The influence of personality and ability on undergraduate teamwork and team performance

Abstract

The ability to work effectively on a team is highly valued by employers, and collaboration among students can lead to intrinsic motivation, increased persistence, and greater transferability of skills. Moreover, innovation often arises from multidisciplinary teamwork. The influence of personality and ability on undergraduate teamwork and performance is not comprehensively understood. An investigation was undertaken to explore correlations between team outcomes, personality measures and ability in an undergraduate population. Team outcomes included various self-, peer- and instructor ratings of skills, performance, and experience. Personality measures and ability involved the Five-Factor Model personality traits and GPA. Personality, GPA, and teamwork survey data, as well as instructor evaluations were collected from upper division team project courses in engineering, business, political science, and industrial design at a large public university. Characteristics of a multidisciplinary student team project were briefly examined. Personality, in terms of extraversion scores, was positively correlated with instructors’ assessment of team performance in terms of oral and written presentation scores, which is consistent with prior research. Other correlations to instructor-, students’ self- and peer-ratings were revealed and merit further study. The findings in this study can be used to understand important influences on successful teamwork, teamwork instruction and intervention and to understand the design of effective curricula in this area moving forward.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/2193-1801-2-16) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

A Team Formation Framework for Managing Diversity in Multidisciplinary Engineering Project

“…Previous studies found that graduate engineering and business student teams diverse in openness exhibited more creativity on their innovation management class project [2]. The gender diversity of the team can affect how team members interact with one another, thereby affecting the performance of that team.…”

“…Knowledge of team member's personality types helps to understand team member behavior, managing the dynamics of the team and to know how team members interact well in a group setting to accomplish the task [35]. Previous studies found correlations between individual personality and performance on a team [2] [11]. Differences in personality type of the members on a team have the potential to improve team effectiveness by increasing diversity of perspectives and behaviors [11].…”

“…On the other hand, when members of a team do not collaborate together well, conflict, uncertainty, and an inability to achieve tasks goal can result, even when individual team members are highly qualified [1]. Multidisciplinary approach in teamwork often creates more innovation [2] and may achieve higher levels of performance on a team project [1]. Hence, to maximize effectiveness, teams should be balanced and comprised of diverse student characteristics rather than uniform [3].…”

“…Previous studies found that diversity in a team does not always increase a team's performance [2]. So to form a balanced and diverse team, members selection for a project should be done carefully [2], [4].…”

“…So to form a balanced and diverse team, members selection for a project should be done carefully [2], [4]. A number of team effectiveness models or frameworks have been developed and empirically tested by adopting input-processoutput (I-P-O) framework in earlier studies.…”