Team-building with Personality Science

Tools like DiSC and MBTI sort people into a small number of styles or types. Big 5 at Work is built on the Five Factor Model (OCEAN), the most widely researched model of personality in psychology, and measures five traits and 29 facets on a continuous spectrum. If your team has already done DiSC, this isn't a repeat. You keep the kind of discussion teams value and add new ground DiSC mostly doesn't cover, like how people respond to change and new ideas (Openness) and how they react to stress and risk (Neuroticism).

There are three formats: a 2 Hour Session or a Half-Day Workshop (each virtual or in person), or an in-person Team Deep Dive (a full day or two half-days). Before the workshop, each participant completes the Comprehensive Assessment (not just the free test) and shares their results with the team. Every format follows the same arc: why there is no correct setting on any trait, the science behind the Five Factor Model, the five traits with a live team map and a first look at the facets, the Two Things Are True method for hard conversations, and one commitment from each person. The Half-Day Workshop goes deeper into the facets, with more breakout time on your team's real friction points. The Team Deep Dive adds breakouts planned with you and time to build the “Scaffolding”: the processes and guidelines that keep your team working well together.

A Big 5 at Work Consultant can host an in-person workshop anywhere in the United States. If no consultant is available in your area, travel costs are added to the price. The 2 Hour Session and the Half-Day Workshop can also be held online through Zoom or Microsoft Teams, depending on your preference. The Team Deep Dive is in person only, because a full day is too hard to facilitate well over video.

Yes. The 2 Hour Session and the Half-Day Workshop both run virtually on Zoom or Microsoft Teams, and they work for fully remote and hybrid teams as long as everyone joins from their own laptop. For help choosing a format, sample remote agendas and the questions to ask any workshop provider, read our guide to remote team-building workshops.

Big 5 at Work offers a free test that scores your five main traits. The Comprehensive Assessment, which adds facet scores, a personal report and the Virtual Coach to help you interpret your results, is $4.99 per person, with lower per-person rates when you buy for 10 or more people (down to $3.49 each for 50+). A Team Dashboard to compare everyone's results, with the Virtual Coach's analysis of how your team works together, is a one-time $50 per dashboard. For groups of fewer than 20 people, workshops are $2,500 for a 2 Hour Session, $4,500 for a Half-Day Workshop, or $8,500 for a Team Deep Dive; groups of 20 or more get a custom quote. Assessments and the dashboard are billed separately from workshops, and if no Big 5 at Work Consultant is available in your area, travel costs are added. See the pricing page for full details.

The Big Five, also called OCEAN or the Five Factor Model, are the five broad traits psychologists use to describe personality: Openness (curiosity and interest in new ideas), Conscientiousness (organization and follow-through), Extraversion (energy from social interaction), Agreeableness (cooperation and consideration for others) and Neuroticism (how readily you notice and react to risk and stress). Everyone falls somewhere on each spectrum, and no score is good or bad on its own.

The free test has 58 short statements that you rate based on how well each one describes you at work. The Comprehensive Assessment adds 58 more statements to measure 29 facets, followed by a conversation with the Virtual Coach about what your results mean for your work.

The Big Five is the most widely researched model of personality in psychology. The same five traits have appeared consistently across decades of studies, in many languages and cultures, and with many different questionnaires. Big 5 at Work uses statements adapted from the IPIP-NEO, a public-domain questionnaire built for research, and scores them with its published method.

No. Neuroticism describes how strongly you react to stress and potential problems. People who score higher often spot risks early, prepare carefully and care about getting things right, which is valuable on any team. Like every trait, it comes with a superpower and a pitfall, and understanding it helps teammates work together better. It's one reason we think Neuroticism needs a rebrand.

Big Five results give a team a shared, non-judgmental language for how people work. Teams use them to understand why colleagues communicate, make decisions and handle conflict differently, to agree on working norms, and to make better use of each person's strengths. Team members who choose to share their results can compare them side by side on a private team dashboard.

Workshops are led by a Big 5 at Work Consultant. Consultants are therapists and professional coaches who have completed the free Big 5 at Work Consultant Training.

Your results and reports are stored in the United States, in an encrypted cloud database on Amazon Web Services in Oregon. We use a few trusted providers for specific jobs: HubSpot for contact details, Stripe for payments (we never see your card number), and Anthropic's AI to write your personalized Comprehensive Assessment. You choose whether to share your scores with your team, and you can delete your account anytime. Accounts with no sign-ins for 18 months are deleted automatically.