Uwe Schirmer

Cross-functional teams have all competencies needed to accomplish the work without depending on others not part of the team.

The preceding quote from the Scrum Guide is often interpreted as meaning, “Have all the skills needed to technically accomplish the work.”

As a consequence, staffing people for a project is often done by only focusing on availability and skills. The impact of the individuals’ personalities on the success of the team is easily ignored, as are other factors that affect how a team works and the outcomes they produce:

• Do they have a shared vision and purpose?

• Are they empowered to do what must be done?

• How is the quality of collaboration and interaction in the team?

The intensity and quality of interaction between team members is important for the interpersonal relationships that the team members develop. It reflects whether the team behaves as a whole, which is crucial for the overall performance of the team.

The intensity and quality of interaction between team members depends on the personalities of the individuals and on the mix and compatibility of the personalities within the team, more than on their collected technical skills.

People who are accountable for building teams often acknowledge this and subsequently aim for the perfect team composition. They categorize potential team members into personality types using assessment methods like Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), DISC, Life Orientation (LIFO), Hermann Brain Dominance Index (HBDI), or Insights Discovery.

One interesting fact about all these assessment methods is that they typically use four personality types. This can indeed be used to better understand the behavior of individuals in a team and what drives and motivates them. But you cannot use them to construct a high-performance team at the drawing board. There is simply no recipe for building teams like there is for cooking a meal. No single person perfectly matches one personality type, not to mention that the interdependence between personalities is too complex to be planned.

The personality of a person is not fixed either. People show slightly different personalities in different environments. Even within the same environment, personality may change over time as experience and specific insights grow.

Assessment methods may help to better understand the behavior and needs of the individuals in your teams. However, how effective a team is in a certain composition depends on the work the team has to perform, how much interaction is required for that work, and the intensity and quality of the interaction. What kind of interaction is needed might be different for planning activities, for creative work, or for decision making, and it takes a different mix of personalities in a team to achieve the best performance for each of these tasks. There is no way to optimize for each individual type of work a team needs to perform, and team composition cannot be changed for each and every task. Both approaches will undermine team cohesion and stability, negatively affecting overall team performance and team outcomes.

So, the next time you staff new teams or change an existing team, take more into account than just availability, technical skills, and rigid personality assessments. Try to understand what personalities best fit into your team depending on their context. And, above all, take it to the team. You will feel the difference.