What makes a good team player? Personality and team effectiveness

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264 DRISKELL, GOODWIN, SALAS, AND O’SHEAThere are several general conclusions thatcan be drawn regarding team member personalityas elaborated in this model. First, at ageneral level, this model is consistent with existingresearch on personality and team effectiveness.The higher-level traits of emotionalstability, extraversion, openness, agreeableness,and conscientiousness have all been related toteam effectiveness at a broad level (cf. Barricket al., 1998; Barry & Stewart, 1997; Hollenbecket al., 2002; LePine et al., 1997; Neuman &Wright, 1999). However, as we noted previously,we do not know based on existing researchif any purported relationship between,for example, conscientiousness and team effectivenessmay be attributable to the dependabilitycomponent of conscientiousness (i.e., goodteam players are reliable) or to the achievementcomponent of conscientiousness (i.e., goodteam players are hardworking). Accordingly,we extended our examination of personality andteam performance to incorporate specific personalityfacets that we believe are related toteam effectiveness, and to incorporate specificdimensions of teamwork. We have defined onefacet, dominance, by its negative pole, becauseresearch suggests that those who are dominantand controlling can be an anathema to interdependentteam interaction (Driskell & Salas,1992; Driskell et al., 1993). However, the teammember facets that are predicted to be criticalacross all teamwork dimensions are adjustmentand flexibility. We concur with Barrick andMount (2001) that adjustment is fundamentallyimportant to interdependent interaction, and weconcur with Hackman and Morris (1978) thatflexibility is virtually universally advantageous.There are several facets, such as self-esteem ordutifulness, that are predicted to affect a morenarrow range of teamwork activities. This doesnot imply that these facets are less important,just that their impact is more specific. Moreover,this greater specificity in describing personalityand team effectiveness allows us toexamine both the “bright side” and the “darkside” of personality—whereas affiliation mayhave a positive impact on maintaining interpersonalrelations in teams, it may have a negativeimpact on the more instrumental activities involvedin team management.Second, the predictions that are derived fromthis model, shown in Table 2, are clearly speculative.We have attempted to bring to bear theweight of existing research, but as Barry andStewart (1997) have noted, “relatively few studieshave empirically examined the role of personalitycharacteristics in task-oriented groups”(p. 65). Although recent research efforts haverectified this situation somewhat, we faced theadditional difficulty that very few existing researchstudies specify personality to the facetlevel and very few existing studies specify teameffectiveness to the teamwork dimensions level.Not surprisingly, we do not have a wealth ofdata to draw on. On the positive side, Table 2presents a framework that calls out for additionalresearch, and each of the relationshipsshown in Table 2 should be verified in furtherempirical studies.Third, the hierarchical model of team orientationshown in Figure 1 was derived by thedesire to specify the link between Big Fivepersonality traits and team effectiveness. Althoughthe higher level traits identified by variousBig Five models generally resemble oneanother, there are some distinctions among differentmodels. For example, Hogan (1986) haspresented a six-factor model of personality, separatingextraversion into separate traits of sociability(outgoing, affiliative) and ambition (surgency,dominance). Furthermore, as Lucas andDiener (2001) have noted, the facets that composethe higher-level traits often differ in differentmodels. For example, McCrae and Costa(1997) claim that flexibility/rigidity is related tothe higher-level trait of openness to experience;Hogan (1986) places flexibility within the higherlevelconscientiousness trait; whereas othersnote that rigidity may be related to neuroticismor poor adjustment (Mumford, Baughman,Threlfall, Uhlman, & Costanza, 1993). Judge,Martocchio, and Thoresen (1997) note thatsome facets load equally on several higherlevel traits. We are not able to resolve theseissues but have attempted to derive a model ofteam member personality that is consistent withexisting personality models.This approach further calls attention to theissue of trait bandwidth and the value of broadtraits versus narrow traits. Stewart (1999) hasstated that broad traits are applicable in severalcircumstances, including when the criterion itselfis broad or diffuse. However, Barrick et al.(2001) also have noted that sometimes a broadpredictor and a broad criterion can mask underlyingrelationships. For example, we posed the
PERSONALITY AND TEAM EFFECTIVENESS265question of whether conscientiousness may berelated to team performance in existing researchbecause of the lower-level facet of achievementor because of the lower-level facet of dependabilitythat both comprise conscientiousness inmany Big Five models. Narrow facets may allowmore accurate prediction when they theoreticallyalign with more specific behaviors, andBarrick et al. (2001); Schneider, Hough, andDunnette (1996); Dudley, Orvis, Lebiecki, andCortina (2006) and others have noted the valueof linking lower-level predictors with lowerlevelcriteria. Moreover, by defining the coreteamwork dimensions that underlie team performance,we are able to make informed hypothesesregarding the specific personality facets thatare predictive of these performance dimensions.At same time, our approach is limited in anumber of ways. Although the most current andinfluential formulation of individual differencesin personality is the Big Five trait approach thatwe have adopted, it is certainly not the onlyuseful model of personality, nor does it captureall there is to say about personality. We concurwith McAdams and Pals (2006), who note thatalthough the Big Five model is arguably themost recognizable contribution personality psychologyhas to offer, understanding personalityin a more finely grained sense requires goingbeyond the personality trait concept to includeother motivational, social–cognitive, and developmentalconcerns. Our approach, then, takesadvantage of the current body of empirical researchon traits within the Big Five framework,and at the same time is restricted by the narrowedfocus of the trait approach.We have attempted to address the question ofwhat type of person makes a good team player(or more specifically, what specific facets ofpersonality are relevant to specific teamworkdimensions). We assume, in general, that teammembers who possess these personality facetswill be more effective under specified conditionsthan those who do not. However, we havenot addressed the more complex question ofhow personality facets combine. For example,the impact of expressivity is likely to be considerablydifferent if coupled with high adjustmentthan if coupled with low adjustment(Friedman & Miller-Herringer, 1991). Furthermore,we have not addressed the more complexquestion of team composition, or how teammembers possessing specific personality facetscombine. There are several ways of operationalizingteam composition. An additive approachexamines the amount or average level of a traitamong team members; for example, LePine(2003) has argued that a team composed of toomany highly dependable members may exertundue pressure on those who offer alternativeviewpoints. A compensatory approach examinesthe heterogeneity or variability of traitsamong team members; for example, Barry andStewart (1997) have observed that finding benefitsof sociability at the individual team memberlevel does not necessarily argue for creatinga work team full of them. A disjunctive approachexamines the highest or lowest traitscore for the team; for example, Totterdell etal.’s (1998) work on mood linkage and negativeaffect suggests that having one team memberlow on adjustment can impact the entire group.Clearly, composition matters, and although wedo not address these issues in the current formulationof our model, questions of team compositionand heterogeneity are important andrequire further examination. Finally, we knowthat individual factors often interact with othergroup-level or structural factors to impact performance—infact, Hollenbeck et al. (2002)have proposed a person-team fit approach thatemphasizes the importance of task and organizationalfactors. For example, conscientiousnessmay be less relevant to team performanceto the extent that backup or compensatory behaviorsare institutionalized in task procedures.Nevertheless, we believe there is considerablevalue in developing a comprehensive model atthe individual team member level that can serveas a basis for further elaboration to addressthese and other related questions.In the model presented, we view the focalteam member as “one among equals.” In otherwords, the team setting we have specified is onein which each team member has specific expertiseuseful to the team, and the team has tointerdependently achieve a team outcome. Wehave described the core traits that we believedefine the effective team member, but not necessarilythe effective team leader. For example,we noted earlier that dominance may be problematicamong team members but useful in ateam leader role. Moreover, it is likely thateffective leadership may require dominance andaffiliation, among other traits. By anecdotal accounts,General George Patton was a high dom-
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