There’s an interesting thing that happens when anyone joins a company, or a new project. The thought of an Agile Team Personality Type, its effects on team dynamics, and getting to a state of performance, gives another indication on how fast everyone will reach that state. Depending on the workplace culture, it is easily assumed that everyone joining or about to work on a project is going to be competent, knowledgeable and a contributing member of the team. This is sort of like a “honeymoon phase.” What we soon discover that this initial impression will eventually change, sometimes for the better, and possibly for the worse.
Why are Personality Type Considerations Important?
Human nature will indicate, most of us have a tendency to give the benefit of the doubt to a stranger at the very beginning of a relationship. After all if it was any other way, relationships would never exist. What we tend not to do, is think of our personalities with regard to others we are interacting with. Further to this, we don’t normally think of the other individual personalities with regard to their compatibilities to ourselves and to each other. The good news is that this one consideration can accelerate synergy and performance on many levels.
What Types of Personalities are There?
There are many theoretical personality types, some ranging from 4 (four temperaments) to 16 personality types (Myers-Briggs). Some debate on which are better, more accurate, or more thorough. Most individuals think that others are like themselves at the beginning of a relationship, after all, who do we know better than ourselves? They don’t think about personality types, for example, most will think “this person is more or less like me” until the relationship develops. Later on they think about the relationship as “this person is more or less like me, but (adding exceptions).” Eventually it ends up being “this person is not like me” or “this person is a lot like me.” This would be the natural progression. But it’s the long way. Thinking about personality types of others (and yourself) up front and early on in a group relationship will empower you to know what is the best or worst expectation to come out of a team member, either individually or as a whole.
Knowing Personalities: A First Step Toward Leadership
The irony in some projects is that we tend to get caught up in the risks that could prevent the project from being completed as per the budget, timeline, or scope, but it’s taboo to think of the risk of the varying personalities that are interacting in the project. Some are compatible, and others not. But what we should stop and think about is, what actually makes a project unbearable? Is it a team working together to overcome problems? Or a team complaining about who is responsible for those problems? Knowing why this is a tendency through personality types, can allow you to take a step back, be a leader, see things outside the box, and then make the necessary preventions and adjustments.
[Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net]
Share this:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
