Personality is a major factor in team performance.
The Myers-Briggs Company's Type, Teams, and Team Performance report indicates that employees want to feel valued—and they do their best work when they feel that way. Of the survey's 883 respondents, the majority said that the top three best parts of being on a team are "feeling valued and supported," "achievement, high performance, motivating," and "collaboration, sharing, openness." At the other end of the spectrum, "poor leadership" was the worst thing about being on a team.
The Myers-Briggs Company uses the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator to determine the relationship between personalities and team performance. The MBTI assesses personalities using four scales: introversion-extraversion, sensing-intuition, thinking-feeling, and judging-perceiving.
Interestingly, personality type didn't relate to team performance, but the personality of the team—which companies determine via team members rating their team's characteristics and by each function's relation to individual personality type—did. For instance, "Those whose type matched the team type on Sensing-Intuition and Thinking-Feeling felt that their team performed more effectively," the report notes. "Those whose type was entirely different from that of the team had, on average, the least positive view of the team's performance."
Job satisfaction can also depend on personality type. According to Type, Teams, and Job Satisfaction, ENTJ (extraverted, intuitive, thinking, and judging) personality types had the highest levels of job satisfaction, with 92 percent "satisfied or very satisfied."
Conversely, INFJ (introverted, intuitive, feeling, and judging) and INFP (introverted, intuitive, feeling, and perceiving) personality types were the least satisfied. Despite each personality type registering more than 80 percent satisfied, three personality types—INFJ, ENFP, and INTP—each had 10 percent or more respondents indicating that they were "likely or very likely" to leave their companies.
The size of teams affects overall satisfaction as well. Teams with more than 12 people not only had lower levels of satisfaction, but team members were more likely to be contemplating leaving the company.
Both reports emphasize how vital leadership is regarding satisfaction and performance among employees.