for you in this situation? Not as an instruction: you are this type, so this is how I must treat you.

Replace every letter with a question

A team does not need to memorise sixteen types. It can discuss the four subjects behind many type recommendations directly.

1. Contact: when does live conversation help, and when is asynchronous work better?
2. Information: do you want a concrete example, the wider pattern or both first?
3. Decisions: which facts, consequences and people should be considered before choosing?
4. Structure: what needs to be fixed in advance, and where may the route still change?

These questions keep the useful part of the model without reducing a colleague to a category. They also reveal differences within the same type.

Keep asking until the answer describes behaviour. “I am an introvert” can become: “I like to read complex proposals before the meeting and will respond by the next morning.” “I am spontaneous” can become: “Fix the goal and deadline; leave the intermediate steps open as long as I report risks early.”

A preference only helps when the other person knows what to do

A remote working agreement needs at least four parts: situation, channel, response time and exception rule.

Compare these statements:

I like clear communication.

For an urgent question, put the deadline and required decision in the first two lines of Slack. Call if I have not responded within two hours. I answer non-urgent questions by the next working day.

The first sentence sounds positive but leaves all interpretation to the colleague. The second makes behaviour predictable. Someone with a very different communication style can still use it.

The same applies to meetings. “I like to think first” can become an excuse for silence. A reciprocal agreement shares responsibility: the organiser sends the question a day ahead; the participant records an initial position before the meeting and says what remains uncertain during the conversation.

Use dimensions when nuance matters

A type can feel familiar and accessible in a first team conversation. A dimensional model is more precise for coaching, comparison and personal user guides. The Big Five describes people on five continuous scales instead of placing them in sixteen boxes.

You can then say that someone usually initiates social contact without scoring at an extreme. Or that a person likes planning and remains open to new ideas. Such combinations better fit remote work, where needs change by task and moment.

A score is not a user guide either. The useful sequence remains:

score → recognition → concrete example → reciprocal agreement → review

Skip the middle steps and one guessing game merely replaces another.

Do not turn poor work design into a personality problem

Not every remote problem comes from personality. A stream of messages may signal unclear responsibilities. Meeting fatigue may exist because decisions are not recorded anywhere else. A colleague who does not respond may be overloaded rather than introverted.

Check three layers in order:

• Work design: are goals, roles and decision rights clear?
• Team agreement: does everyone know which channel serves which purpose and when an answer is needed?
• Personal preference: what adjustment helps this colleague work well within that structure?

Personality belongs in the third layer. Otherwise the individual gets blamed for a system that works poorly for everyone.

Test one agreement instead of sixteen stereotypes

The best way to use the Fast Company guide is to start small. Choose one recurring remote moment, such as a weekly kick-off, feedback round or urgent request. Ask every team member to complete four short sentences:

1. In this situation, it helps me when...
2. Colleagues may misread my behaviour when...
3. You can expect me to...
4. In two weeks, we will know the agreement works when...

Create one team agreement and test it for two weeks. Do not check whether everyone behaves “according to type”. Check whether decisions become clear sooner, questions surface earlier and fewer repair conversations are needed.

Fast Company is right that personality differences become more visible in remote work. The sixteen types are not the solution. The solution is the conversation they can start, followed by agreements that everyone can see, use and correct.

Create a personal user guide based on continuous Big Five dimensions. Use the profile as source material, then decide together what remote collaboration requires in practice.