The worst thing about teams

2 min. read

If you’re looking for ways to improve team performance, check the results and recommendations from these two new pieces of research by The Myers-Briggs Company:

• Type, Teams, and Team Performance
• Type, Teams, and Job Satisfaction (using data from MBTIonline Teams)

In this blog, we share some top-level findings from Type, Teams, and Team Performance.

The best and worst things about teams

Respondents were asked what the best and worst things about their team were. The top three best things were:

1. Feeling valued and supported.
2. Achievement, high performance, motivating.
3. Collaboration, sharing, openness.

The top three responses to the worst things about being on a team were:

1. Poor leadership.
2. Nothing, no negatives.
3. Lack of resources, high workload.

Download the research to see the full range of responses on pages 32–33.

Satisfaction and intention to leave

The research makes the following conclusions:

• There is a strong relationship between satisfaction and team performance.
• If a person feels that the team is performing well, their satisfaction is higher.
• There is a correlation between satisfaction and the team leader's performance.

The message for employers is that focusing on job satisfaction—that is, how happy and fulfilled employees are—is likely to have a positive effect on both performance and retention. An understanding of personality type can help with this.

Unsurprisingly, people with lower satisfaction said they were more likely to want to leave their job.

Generally, it’s younger people who tend to report lower levels of job satisfaction. Entry-level employees report the least satisfaction of all those surveyed, while executives and senior management report the highest levels of satisfaction.

Personality type and team performance

The research also explores the relationships between MBTI type and team performance, including:

• Whether individual type has an impact on team type (or vice versa).
• Which types tend to be more satisfied at work.

Extraversion/Introversion differences between an individual and the leader can negatively affect the individual’s perception of team performance. This is likely to reduce job satisfaction.

If leaders learn to flex their preferences, this could have a positive impact on the satisfaction and performance of team members with opposite E–I preferences.

For the complete findings, summaries, and recommendations, download the reports below.

• Type, Teams, and Team Performance
• Type, Teams, and Job Satisfaction (using data from MBTIonline Teams)

Want more resources to improve team performance? Try these:

• Psychology of Teams ebook
• Connecting with the People You Lead podcast with Dr Martin Boult