Monday, September 19, 2011

Team structures.. a product of personality?

In reading the assigned document, "The Wisdom of Teams", it occurred to me that the make ups of the team performance curve may very well be a product of personality. The reading discusses the five different frameworks that make up different teams. The way this article describes the different structures made me draw the assumption that the make up of each group relies heavily on the personalities present. The Myers-Briggs personality test that we were all supposed to take for our papers placed us into categories based off of our preferences. The test put me into the category of Protector:
"Protectors make up as much as ten percent the population, because their primary interest is in the safety and security of those they care about - their family, their circle of friends, their students, their patients, their boss, their fellow-workers, or their employees. Protectors have an extraordinary sense of loyalty and responsibility in their makeup, and seem fulfilled in the degree they can shield others from the dirt and dangers of the world"


This led me to believe that protectors are most likely to follow a real team or even high-performance team make-up. The real team framework says it contains people who "are equally committed to a common purpose, goals, and working approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable". The protector looks out for his co-workers security and safety, meaning they are likely to fall into this category. 


Likewise other personalities are more likely to be self-serving.  An example may come from the personality of an inventor:
"Inventors are keenly pragmatic, and often become expert at devising the most effective means to accomplish their ends. They are the most reluctant of all the types to do things in a particular manner just because that's the way they have been done."


Inventors like to figure things out for themselves and do not like to follow exact procedure, but rather try new things, meaning they may be more likely to fall into a work group category, where "members interact primarily to share information, best practices, or perspectives and to make decisions to help each individual perform within his area of responsibility".


I also found this particularly interesting from the reading "Political concerns almost always overshadow performance considerations". This too I think falls into personality types, some personalities are more self-serving than others, but there are certain personalities that are actually more group oriented and focused that this would not be true for.



1 comment:

  1. I'm glad you decided to post about this because I apply personality traits to a lot of ideas as well. A group cannot become a team unless all members are willing to make that transition. Some members may not be interested in this change simply because of their personality, just like the inventor you wrote about. These personalities want to stick with what they're familiar with and what they think works best. In my article "Personality Plus", the TAT personality assessment is discussed. This test requires a psychologist to show the tester ink pictures where the tester must then come up with a story to match what they see. The results, as I see it, are completely subjective to how the psychologist will analyze the stories, which in turn depends upon the psychologist's general personality and outlook.

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