A team with personality

Team building takes time, especially for a large staff. To help speed up the process of getting to know each other, employees at Upstate Veterinary Specialists in Greenville, S.C., first got to know themselves better. "Our office manager brought in a human resources guru for three days and set up personality tests for all 13 doctors and 50 employees," says Emily Lynn Coblentz, receptionist.

Emily Lynn Coblentz, receptionist and extrovert, gets up close and personal with her Siamese cat, Rahfiki.

The staff completed the Myers Briggs Type Indicator assessment, a personality questionnaire that identifies a person's top four personality types from a total of eight possibilities. Of the eight types, the assessment pegged Coblentz, pictured above, as the following: extrovert, intuitive, thinking, and judging.

"It's easy to feel insignificant in a large practice," Coblentz says. "But this was a fun and helpful way of interacting with all departments and personnel." Besides getting a better inner perspective, team members also gained a better appreciation for each other. "We all learned so much about how introverts and extroverts work together and how they need each other to survive," she says.