Using Personality Assessments to Build Teams

When it comes to personality assessment, we have always been amazed at people’s capacity to be infinitely interested in themselves. Well-constructed personality assessments can reveal why people act in unique ways, how they are likely to be perceived by others, how easy or difficult it will be to change targeted behaviors, and why they may have difficulties building loyal followings or getting work done through others. Since co-authoring “What We Know About Leadership: Effectiveness and Personality” in?American Psychologist?in 1994 we’ve used thousands of personality assessments in our leadership assessment, executive on-boarding, executive coaching, and leadership development practices; built commercially published personality assessments; and certified thousands of people in their use. We are and continue to be big advocates of personality assessment.

Given how useful personality assessments can be with individuals, it is easy to see why consultants use them with teams. Yet we rarely use personality assessments with teams. For a start, consider the following questionnaire items:

·??????The team shares a common understanding of its stakeholders and challenges.

·??????Team goals are documented and measured.

·??????The team has the right number of people.

·??????Team meetings make efficient and effective use of time.

·??????Team members’ primary loyalty is to this team versus other teams.

·??????The team is empowered to make decisions.

·??????Team members feel safe challenging each other.

·??????The team consistently delivers on all its goals.?

The answers to these items are crucial to understanding team dynamics and performance, yet it is difficult to see how the aggregated personality results of team members shed light on any these issues. Relatedly, situational factors as well as team members’ intelligence, experience, and skills are often bigger determinants of team dynamics than team member personalities--just think how the pandemic has affected team functioning and performance. Another problem is the sheer complexity of personality feedback in team settings. Suppose a team was made up of ten people, and everyone completed a personality inventory that provided feedback on ten personality traits. Keeping ten personality trait x ten people combinations straight when interacting with others is nearly impossible.?

A third issue is that aggregated personality results can indicate?why?teams may act in a particular way, but they say nothing about?what?teams actually do or?how?they get work done. Just as 360-degree feedback can help confirm or disconfirm whether personality traits are playing out in the workplace for individuals, team-level assessments are needed to understand whether aggregated personality results are affecting what teams are doing and how they function.

Our Team Assessment Survey (TAS) provides teams with benchmarking information about team dynamics and performance. The TAS provides detailed feedback on the eight components of the Rocket Model, the extent to which a collection of people is operating as a group versus a team, as well as qualitative feedback on team dynamics.??Over 3,000 teams from across a wide variety of geographies, industries, functions, and organizational levels have completed the TAS, and the results are linked to 40 different team improvement activities described in?Ignition: A Guide to Building High Performing Teams?(Curphy, Nilsen & Hogan, 2019).?

If you would like to learn more about the Team Assessment Survey and how to effectively scale teamwork across organizations, then consider joining us at the next Virtual Team Improvement Workshop. The details for the workshop can be found at the end of this short video:??https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Opk6R6e1D8