A New Way to Address Troubled Team Dynamics

We adapted the Big Five personality test to illustrate personality preferences among team members. Our research involved assessing over 600 ad hoc teams that participated in IMD leadership development programs, as well as 100 senior executive teams across Europe, Asia, and the United States in various industries. Medita Holdings, a company facing challenges due to overstretched resources and multiple unrelated ventures, engaged in unproductive discussions during team meetings.

The HR department suspected that the root cause was a common personality trait among leaders, specifically strong intellectual curiosity.

When brainstorming solutions, we discovered that modern teams often lack opportunities for team members to connect on a personal level, making it difficult to foster better relationships. To improve team dynamics, we utilized the Big Five personality test, which assesses individual differences across five broad dimensions: need for stability, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness.

By conducting a workshop, we plotted the personality scores of team members and identified clusters and divergences in their preferences. This visual representation, known as the team DNA, allowed the team to recognize the traits that either enhanced or hindered their collaboration. In Medita's case, the team exhibited a high cluster on intellectual curiosity, meaning members were highly open to exploring new ideas.

However, a notable outlier in every agreeableness trait raised concerns about a team member's potential exhaustion from consistently challenging consensus decisions. By visualizing the team DNA, the Medita team was able to understand their collective personality traits and address the underlying issues affecting their performance.