# Characteristics of People: The 8 That Colleagues Notice Most Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/personal-qualities/characteristics-of-people/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/personal-qualities/characteristics-of-people.md Entity type: Article Last updated: 2026-07-07 Language: en Primary audience: professionals improving building self-awareness at work Owner: Headway Skills Contact: https://headwayskills.com/contact/ ## Short answer The characteristics of people that matter at work: reliability, honesty, respect, humility, initiative and more, why they are behaviors, and how to build them. ## Key facts - Title: Characteristics of People: The 8 That Colleagues Notice Most - Category: Personal Qualities - Primary skill: Building Self-Awareness - Related skills: Professional Behaviors, Teamwork - Primary keyword: characteristics of people - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/personal-qualities/characteristics-of-people/ ## What this page covers - The characteristics of people that matter at work: reliability, honesty, respect, humility, initiative and more, why they are behaviors, and how to build them. - Practical guidance for characteristics of people - How this topic connects to Building Self-Awareness ## Detailed explanation The characteristics of people come in two layers: personality tendencies such as openness, conscientiousness, extraversion and agreeableness, and the behaviors others actually see, such as being reliable, honest, respectful, humble and willing to take initiative. At work, colleagues judge the second layer, and that layer can be developed. That may come as a relief if you have ever compared yourself with a colleague who seems naturally trusted, or wondered whether you have the "right" personality for working life. The characteristics that make someone easy to work with turn out to be less about who a person is than about what they do, day after day. ## Personality and behavior: two layers of characteristics When psychologists describe the characteristics of people, they usually start with the Big Five: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism, the tendency to experience negative emotions such as anxiety and sadness. Each is a spectrum. Nobody is simply "an extravert"; everyone sits somewhere between the poles on all five. That gives you a vocabulary for temperament, but it describes tendencies, not the specific things colleagues see you do and come to rely on. Personality itself grows out of a mix of biological disposition, upbringing and life experience. Because part of it is learned, part of it can be relearned. The traditional view held that personality is fixed while character is something you build through effort. Research on deliberate personality change blurs that line: as an essay in *Psyche* describes, a mega-analysis of 12 datasets found that having the goal to change one's personality predicted change across all of the Big Five traits. The mechanism is unglamorous. Someone who wants to become more organized starts doing organized things, and the repeated behavior gradually moves the trait. A daily diary study in the *Journal of Personality* adds a second angle. The same person shows a character strength such as kindness or perseverance far more on some days than on others, and how much it varies depends on whether the strength is more situational or more constant. A characteristic, in other words, is something you display in moments, not a label stamped on you. Choosing to show it more often is how it grows. So inherited tendencies set your starting point, not your ceiling. The characteristics below are the ones colleagues notice most, and every one of them is a behavior you can practice without becoming a different person. ## 8 characteristics of people that matter most at work Employers pay close attention to this visible layer. In NACE's Job Outlook 2025 survey of [employers hiring new graduates](/knowledge/employability/soft-skills-employers-want/), more than 80% said they look for strong teamwork skills, and initiative and a strong work ethic were each important to at least 70% of respondents. Read the list below as a mirror as well as a description of others: for each characteristic, ask whether you could point to a recent moment when you showed it. ### 1. Reliability Reliability means doing what you said you would, when you said you would. It sounds modest, and that is exactly why it carries so much weight: trust is built from repeated small proofs of follow-through, not from a single impressive act. A new colleague's reputation forms quickly from everyday moments, such as the draft that arrives on the agreed day, the message answered as promised, the task finished without a reminder. This is largely what employers mean by work ethic. Reliability is among the cheapest characteristics to demonstrate and among the most expensive to lose. ### 2. Honesty and integrity Honesty is meaning what you say; integrity is acting in line with it, including when nobody would notice the difference. Colleagues weigh these first when deciding whom to trust with sensitive information, a difficult client or a mistake they need help fixing. In practice, integrity shows up in small choices: admitting you missed something instead of letting it slide, giving a realistic estimate rather than a pleasing one, and speaking about a colleague the same way whether or not they are in the room. One visible lapse can undo months of good impressions, which is why this characteristic is worth protecting deliberately. ### 3. Respect Respect at work means treating everyone impartially: the receptionist and the senior partner, the intern and the client. People notice quickly whether your courtesy depends on someone's rank. Its opposites are just as visible. Aggressive behavior, such as personal attacks or a cutting tone in a disagreement, and arrogance, acting as if you are above certain people or tasks, register with colleagues at least as fast as good manners do. Respect is less about formal politeness than about consistency: the same basic regard for every person you deal with. ### 4. Humility Humility is the willingness to learn an environment before trying to change it. For someone new to a workplace, it means asking how things are done and why before proposing something different, and accepting that colleagues who have been there longer know things you do not know yet. It also means staying open to change and to being wrong. Humility has a limit, though. Taken too far, it [slides into passivity](/knowledge/communication/assertive-communication-skills/): the newcomer who listens politely, never contributes and is soon overlooked. That is why it belongs next to the characteristic that balances it. ### 5. Initiative Initiative is acting without waiting to be told: asking questions, volunteering for a task, raising an idea in a meeting, offering to prepare the first draft. Initiative and humility pull in opposite directions, and what people value is the combination. Too little initiative reads as passivity; too much, before you understand the environment, can read as arrogance. The workable balance is to learn first while still speaking up, so that people experience you as both teachable and engaged. > Be critical. Don't just say 'yes, thanks' and 'OK' — ask questions, and question things. It really isn't that dangerous. Watch out for too much humility and deference to authority. Asking is taken positively, even if the answer is no. And ask even when it's outside your area of expertise — it gives you insight. That advice came from one of the young people we interviewed about starting work; what we have is our notes of what she told us rather than her exact words. Her point fits the balance above: humility that never asks a question stops being a strength. ### 6. Team orientation Team orientation means working for the shared goal rather than your own agenda: sharing what you know, giving credit to the group, and doing the work that needs doing even when it is not the most visible. Given how many employers look for teamwork, it is one of the most sought-after characteristics of people early in their careers. It is also easy to lose when you are busy. Someone who focuses only on their own tasks can deliver well and still drift away from the team, because colleagues experience that narrow focus as distance. ### 7. A positive attitude A positive attitude is the habit of looking for what works before pointing out what does not, and of expressing appreciation when someone helps you. It is not forced cheerfulness, and it does not mean hiding real problems. Its opposite, chronic negativity, is one of the patterns colleagues pick up on quickly: the person whose first response to any plan is a complaint, or who criticizes more than they contribute. Because attitude is expressed in what you say and do, it is a pattern you can shift, not a mood you are stuck with. ### 8. Openness to feedback Openness to feedback is the characteristic that makes all the others improvable. How you see yourself and [how others experience you](/knowledge/self-awareness/self-awareness-skills/) often differ: plenty of people would describe themselves as good listeners or as reliable without ever checking how their behavior lands. Asking a colleague or manager for specific feedback, such as one thing you could do differently in the next meeting, is the most direct way to close that gap. Being open means hearing the answer out fully before explaining yourself, then deciding what to do with it. ## The characteristics people notice for the wrong reasons Positive characteristics are only half the picture. Colleagues spot unprofessional patterns at least as quickly, and five come up again and again: - Passive: present but not contributing, waiting to be told. - Aggressive: personal attacks, raised voices, making disagreements personal. - Arrogant: acting as if you are superior to colleagues or above certain tasks. - Manipulative: indirect communication, working around people, spreading rumors. - Negative: excessive complaining and criticism. Each describes behavior rather than a fixed trait, so each can be recognized and dropped. Almost anyone can slip into one of them during a demanding week. For judging yourself, naming these patterns is often more useful than collecting virtues: it is easier to notice that you complained in every meeting this week than to measure how positive you are. If you would rather not rely on guesswork, the free Job Skills Test offers [a structured look at your habits](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/), showing which skills already support the characteristics you want others to see. ## What builds these characteristics over time Look back across the eight characteristics and the five patterns, and one thing stands out: none of them is visible until someone acts. Each is a cluster of habits, which raises a more useful question than "what kind of person am I?" It asks what sits underneath those habits. **Building Self-Awareness** is what turns a list of characteristics into a mirror. It means knowing which of these behaviors come naturally to you, the ones where the work feels easy and the results are good, and spotting the blind spots where your self-image and other people's experience of you part ways. Feedback is the main tool: first understand what the person is telling you, then add your own view, then reflect on what to change. A personality profile can start that conversation, but it should not end it. **Professional Behaviors**. Respect, humility, genuine interest in others, seeking the positive and expressing appreciation are, in workplace terms, everyday conduct rather than hidden qualities. The same goes for the passive, aggressive, arrogant, manipulative and negative patterns to avoid. This skill is about recognizing which signals you send in ordinary moments, such as a meeting, a hallway conversation or a reply to a request, and choosing them deliberately instead of leaving them to chance. **Teamwork** gives reliability and honesty their practical meaning. Trust in a team comes from being sincere, meaning what you say and walking the talk; from being reliable, doing what you commit to; from being authentic; and from forgiving others when they slip. Put the team's common purpose ahead of your own agenda, share what you know and give credit to the group, and team orientation stops being a claim and becomes something colleagues can vouch for. The free Job Skills Test lets you [pinpoint which habit to build first](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/), covering these three alongside the rest of a **set of twelve work skills** that shape how people come across. Each of them can be learned, and none of them asks for a new personality. Some of these characteristics may already describe you on an ordinary Tuesday. If you are the one who sends the agreed draft on time without being chased, reliability is already part of how colleagues see you, whether or not you have ever called it that. The characteristics that feel further away are not missing pieces of who you are. They are habits you have not yet had a reason to practice, and you can choose which ones matter most for you right now. What colleagues remember about you grows from small, repeated behaviors, and the more people your work touches, the more those behaviors shape the trust and opportunities that come your way. Habits are easiest to adjust early, which makes now a good moment to see where yours stand. ## Start with an honest look at your work skills The only step left is to find out where you stand. The Job Skills Test is a **free** self-assessment of your work skills: in 7 minutes it maps all twelve and shows which ones would make the biggest difference to how colleagues experience you. **[Discover my skills](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/)** *Free, takes 7 minutes, and your results appear instantly.* ## Who this is for - Professionals building practical workplace skills - Readers looking for specific, usable work advice - Managers, educators, and coaches supporting career readiness ## Common questions ### What is this guide about? The characteristics of people that matter at work: reliability, honesty, respect, humility, initiative and more, why they are behaviors, and how to build them. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Building Self-Awareness. It also relates to Professional Behaviors, Teamwork. ### What is the recommended next step? Use the free Work Skills Test to reflect on which work skill to improve next. ## Related pages - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/personal-qualities.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/self-awareness.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/professional-behaviors.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/teamwork.md - https://headwayskills.com/work-skills-test.md ## Citation guidance Use the canonical page when citing this content: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/personal-qualities/characteristics-of-people/ Preferred summary: "The characteristics of people that matter at work: reliability, honesty, respect, humility, initiative and more, why they are behaviors, and how to build them." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.