Jeff Gainer's CRITICAL PATH
Team Dynamics
By Jeff Gainer
January 10, 1998
Jeff Gainer highlights the relationship between the Keirsey Temperament Sorter and Team Dynamics
It used to be that assembling an effective mix of personalities for a team
was more a matter of luck than management. You selected the individuals,
put them together, sat back, watched and hoped that the team would jell.
Ideally, leaders emerged, and followers followed them. With luck, good ideas
rose to the surface. Sometimes it all worked. Sometimes it didn’t work at
all. But usually, it was a matter of some things that worked, some that
didn’t work well, but there was always hindsight. You could look back and
decide how you would have restructured the team and some roles, if you had
only known the personalities involved.
Now, however, you have a tool available on the Web to help you and your team
better understand personality types and to help you more effectively structure
your team. The Keirsey Temperament Sorter:
http://www.keirsey.com/cgi-bin/keirsey/newkts.cgi
can be a useful tool for determining roles for IS teams. The 70-question
survey takes 20-25 minutes to complete, and like most personality tests, there
are no "right" or "wrong" answers, only highly open-ended questions. The test
questions are a simple either/or preference, but the options are so open to
individual interpretation that many require considerable thought before
choosing an answer.
Developed by psychologists David Keirsey http://keirsey.com/DWK.html and
Marilyn Bates, the survey identifies four main personality types and sixteen
subtypes. The four main types are the Rational, the Artisan, the Idealist, and
the Guardian.
Rational
The Rationals are strategists, dealing well with architectural or strategic
issues. Their strengths are abstract, but utilitarian. The sciences and
technology are populated with Rationals. Relatively rare, Rationals make up
only 5-7% of the population.
Artisan
Artisans are concrete and utilitarian, and are particularly adept at improving
existing designs or processes. Understandably, there are many Artisans in the
arts and entertainment industry, as well as business operations.
Idealist
Idealists are insightful, charismatic and enthusiastic. They are at their best
dealing with abstract concepts rather than concrete details. Idealists make
excellent motivational speakers, teachers, diplomats, and religious leaders.
Guardian
Cooperative, reliable, goal-oriented and concrete, Guardians are loyal,
conservative traditionalists. They are detail people who carry out specific
plans and instructions. The most common personality type, Guardians make up
40-45% of the population.
If you choose to employ the Keirsey Temperament Sorter, keep in mind that it
is only a rough indicator of personality, not a definitive test. Use it as a
supplement resource, not as a guide by itself.
I have found it useful for a team to take the survey as a group in the early
days of a project. Everyone means just that: developers, analysts, writers,
managers. Each person prints out his or her results, then the group meets to
compare notes. Even if you do not use the temperament sorter as an aid to
assigning team roles, it is helpful to understanding some of the meeting
dynamics you’ll encounter in the coming months.
Known in some circles as "Jeff the Evangelist," Jeff Gainer thinks and writes about the state of information technology and process improvement from his office in Colorado, aircraft cabins, and the back seats of Lincoln Town Cars and limousines. Mr. Gainer's latest musings appear in the January edition of Cutter IT Journal, where he discusses the possibilities of "The Coming Backlash: Twilight of the Gods?"
Copyright © 1998, Jeff Gainer, All Rights Reserved.
gainerj@jeffgainer.com
Jeff Gainer's Bio
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