The Second Rule to Create Teams that Click: The “it” Factor

When astronauts jettison into space for extended periods of time, there are two main obstacles they need to overcome. One, the effects of radiation on the body, and two, crew dynamics in a confined space. How well the crew can get along together and achieve their mission’s goals is a grave concern. While NASA can use specific materials to construct the spacecraft to minimize the crew’s radiation exposure, ensuring the team gets along requires different technology. The space agency is currently conducting research to figure out how to best construct a team that will work together in difficult conditions. They are learning that an astronaut's personality can either help or hurt the team's performance.

NASA researcher Suzanne Bell says that certain personality traits are key for team performance. “Team chemistry doesn't have to be a matter of luck,” says Bell. She found that high agreeableness and a preference to work on teams are the top two personality metrics that predict team performance. Bell is working on designing algorithms that will help NASA choose the right astronauts for their mission to Mars. Four team members will live in a confined space the size of a studio apartment for two and a half years. Figuring out a way to ensure the team works well together in this long-term stressful environment is essential. She explains: “A mission team—like any team, anywhere—needs competent people who work well together. In our models, we assume that astronauts are intelligent, that they are experts in their technical areas, and that they have at least some teamwork skills. What’s tricky is how well individuals combine.”

Bell recognizes that the Mars mission requires specific personality traits for a successful endeavor that are different from a company’s team needs. Depending on the context, teams will require different mixes of personalities. While having a balance of introverts and extroverts on a corporate team might make sense, explains Bell, extraversion on a Mars mission does not. “A very sociable, talkative person could become irritating and could end up being ostracized,” explains Bell. Her research is nuanced—it does not look at extroverts as one blanket personality quality. Instead, her team looks at the traditional "Big Five" personality traits—extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism—to see if there are any parts that could help the Mars mission. From this finer detail, they found that while gregariousness might not be the best for long-term isolation, assertiveness can be more beneficial. Both qualities are facets of extroverted personalities.

Your Technical Skills are Only Half of the Equation

If you think personality nuances are a bit overwhelming, you are not alone. The business world has ignored personality when creating teams in part because personality is hard to measure. Instead, businesses focus on a person’s functional role. That role is, “based on their formal position and technical skill,” writes Dave Winsborough and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic in Harvard Business Review. Résumés are full of information about someone’s functional role. However, this misses half of the equation. Winsborough and Chamorro-Premuzic explain that there are “two roles every person plays in a working group.” Yes, the functional role, but also the psychological role which is, “based on the kind of person they are.”

As far as team performance is concerned, who you think you are matters less than who others think you are. Hogan Assessments, which creates personality assessments for over 75% of the Fortune 500 companies, explains, “Your reputation is the person other people think you are. Your success in the workplace is dependent on your reputation, and this is the part of personality that the best personality tests are based on.”

A deep understanding of personalities and how they work together is essential to create successful teams. It is not about box-ticking, it is about the relational dance or the complex web of social capital. “Who you are affects how you behave and how you interact with other people, so team members’ personalities operate like the different functions of a single organism,” Winsborough and Chamorro-Premuzic explain. Each person’s personality can contribute to the whole team’s success—or failure. Remember the 1990’s Chicago Bulls? Only when they had the right combination of personalities did they begin to excel. Jordan, the demanding superstar, could not carry the team himself. He needed Pippen, a more nurturing figure, and Rodman, rebel-thinker, to create the right balance.

It’s All in the Mix

Our personalities shape the way we interact with others and the world. As a result, our network of connections and relationships looks different. In Social Chemistry, King argues there are three types of personalities: expansionists, brokers, and conveners (I call these three types of people informal captains, charismatic connectors, and team players). Each of us can exhibit these types at different levels. In the figure below, King notes that each network has the same number of people, but they are connected in different ways.

Network Maps for Expansionists, Brokers, and Conveners

?

Note. (What King calls conveners, brokers, and expansionists I call informal captians, team players, and connectors in my book the Click Code)

This image was produced by Marissa King to illustrate the networks that expansionists, brokers, and conveners form. The dark circle represents each type of networker, and the light circles represent the people they connect with. The lines between each circle represent the relationships between those people. Notice how the light color circles can also be connected to each other, irrespective of the dark circle. From Social Chemistry: Decoding the Patterns of Human Connection by Marissa King, 2020, Penguin Random House, p. 14.

As King noted in her analysis of the three types of network personalities, each person can embody multiple types. We find the same to be true in our research. Although human brains love to categorize people into neat boxes, someone can display multiple personality traits. Building excellent teams is not simple, there are layers of understanding involved. However, there are some shared qualities amongst the three personalities. These folks all want to work on teams and fulfill their roles. They are all effective self-monitors, meaning they are aware of their emotions and regulate them. They also have an elevated level of affective presence. Whoever is around them experiences more positive emotions than if these people were not there. Want to assess your network? Copy and paste the following link into your browser to access Professor King's network assessment. https://www.assessyournetwork.com/

It’s Not You, It’s Us

Teams with that “It” factor combine people who embody qualities of informal captains, team players, and charismatic connectors (similar to King’s conveners, expansionists, and brokers). Each person contributes their useful personality skills to advance the team toward its various goals. These folks may or may not have star-level talent but that is less important for team performance. While the western world deifies solitary, independent actors, the research shows that higher performance is possible when balanced teams unlock each members’ potential.

Creating the right mix of people—the “It” Factor—who maximize each other’s abilities—the Inclusion Rule—lays the foundation for team success. However, those elements alone are not enough to ensure great teamwork. Team members need to apply a specific style of giving and receiving feedback, one that asks each feedback-giver to go beyond pointing out another’s mistake. Feedback-givers need to also leverage their creativity to make suggestions for how to improve something. This key element is called the “Plus Principle.” One of the most famous animation studios employs this technique to heart-warming success.?I’ll discuss this in my next blog post on creating teams that click.

References

On long term space flight obstacles: Spell, Chester, Evangeline Yang, and Kate Bezrukova. “What Apollo 11 Can Teach Us about Team Building.” Psychology Today. Sussex Publishers, July 17, 2019. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/team-spirit/201907/what-apollo-11-can-teach-us-about-team-building.

On space radiation: Bevill, Terrie. “Space Radiation Analysis Group (SRAG) Web Site.” NASA. NASA. Accessed October 15, 2021.

https://srag.jsc.nasa.gov/spaceradiation/how/how.cfm.

NASA’s research on how to create the best teams: “Mission to Mars.” Mission to Mars | Distinctions | DePaul University | DePaul University, Chicago. Accessed October 15, 2021. https://www.depaul.edu/distinctions/Pages/mission-to-mars.aspx.

NASA’s podcast interview with Bell: Moran, Norah. “EP 175: The Science of Teams.” NASA, December 10, 2020. https://www.nasa.gov/johnson/HWHAP/the-science-of-teams.

On psychological and functional roles: Winsborough, Dave, and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic. “Great Teams Are about Personalities, Not Just Skills.” Harvard Business Review, January 31, 2017. https://hbr.org/2017/01/great-teams-are-about-personalities-not-just-skills .

Three types of networkers: King, Marissa. Social Chemistry the Elements of Human Connection. New York, NY: Dutton, 2020.