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The executive team at Medita Holdings was overstretched. Leaders struggled to decide where to focus their attention — and the company’s shrinking resources — across a patchwork of unrelated ventures. Rivals were pursuing growth opportunities and creating new partnerships, but Medita had stalled.1
During team meetings, leaders were fully engaged and appeared to get along well. But the head of HR had noticed that leaders tended to engage in unproductive discussions, such as questioning earlier decisions without resolving any of the issues they raised, or allowing conversations to drift away from the topic at hand. She began to suspect that the core problem was not the strategy at all. Was the CEO a weak leader? Or was there some other explanation for the team’s chronic inability to focus and follow through?
It turned out that the endless debates sprang from a personality trait the group had in common: strong intellectual curiosity. When teammates struggle to collaborate and make decisions, their behavior can often be traced to similarities and differences in their personalities.
But systematically paying attention to how different personality types affect how teams interact and perform is rare. In fact, the structure and work processes of modern teams make it harder for teammates to get to know one another well and build rapport. Companies increasingly form ad hoc teams as new challenges and opportunities arise. Virtual meetings, now routine, tend to be task-focused and offer few opportunities for team members to connect on a personal level. In this context, “slogging your way to a better relationship with colleagues” through trial and error is painful and inefficient, as Ian Roberts, the CTO at Swiss plant equipment manufacturer Bühler, told us.
Over eight years of working with thousands of executives on hundreds of teams, we developed a way to improve team dynamics more easily using a familiar tool: a personality assessment. Specifically, we used the widely studied and accepted Big Five personality test to help reveal the psychological differences that can sap collaboration and team productivity. The assessment highlights individual differences in how people think, act, and feel across 30 personality traits in five broad dimensions: need for stability, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. This framework has dominated personality research because of its high validity and robustness over time.2 (See “The Research.”)
The advantage of using personality assessments as diagnostic tools is that they open up rich conversations. Through facilitated discussions, participants can connect their collective personality traits with team tensions or difficulties — whether latent or overt — and defuse them in the process. And for newly formed teams, the same exercise can provide insights that accelerate cohesion. Whether team members collaborate effectively is often rooted in their ability to work through, accept, and capitalize on their differences.
Know Your Team DNA
When we consulted with Medita Holdings, we suspected that the reasons for executives’ indecisiveness went deeper than weak leadership. To develop a more rounded picture of the team dynamics, we read the most recent 360-degree feedback team members had received, interviewed them individually, and asked each of them to complete a personality assessment. We evaluated this information to determine whether their self-perceptions matched how their colleagues saw them and to identify personality traits that might not be apparent to themselves or others.
Next, we set up a workshop to discuss the results. To prepare, we plotted the personality scores of the five team members, plus the leader, on a single sheet of paper, like constellations. We used a different color for each person but did not identify them by name. The illustration revealed the traits where team personality preferences strongly clustered or diverged, giving participants a sense of what we refer to as the team DNA. Each pattern carries risks and benefits. (See “Visualizing Team DNA.”)
Take extraversion, for example. When a team clusters at the low end of this dimension, their discussions tend to remain structured and everyone is likely to be heard. But their meetings may lack energy. Conversely, when a team clusters at the high end, members may enjoy lively interaction, but they may talk over one another and listen less. Further, when a team is split across the extraversion spectrum, it can potentially combine reflection with action. But the team may struggle with tension between the quieter and more outspoken subgroups, who might see each other as passive or domineering.
The Medita team DNA plot revealed a striking cluster at the high end of the intellectual curiosity continuum, indicating that the team members were extremely open to exploring new ideas. Observing a lower-scoring outlier on every trait related to agreeableness initially (and naturally) prompted them to speculate about who it was. But as we delved more deeply into the specific traits within each dimension, they turned to discussing the challenges for this still-anonymous individual. They recognized, for example, that their colleague might grow exhausted in their role as the lone challenger of the consensus and stop participating. As one team member put it, “You begin to sound like a broken record.”
Further, we explored how individuals scoring very high or low on specific traits may help the team. Participants noted that their colleagues who scored low on conscientiousness may be more flexible when business objectives shifted and that those who scored highly on anxiety may be quicker to detect emerging risks.
Once a team has explored its dynamics in the abstract, we consider revealing individuals’ identities — provided that the members all agree to it. When a team opts for disclosure, the facilitator must invest more time upfront setting the ground rules and boundaries for a respectful discussion. Concealing and revealing people’s identities can both generate rich insights, as the examples that follow show.
Three Patterns to Look for
Once the team understands its profile, members can reflect on the implications of the most extreme patterns — specifically, which perspectives they might be overlooking and where they can expect disagreements.
Three patterns warrant particular attention: a skewed cluster, where scores are tightly grouped at one extreme; a dispersed distribution, where the team diverges widely on one trait; and a grouping with a strong outlier. Left unmanaged, these configurations can create blind spots or tensions, leading to three traps that can derail teams.
1. The like-mindedness trap. The Medita team was proud to see that every member scored high on intellectual curiosity, feeling that it reflected intelligence, creativity, and a learning orientation. But when we started probing the consequences of their collective openness to ideas as indicated by the skewed cluster, they realized that it was the source of their core problem: their frequent digressions and endless discussions.
There was no one to counter their exploration of any decision. “Each new comment opens a Pandora’s box,” noted the CEO. “It’s sometimes impossible to just put a full stop on one item and move on to the next agenda point.”
Because leaders choose team members with qualities they especially value in followers, they may inadvertently drive that convergence of scores. But like-mindedness can lead to blind spots that are difficult to detect until the team fails to make decisions or makes poor ones. The blind spot for the Medita team was members’ inability to see when their free-ranging discussions became unproductive. After surfacing this missing factor, the team designated a rotating “focus keeper,” whose role was to signal when the conversation drifted and get them back on track.
2. The synergy trap. On some teams, personalities may be polarized, with two or more people scoring at opposite extremes for a specific trait. These widely dispersed distributions reveal a potential for synergy, where better decisions arise from integrating diverse perspectives. But that does not occur automatically. As long as personality differences remain unexplored, they are hazardous. Diverging on a single trait can create irritations that ruin relationships and ripple through the team rather than bringing people together. The group may fragment, and its performance may decline. In the worst cases, polarization leads to conflict and turnover.
In a Nordic food processing company we advised, the top team was perturbed by tension between the two most powerful figures below the CEO: the chief strategy officer (CSO) and the CFO. The distress call we received from the CEO went something like “Please do something before I fire them both! They are killing our team meetings.”
When we looked at their personality profiles and listened to how each executive viewed their relationship, a plausible explanation for their tension quickly emerged. The CSO had a high score for gregariousness, while the CFO’s same score was low. “I can’t stand his constant talking,” the CFO told us. “He thinks out loud, and whenever there is a small thing to say, he wants to meet.” From the CSO’s perspective, the CFO was “secretive” and “unwilling to share” because he was often silent and unresponsive. “He just wants to make decisions on his own,” the CSO complained. Their simmering frustrations seeped into team meetings, where the pair pointedly avoided eye contact or direct exchanges. The discomfort radiated outward, dividing colleagues and putting everyone on edge.
Simply pinpointing the source of their differences was a revelation. They pledged to stop venting about each other to colleagues, and they chose to focus instead on their similarities — notably, their high conscientiousness scores. They were both strongly motivated to achieve their goals and confident in their abilities.
A whole team can be polarized too, which can lead to a deep fault line. This happened at a European engineering company. The board chair called us in after informal chats with members of the top team led him to conclude that some executives were disengaged and at risk of leaving.
Another board member described the problem to us. “Everything gets decided by the CEO and these two people,” she said. “It’s like the other four have nothing to contribute.” Worse, she sensed that the CEO’s two “lieutenants” were not the most capable members of the team.
The CEO’s extremely low score on measures of moodiness indicated that he maintained a consistently positive outlook, which cleared the way for broaching this issue. He described himself to us as an incurable optimist, and his favorite team members’ mood scores most closely matched his. The rest of the team was loosely grouped at the higher end of the mood scale, meaning they tended to be more measured in their outlook.
Pointing out the CEO’s fixation on positive energy enabled us to discuss his unconscious bias against the four less upbeat team members and the risks of unchecked optimism. It also clarified why the four seemed increasingly disengaged. He had assumed that their withdrawal had led him to favor the other two team members, but in reality, the four participated less because he favored the other two. Recognizing this helped the CEO to appreciate their value as counterweights to his exuberance and led him to plan an offsite to reset the relationships.
3. The outlier trap. Teams fall into the third trap when the entire team is unified on a single trait except for one extreme outlier. This outlier may be ignored or dominate the team, in both cases preventing the group from making full use of its competencies.
In the first scenario, the outlier’s dissenting voice, though valuable, is disregarded by the rest of the team. Consider the case of a self-managed project team struggling to make progress on a strategic consulting task. After we debriefed each individual on their personality profile, we asked the group to articulate some rules of engagement and explore their team dynamics without a facilitator. (We wanted to see whether teams could run the exercise themselves; we talk more about that below.)
They quickly homed in on their starkest differences and figured out how they affected their interactions. All of the team members were working on the project alongside their usual responsibilities, and they clashed repeatedly over how often to meet. One person insisted on frequent and regular meetings. The more she pushed, the more they resisted, dismissing her as a “pain” and exacerbating her frustration.
“And this is why,” they said, pointing to their scores for conscientiousness. While most of the team had scored somewhere in the middle on this set of traits, the woman who wanted more meetings had scored extremely high on both achievement-striving (that is, focus on reaching her goals) and self-discipline.
This insight helped them all realize the source of her deep concern about scheduling and progress. They came up with a compromise that they could all commit to: Instead of scheduling more meetings, they would hold brief end-of-week check-ins to stay aligned.
Beyond ignoring the “odd one out,” the team can also become “odd one led,” notably when the outlier is either the formal leader or the opinion leader in the group.
Take the case of a high-profile but underperforming European opera house. To turn it around, the board had appointed a former accountant as director general. While the new director general brought commercial discipline to the operation, the opera house’s artistic productions continued to underwhelm critics and audiences. The four-person executive team seemed unable to break the cycle of turnover among directors, designers, and performers.
Interviews with members of the executive committee and other senior leaders revealed that the director general had reinforced the existing siloes between the artistic and commercial functions and that the financial focus had come to dominate their discussions.
The personality profiles of the four top executives revealed that the director general had a strikingly low score on adventurousness, whereas the scores for the rest of the team were bunched in the middle. The director general’s preference for the habitual seemed to curtail efforts by the rest of the team to introduce new thinking and explore how other performing arts venues were reviving their fortunes.
His score opened a wide-ranging discussion about the opera house’s need for fresh ideas. Later, the executive team was restructured to include the artistic side of the organization, giving it a greater voice in decisions.
Although it’s too early to know whether those steps will improve the opera house’s financial and artistic health, the changes have reduced frustration within the organization and brought forward some fresh initiatives.
The Ultimate Icebreaker
Personality is not the sole cause of team dysfunction and tension, but it plays a significant role. It is a guaranteed differentiator, even in the most homogeneous teams. This makes a workshop focused on personality types a rich and intriguing entry point for discussing team dynamics.
“Talking about personality kicks off conversations and lets us see each other’s struggles and underused superpowers,” Medita Holdings’ head of HR said. She noted that extreme scores might not surprise anyone but that discussing them candidly enables participants to find value in traits they otherwise see as frustrating.
Further, many executives have experience using the Big Five personality test for their personal development, so they understand what they can learn from it. The International Personality Item Pool (IPIP) is a free, open-source version of the instrument that includes a comprehensive report explaining the scores and the option to plot comparison charts. Additionally, the IPIP can be adapted freely and does not need to be administered by a certified facilitator.3
Debriefing the exercise is straightforward for any facilitator, coach, or consultant who is familiar with Big Five assessments and can set and enforce behavioral boundaries, help teams reflect, and keep discussions on track. The team does most of the work, by identifying the dimensions where they struggle or that resonate most with them.
Team leaders can facilitate the process themselves, role-modeling and enforcing the behaviors required for an open discussion. To succeed with this approach, however, they should disclose their own personality assessments and participate in the discussion, as happened with the self-facilitated project team mentioned earlier. Disclosure allows team members to question the leader’s preferences and blind spots, connect their insights to observed behavior, and make practical adjustments.
However, even when team leaders are willing to share their assessments, other team members may hesitate, concerned that revealing their own preferences will expose them to judgment or misinterpretation. For this reason, the exercise often works best when facilitated by someone from outside the group who can credibly reassure participants about the purpose and process of the discussion. It can take time to grasp that there are no “bad” profiles and that individuals can safely reveal their identities. An external facilitator can also point out dynamics involving the leader without triggering defensiveness.
Before starting the exercise, the facilitator must lay the groundwork to help participants cocreate the rules for interaction, understand the payoff, and buy into the process. A half-day session allows for this preparation plus two or three hours of discussion and reflection. It is important not to rush any step, so that everyone has a chance to contribute. Researchers find that conversational turn-taking boosts psychological safety and team performance.4 (See “Guidelines for a Productive Discussion.”)
Mutual agreement on the ground rules creates clarity and trust by addressing three key questions: (1) What will be important to achieve in this conversation? (2) What topics or behaviors are off-limits? and (3) How will we call out unacceptable behavior? Facilitators can foster candid and respectful discussions by requiring participants to focus on a common goal, disagree respectfully, stick to facts and evidence, acknowledge their biases and knowledge gaps, and ensure that everyone has a voice.5
Teams do not need to wait for problems to arise to engage in the process. We know a couple of leaders who shared their personality profiles unilaterally with teams they had inherited, to help their new followers adapt faster to their quirks and leadership styles. Inspired by this proactive approach, we expanded our research to new teams and teams with new leaders. We found that personality assessments can help them jell more quickly.
Using this exercise when team members first begin working together has several benefits. It provides them with a common vocabulary to talk about their individual and collective strengths, sensitizes them to the limits of those strengths, and highlights the potential value of having contributors with unusual traits. More broadly, it jump-starts team collaboration by getting colleagues used to disclosure, information sharing, and mutual respect.
After we ran this exercise with the top team at a French fintech group and an internal coach, they decided that the entire staff would take the Big Five personality assessment to prepare them for joining any new team. “Discussing hidden differences as a team … changed our view of colleagues and the way we talked to each other,” the CEO said. “It saved a lot of time and misunderstandings.”
Reducing the Guesswork in Teamwork
Whether the aim is to fix problems or prevent them, comparing personality assessments benefits individuals and their teams. Enhanced self-awareness makes people better team players, while team awareness improves group interaction.
Even if someone has received personality feedback before, when they compare their results with those of their teammates, they see how distinctive they are. Enhanced self-awareness enables individuals to better recognize how their traits work for or against them in different situations.
For example, a Danish business leader we coached scored lower than he expected on altruism — specifically, on his consideration for others. Yet, as an accomplished manager, he knew that he had to take care of the people on this team. Because he lacked the intuition to guide his interactions, he developed a habit of checking in regularly with his direct reports. As a result, they viewed him as considerate of their needs, despite his underlying self-absorption.
Although it’s difficult for people to modify their traits, anyone can stretch their repertoire of behaviors, as the Danish leader did. Individuals can develop routines to keep their traits in check, such as resolving to speak last if they score high on assertiveness and tend to dominate conversations.
Another option is to find others with complementary profiles. For example, in a Financial Times interview when he was CEO of VMware, Paul Maritz was candid about his Achilles’ heel. “I don’t like confrontation,” he said. “I need other people to keep me honest on that front.” He appointed an “enforcer” to his team to keep him focused on tough decisions he might otherwise dodge.6
Self-awareness is only half the battle, however. Realizing that colleagues have different ways of thinking, doing, and feeling is the other half. The team DNA chart highlights areas where the entire team needs to be vigilant. A team that is aware of its collective tendencies can take steps to compensate for its potential vulnerabilities.
In one exercise, the CTO of a watch manufacturer was surprised to see that the entire team, including himself, had midrange scores on imagination. He had perceived himself as highly innovative, but when he challenged the validity of the results, his team members disagreed. “No, you have initiative,” a colleague said. “But that’s different from innovation. You start things, and you give some impulse, but then your ideas are not … .” The sentence trailed off.
That feedback was tough for the CTO to take, because he oversaw innovation. But it prompted an overdue discussion about how the company could resuscitate its innovation capability and get out of its slump.
With teams in a state of constant flux, leaders need better tools to bring new members up to speed, facilitate productive exchanges, and quickly create rapport. As the chief operating officer of Medita Holdings observed, “They’ll find out about each other anyhow. May as well do it upfront” while establishing principles and good habits for communication.
Exposure to the range of personality differences within a team helps executives better understand where colleagues are coming from. It makes it easier to value and solicit their input and to anticipate their quirky reactions. Antagonists come to realize that a teammate’s thinking is not stubborn or wayward but predictably different — and they can stop taking the opposition personally.
Paradoxically, knowing colleagues’ personality traits depersonalizes discussions. Above all, it boosts people’s appreciation for what each party can bring to the table. As Maritz memorably observed, “Really great teams have team members who know who they are and who they’re not, and they know when to get out of the way and let the other team members make their contribution.”7