Team Performance Optimisation - Why Personality Is So Important
Let’s start with a question… how often after a meeting with your leadership or management team do you find yourself leaving thinking, ‘that was a really productive, efficient and enjoyable meeting’?
Versus coming out thinking things like, that took longer than it needed to, or I’m not sure that was time well spent, or was anyone really listening? Pause for a moment and consider how well you understand the range of personalities in the team. Or even, how well you understand how you best contribute to the team and what you need from the other members to be at your best?
Research has shown time and again that diverse teams in the long term, once performing, are more profitable and more creative. Last year in 2022, findings from Forbes showed that diverse teams deliver 60% better results and make better decisions in 87% of cases. Powerful business rationale to have a range of diversity in team, whether that be through gender, race, socio-economic or neurodiversity.
We know that once developed and performing, diverse teams will outperform a homogenous team. However, with the variety of styles and ways of working that come from diverse teams it can mean they take longer to move through Tuckman’s (1965) 4 psychological phases of team building and development. Namely, forming, storming, norming and performing.
Forming
At this early phase there’s generally a display of eagerness but tempered with a polite tone to the meeting. Team members often aren’t fully clear now how they fit in and best contribute, and so will tend to stick to safe topics.
Storming
In this phase team members start to share their ideas and opinions. It’s a time that can often carry high emotions, and result in conflict arising based on differences of feeling and opinion and perhaps competition within the team. The green shoots of some team norms will however start to emerge.
Norming
It’s in this phase the team start to gather some forward momentum and see a rise in their performance. It’s when the purpose and goals of the team are understood, there's improved commitment, communication and confidence bringing a supportive and engaged environment.
Performing
This phase sees the teams’ peak performance, with a foundation of high motivation, trust and empathy. The team works with a focus on the needs of the team over individual gain, allowing consistent performance and effectively delivering results.
So, if you now reflect on your own leadership or management team, which phase are you in? The time it takes to progress through the phases varies from team to team. By recognising that a team inevitably has to move through all of these to reach its full potential, it enables you to better determine what’s needed to help the team progress to the performing stage and continue to thrive.
Understanding individual and team personality is a powerful catalyst for progression through the 4 stages of team building and development and keeping a team soaring at performing.
There are a number of different personality assessment tools available. Two very respected tools are the Hogan personality assessments and the Golden personality profiler. These types of assessments can provide enhanced self-awareness to each individual team member, for example by better understanding their values, their strengths, their reaction and resilience to stress and which behaviours could become performance derailers for them.
Following individual insights and reflections, team benefits can be realised too. There’s the opportunity for the team to understand what’s needed for themselves and the rest of the team to be at their best. For example, understanding attitudes to risk taking, how information is most optimally digested, attitude and reaction to perceived conflict in discussions, and their preferred pace and variety of work to maintain energy and focus. These all enable the team to play to their strengths, work more effectively with each other and develop the empathy and trust essential for a high performing team.
By taking time to raise the self-awareness of individual strengths, style and personality followed by facilitated team discussion and development, there are significant benefits to be gained. Not only can it help accelerate the time it takes to work through the 4 psychological stages of building and developing a team (and all the successes that come from it); but it might also mean that when you leave your leadership or management team meetings in the future, you’ll have a greater sense that it was effective, productive – and perhaps even enjoyable!