At Koios, we know the importance of understanding the unique compositions of each individual within the workforce, but we also recognise the immense power that can be realised when leveraging each individual and their strengths to build a highly functioning and productive team.  

This ushers a critical question – what makes a team perform well, and how can we improve that performance?

We believe that harnessing the power of individual personality traits can provide invaluable insight into understanding and enhancing team performance. 

This led us to develop our newest feature: Team Insights

‍

Our Team Insights Framework

Interestingly, the relationship between individual team member’s Big 5 personality traits and team performance is an under-researched subject. Nonetheless, there is still enough to provide us with an overarching understanding of the subject. 

Our current Team Insights framework provides an analysis of a team based on the combination of each member’s distinct personality traits. This analysis takes into consideration all of the existing literature we have examined to provide actionable recommendations for maximising team performance based on the unique combination of team members provided.

One of the key concepts we have based our framework on is that of Team Personality Elevation (TPE) and Team Personality Diversity (TPD) (Neuman et al., 1999). 

• Team Personality Elevation (TPE) refers to the average level of a given personality trait within a team. 
• Team Personality Diversity (TPD) refers to the variability or differences in personality traits found within a team.

Overall, the literature suggests that diversity and elevation for certain personality traits can be beneficial for team performance for certain traits, but can also hinder performance for certain traits. 

To learn more about the existing literature on this subject in detail, see here. 

What Would Our Analysis Reveal

Understanding these scores will help the team explore the existing strengths of their joined personality composition and discover effective strategies to further boost overall team performance. It will also offer insights for collaborative problem-solving and potential tension management.

Becoming aware of the ways that each team works effectively together and areas that have room for growth will be invaluable for optimising team performance. 

For example, these insights could provide advice regarding how to improve communication between certain team members or how to foster an environment that is most conducive to productivity for that individual team. 

What Does This Mean?

The research clearly underscores the significance of managers having a profound understanding of their team and the dynamics that occur within that space. This goes beyond merely knowing their name or their individual roles within the team. Rather, it involves a holistic understanding of their strengths, growth areas, interactions, and even their motivations. By leveraging this in-depth knowledge, managers can tailor their leadership styles, recognition methods, and communication strategies to suit the unique needs of each team member. Again, this can also have profound benefits for inter-team relationships as managers can more skillfully mitigate conflict and encourage positive collaboration. By optimising these mechanisms, managers can effectively enhance team performance, leading to improved overall productivity and success for the organisation.