The Use of Personality Assessment in Team Decisions

[GeeTwo]

Dan,
Do you plan to use the assessment as a tool in selecting members to the drive team (which seems to be what you’re saying in the title of the thread), or just to help manage communications and motivation once you’ve selected drive team members? If the former, which personality types would you align to which of the drive team roles, and why? (The four common drive team roles seem to be Coach, Driver, Operator/Gunner/Navigator/Copilot, and Human Player).

[MysterE]

I don’t think that I would use it as a primary form of choice but rather as another tool to help inform decisions. Really, I’m more interested to see how the students react to their own scores in terms of themselves as drivers.

[Sperkowsky]

@Govind Girish

Our team does this exact test (the 16 personalities test) every year just for fun. I am the team captain, and I do associate team members with their personalities. It has helped me communicate better and understand where team members are coming from. The key word here is helped. Its mainly a personal fascination and not something the entire team spends a lot of time thinking about.

It is creepy how accurate the personalities are.

I am an ESFJ.

Most of the members on my team are INTPs, which is the exact opposite of me.

Funny how I noticed all of the people who said they were ESFJ, were team leaders.

[AriMB]

@Sperkowsky

Funny how I noticed all of the people who said they were ESFJ, were team leaders.

…but not all of the team leaders are ESFJ. I am my team’s captain and I’m very much ISTJ. Introverts can be good leaders too, we just lead differently.

[Ali_Ahmed]

Last year Team 4 the personality test as a guide for our Big Gear, Little Gear program. We would have each student take the test then paired upperclassmen with compatible lowerclassmen. It worked similar to a Big Brother/Sister Little Brother/Sister program. It worked out pretty well except for the fact that we had way more lowerclassmen than upperclassmen so each Big Gear had 2-4 Little Gears. That ratio is not conducive to a mentoring relationship. This year we plan on having more of a one-on-one relationship.

[Taylor]

@carpedav000

ENTP type for me. My favorite actor (Rowan Atkinson) is an ENTP, which is pretty cool. Would you mind explaining what team roles best suit each type?

@Abhishek R

Which brings a tangential question; what is the breakdown of team roles by personality type (ie drive team, pit crew, PR, scouting, leadership, etc)?

I’m depositing these questions from a separate thread here. As you were.

[Jack_O]

To respond to Abishek’s question, I am an ISFJ. I usually take the test once or twice a year just for the fun of it. However, I do find that ISFJ is about 97% accurate at describing me.
I’ve been involved with FIRST for about seven years now. For six of those years I was in charge of scouting. I just found it fascinating, and loved trying to figure the best way to find the optimum combination for an alliance.

[Jessica_Boucher]

ENTP here.

Maybe not for the students, but I would also recommend the Appreciation at Work assessment (http://www.appreciationatwork.com/). You have to pay for the work-focused assessment, but you can take its sister assessment, The 5 Love Languages, for free: http://www.5lovelanguages.com/.

I use both of these to share with people who work with me (or that I’m seeing) so they don’t have to guess as to how to make me feel appreciated.

[Abhishek_R]

@Jack_O

To respond to Abishek’s question, I am an ISFJ. I usually take the test once or twice a year just for the fun of it. However, I do find that ISFJ is about 97% accurate at describing me.
I’ve been involved with FIRST for about seven years now. For six of those years I was in charge of scouting. I just found it fascinating, and loved trying to figure the best way to find the optimum combination for an alliance.

Interesting. I always loved scouting as well, and I’m an ENFP.

Maybe I’ll make some kind of Google form and collect data on personality vs team role (unless some fellow CD’er wants to do that already).

[josephus]

Personality tests, even ones published by psychologists and widely used in business, are notorious for being at worst scams and at best generic and unreliable. Especially if you are using it for drive team selection and your team knows this, the test will simply turn into a competition for who can best mimic the answers of your desired candidates. If you use the test results for general assessment you may find unnecessary grouping that may contribute to the division along test results of your team. Personality test results are often no more than fortune cookies handed to you by someone in a lab coat. I would recommend a look at Forer’s Fallacy of Personal Validation. I would recommend against the use of personality tests on your team.

[D.Allred]

@MysterE

I don’t think that I would use it as a primary form of choice but rather as another tool to help inform decisions. Really, I’m more interested to see how the students react to their own scores in terms of themselves as drivers.

Could you provide some examples of how you would use these tests to make an informed decision?

@josephus

Personality tests, even ones published by psychologists and widely used in business, are notorious for being at worst scams and at best generic and unreliable. Especially if you are using it for drive team selection and your team knows this, the test will simply turn into a competition for who can best mimic the answers of your desired candidates. If you use the test results for general assessment you may find unnecessary grouping that may contribute to the division along test results of your team. Personality test results are often no more than fortune cookies handed to you by someone in a lab coat. I would recommend a look at Forer’s Fallacy of Personal Validation. I would recommend against the use of personality tests on your team.

I think these tests have some validity but agree with you conclusion. Personality tests may provide some insight but should not be used for decision making, especially for team roles. To me, motivation, drive, and maturity are much more important selection criteria.

Furthermore, personality traits may help you determine what you like, but that doesn’t mean you would be bad at a job that’s not a direct “match” to your a personality.

David

[abigailthefox]

I did a research project on the reliability and validity of the MBTI for a science symposium in my community. My results indicate that the MBTI was not very reliable, and should not be used for anything other than a fun self-assessment. Please, do your team members a favor and don’t use this to make any kind of decision. Maybe don’t use it en masse at all, because once you associate a trait with a person, those preconceptions can be hard to shake. I understand that it’s fun and all, but people are complex human beings who deserve to be treated as such.

Addendum: I can share my research if anyone is interested, as well as research by others in psychology (mine may be of limited usefulness due to sample size limitations)

[smitikshah]

@abigailthefox

My results indicate that the MBTI was not very reliable, and should not be used for anything other than a fun self-assessment. Please, do your team members a favor and don’t use this to make any kind of decision.

Addendum: I can share my research if anyone is interested, as well as research by others in psychology (mine may be of limited usefulness due to sample size limitations)

I would love to see the data and research. My question is how did you analyze the data and what significance value did you use?