Balance of personalities in a Dev team

Question

I am sure many of us have worked in teams where the teams have a different balance of personalities. Generally I think that having a diverse team is good. If people are too alike they tend to make the same mistakes. Some teams I have worked in have gelled well and worked well together, other times it has been very fraught. I couldn't easily tell what specifically made one work and the other not.

How to you evaluate the balance of personalities in your team? And how to you evaluate how candidates will fit in? Are there personality types to avoid? Is there a good reference for me to learn about such things?

Answer 1

Myers-Briggs Type Indicators are good metrics of personalities. It evaluates a personality in terms of Intro/Extrovertedness, Sensory/Intuitive, Thinking/Feeling and Perceiving/Judging. The important thing when evaluating personalities by the Myers-Briggs method is never "which ones work well together" - it's in understanding each other's personality types, and working around that. Simply knowing that your co-worker is Introverted while you are extroverted helps you understand why they may be behaving as they are - and helps you use their unique gifts and abilities.

Answer 2

belbin can be used to make sure you have a balance of thinkers and doers

to summarise from wikipedia they split perosnalities down to the following:

Plant

Plants are creative, unorthodox and a generator of ideas.

Resource Investigator

The Resource Investigator gives a team a rush of enthusiasm at the start of the project by vigorously pursuing contacts and opportunities.

Coordinator

A Coordinator often becomes the default chairperson of a team, stepping back to see the big picture.

Shaper

The shaper is a task-focused leader who abounds in nervous energy, who has a high motivation to achieve and for whom winning is the name of the game.

Monitor Evaluator

Monitor Evaluators are fair and logical observers and judges of what is going on.

Teamworker

A Teamworker is the greasy oil between the cogs that keeps the machine that is the team running.

Implementer

The Implementer takes what the other roles have suggested or asked, and turns their ideas into positive action.

Completer Finisher

The Completer Finisher is a perfectionist and will often go the extra mile to make sure everything is "just right," and the things he or she delivers can be trusted to have been double-checked and then checked again.

Specialist

Specialists are passionate about learning in their own particular field.

Answer 3

Belbin has studied different personalities in a team. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belbin_Team_Inventory

Answer 4

A good starting place would be to look at development team models. I've seen the surgeon approach work pretty well a couple of times, although it tends to end up a little like an episode of house, the others on the team have to be flexible enough to put up with the uber-ego of the surgeon.

A few personality traits to avoid, are

1) Clock watcher, who is there for the requisite hours, but doesn't really do much more than use oxygen and waste food.

2) The ultra critic, who has seen every problem and solved it better at their last job

In the many teams I've worked for the ones that have gelled well, and done impossible things (before breakfast naturally), have all had a good leader, and that isn't necessarily a technical role. Asssuming you have good technical people you need someone to provide direction, and identify what's a problem, what's a crisis, and what's noise.

Answer 5

Each and every person in a team is different. The probability of you getting along with the person having similar personality (behavior) is 50%.

To evaluate any person in your team, just try to see things between you and him/her from the point of view of a third person. This will help you in getting as unbiased conclusion of the evaluation.

Are there personality types to avoid? : Well i will say if a person is good at work , personality should not affect. Until unless you can get your work done from him/her , no need to avoid any one [:-)]

Good Reference : I agree with tuinstoel on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belbin_Team_Inventory

Answer 6

It's not just the internal team or the leadership but the challenges the team face. If you can keep them focussed on the end goal and the challenge to reach that goal then the team should be given the responsibility to attain it as well. The role of the team leader becomes, apparently, secondary to the appearance of a perfectly working team.

I find that personalities which appear invaluable, for example the stickler, who have the natural benefits of creating reliable output and good review of other peoples work but have the downside of being naturally pessimistic to change. However the people with more laid back personalities who may get in late or are not as perfect in their code will also be more accepting of change and look at it with fresh eyes. As long as the leader creates ground rules and keeps the ball rolling, the specific personality type should never be a problem for creating a good team.

You should never be disappointed if a team does not gel but rather approach it as a challenge to be worked on.

Anyway, not sure if this helps.