Personality Exercises Without Tests Improved Team Grades

College students put through exercises with their class teams in which they discussed their personality differences at the start of a semester earned higher project and individual grades in the class than those who didn't. They also were more satisfied with their teamwork experiences. The exercises did not use personality tests, and took only 30 minutes.

Students in two marketing classes were randomly assigned to teams of four or five students, and the teams were assigned by a lottery to do the exercises or not. The exercise leader showed slides of eight humorous team personality types based on political roles and gave brief explanations of related team member behaviors, as quoted here:

• The Communist: Gets upset if each member contribution is not exactly equal.
• The Dictator: "Do you think anyone will notice if I don't say anything, but just start bossing people around?"
• The Anarchist: "Let's just all do our own thing and see what happens."
• The Libertarian: "Just nobody tell me what to do, and quit asking to see my work!"
• The Silent Majority: Blank slide
• The Capitalist: Everything is a competition between group members or other groups, "we WILL win"
• The Monarchist: "Let's just pretend we're getting something done."
• The Fascist: "We're doing it my way, it's the only way to be sure it's right."
• The Martyr: "I was born to suffer, just tell me what to do and I'll do it."

Students were told to "write down any reflection of their own behavior in teams…" according to a journal article. They were also asked to write "how their personality can sometimes inhibit team progress and, if and when that happens, how they would prefer their teammates deal with them." In team meetings, the students then shared what they wrote, and the other members gave them feedback. Halfway through the project, students rated themselves on how they were doing as team members and wrote what others could do to help them do better. These again were discussed with their teams.

The researchers, Matthew Lancellotti and Thomas Boyd of California State Univ., Fullerton, had been using the exercise for eight years, though this was the first scientific test of whether it worked. They provided some "lessons learned" based on their experience. "When teams meet with the instructor they openly joke about their different styles, perhaps because their baggage is already out in the open," the researchers write. "Instead of complaining about each other, they speak in terms of how they can accommodate each other's styles.

"We have also found that trying to match personality types that would seem to appropriately fit together does not work..." they continue. For example, putting a "natural leader" with people who prefer to follow "often results in the leader simply doing most of the work or delegating all of the work."

Source: Lancellotti, M., and T. Boyd (2008), "The Effects of Team Personality Awareness Exercises on Team Satisfaction and Performance," Journal of Marketing Education 30(3):244.