Editor’s Note: Recently, the New Venture Launch classes were part of a unique hands-on workshop facilitated by Bob Kreisberg, President of Opus Productivity Solutions. The post below is written by two students who attended the workshop, Paul Aleo and Drew Balanza.

Opus Productivity aids companies in improving productivity and profitability through the use of a unique personality assessment test. Many employers use this test to assess a potential candidate’s strengths and weaknesses as they relate to completing the required job duties. These tests can also help people learn how to communicate better by teaching them about their own personalities and the personalities of others.

Prior to coming to the workshop, each student completed a brief questionnaire and Opus Productivity created a detailed personality profile for each student and a team profile that put together information about each team member’s personality. Bob Kreisberg facilitated a workshop that showed us how to interpret our personality profile results and how to effectively communicate with co-workers who have similar and different personalities.

The report explained our natural tendencies, what type of environment we work best in, how we come across to others, our style for interacting with others, and what tends to motivate/demotivate us. It was unbelievable how accurate the results were!

Here is an excerpt from one of our personality assessments, with our comments included in parentheses:

You are quite controlling in a careful and convincing way… (Manipulative eh? After all, I am a Scorpio.)

Very attentive to maintain accuracy while getting things accomplished as quickly as possible. Authoritative, self-disciplined. Little tolerance for mediocrity or inaccuracy… (I hate wasting time, especially on low quality work. That’s just a waste of time, you’re going to have to do it over again anyway.)

There is a competitive spirit and an ambitious desire to win… (Who likes losing?)

You have the ability to quickly and effectively convey ideas and information in an influential manner. (I get it, I’m manipulative. I like that, it’s like I’m a bad guy in one of those comic book movies, Spiderman. X-Men. I don’t know.)

Your natural energy level is in the: ACHIEVER ZONE. With this means of accomplishing a task, you should be very successful. Your only concern here might be whether there is enough time in the day and can the important areas of your life (job, mate, peers, etc.) really utilize the energies you have to offer… (Amen!)

Not only did we receive an individual report, we also received a team report that aggregated the results of our team members in a way that described everyone’s dominate personality traits and how our personalities may be perceived from other members in our group in both positive and negative ways. Bob Kreisberg helped us to take this information and use it to understand everyone’s unique personality and how our differences can be utilized effectively to complement each other.

Overall, we found the entire experience to be quite valuable. Learning about our own personalities and how they can affect how well we work with others was quite insightful and definitely one of the more valuable experiences during our time at Cal State Fullerton.