Does Personality Similarity Matter at Work?
How similarities and differences with colleagues and leaders affect us at work.
Posted January 26, 2026 | Reviewed by Tyler Woods
Intuitively, we know that the personalities of our boss and the people we work with affect us. Some colleagues feel instantly familiar, while others seem fundamentally different from us. Research suggests that this personality similarity (or complementarity) may play a much larger role in the workplace than we often realize.
Is Personality Similarity Good or Bad?
A lot has been written about how similar (or different) people are from their (romantic) partners when it comes to personality. One view is that in relationships, differences in personality are adaptive because people can complement each other. For example, one might assume that someone who is very messy could function better in a relationship with a tidy partner than with another person who is also very messy. On the other hand, a contrasting view is that personality similarity is more adaptive. Indeed, it is not difficult to imagine that a messy person may feel more at ease with like-minded messy persons.
Researchers have taken a closer look at these popular assumptions. While some studies have found no effects of personality similarity, some seem to find positive effects of personality similarity. Women report higher levels of relationship satisfaction when their personality is more similar to their partner’s. Likewise, students like teachers with personality characteristics that are more similar to their own’s more.
Personality Similarity With Your Boss
However, have you ever considered your boss’s personality? Are they open to the new and innovative ideas you propose? Or are they more reluctant to change, whereas you spark with creative ideas to improve the workplace?
A study published in the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology examined how employees’ personality similarity to their boss’s relates to their work engagement. In this study, both employees and their supervisors rated their own personality characteristics. The research focused on two personality dimensions in particular. The first one was Openness to Experience , which describes how curious and open to change a person is. The second one is Emotionality, which describes how easily someone experiences negative emotions.
Employees who were more similar in terms of Openness to Experience to their supervisor, tended to report higher levels of work engagement. As expected, employees need a leader who likes change and new ideas as much as they do, but also not more than they do, so that they feel pressured to go outside their comfort zone. For Emotionality, however, the findings were less straightforward. Here, it seems that a complementary fit benefits the employee. In other words, either being more or less emotional than your boss seems beneficial. Apparently, it helps if you know you can rely on your supervisor, but it also feels good to know that your supervisor can rely on you.
Personality Similarity in Teams
Other research has examined personality similarity at work more broadly and examined whether teams whose members are more alike perform better. Similar as to how it can be challenging to work for a very conservative boss when you are highly open to new experiences, collaborating in a team with very different standpoints and working styles may be a barrier to good performance as well.
The evidence, however, seems mixed. Some studies suggest that similarity is beneficial for certain traits, such as Agreeableness , whereas complementarity or diversity in other traits, such as Extraversion and Neuroticism , may actually improve team performance. In this sense, variation in personality within a team can be an asset, allowing for a wider range of perspectives, roles, and approaches to problem-solving. In other cases, however, it may harm interpersonal relationships at work and, consequently, lower performance.
Adapting or Matching Personalities at Work
Whether we’re talking about personality similarity with a supervisor or with colleagues, these findings may have important implications at the workplace. In particular, for people in leadership positions, it may be crucial to consider how well their personality matches that of their employees. Whenever possible, leaders might benefit from adapting how they express their personality to better fit the needs of different followers. This does not mean changing who they are, but rather behaving flexibly. For example, a leader could be energetic and humorous with a highly extraverted employee, but adopt a calmer and more reserved style with a more introverted one. Such flexibility may benefit employees, although it also raises the question of how feasible (and potentially draining) this is for leaders over time.
When it comes to teamwork , or to two colleagues working closely together (such as pilot and co-pilot, or police officer pairs), personality similarity also deserves attention . Although it is not always practical to take personal preferences into account when assigning people to tasks, having some say in who one works with, especially in teams that collaborate intensively, such as surgical teams, flight crews, or law-enforcement units, could benefit both employees and organizations.
Finally, it is worth noting that the effects of similarity or complementarity may depend on who you ask. A messy person may enjoy working with someone who is tidy, but the tidy colleague may not agree with this. As with many questions in psychology, there is rarely a single answer that fits everyone, and when it comes to personality similarity at work, this is not different.
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Loes Abrahams, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at Tilburg University (the Netherlands) at the department of social psychology.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.