What makes a good team player? Personality and team effectiveness

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250 DRISKELL, GOODWIN, SALAS, AND O’SHEAAlthough these results have demonstrated therelevance of team member personality to teameffectiveness, there are two ways in which wewish to extend this research. First, there arespecific, lower-level facets within the higherlevelBig Five traits that may have differing andeven contradictory effects on team performance.For example, it is unclear whether theeffect of extraversion on team performance observedby Barrick et al. (1998) stems from theeffect of the assertiveness/dominance componentof extraversion (i.e., extraverts are assertive)or from the sociability/affiliation componentof extraversion (i.e., extraverts are sociable).Thus, one goal of the current research is todefine specific personality facets within thehigher-level Big Five traits that are relevant toteam effectiveness.Second, we acknowledge that team performanceis multidimensional and that differentpersonality facets may be predictive of differentperformance dimensions. This position is consistentwith a person-team fit perspective (Hollenbecket al., 2002) that the relationship betweenindividual differences in personality andoutcomes is contingent on the nature of the task.Therefore, we argue that to examine the impactof personality on team effectiveness requiresthat not only do we provide more specificity interms of what we mean by personality, but alsoprovide more specificity in terms of what wemean by team effectiveness. More specifically,we claim that the effects of team member personalityon team effectiveness should be examinedin terms of what teams do. Researchershave identified core teamwork dimensions orteam functions that must be accomplishedwithin teams. These teamwork dimensions includeactivities such as team management (i.e.,directing and coordinating task activities), interpersonalrelations (i.e., resolving conflicts andmaintaining socioemotional relations), andadaptability (i.e., compensatory or backup behavior).Thus, it is quite likely that specificfacets of team member personality may havedifferential effects on these activities that underlieeffective team performance. For example,a team member that is highly sociable may bequite adept at maintaining good interpersonalrelations in teams, but not necessarily adept attask management and planning. Therefore, ourgoal is to define the specific personality facetsthat are relevant to team effectiveness and linkthese to the core teamwork dimensions thatdefine effective team performance.In the following, we first attempt to elaboratethe concept of a good team player by deriving ahierarchical model of team member personalitythat defines specific personality traits and facetsthat we believe are most relevant to team performance.We then present a classification ofthe core teamwork dimensions underlying effectiveteam performance. Finally, we derivepredictions linking team member personalityfacets to these teamwork requirements.What Defines a Good Team Player?We follow Ilgen (1999) in focusing on workteams—teams embedded in organizations thatexist to accomplish tasks. In a typical workteam, what Kozlowski, Gully, McHugh, Salas,and Cannon-Bowers (1996) call “action teams,”and what Hollenbeck et al. (1995) term “distributedexpertise teams,” each team member possessesspecific information or expertise to contributeto the team task. Although work teamsare often hierarchically structured, our focus ison the interdependent team member. Thus, ourinitial goal is to describe the traits or facets thatdefine the prototypical team player.Although there is some divergence on howpersonality traits should be labeled and organized,personality theorists are in general agreementon the nature of the structure of personality.Most theorists propose a hierarchical modelof personality, with broad higher-order factorsor traits that subsume and organize more specificlower-level facets (cf. Saucier & Ostendorf,1999). For example, the Big Five factormodel represents a broad set of traits that arethemselves a collection of many facets that havesomething in common. Whereas the broadhigher-level constructs offer an efficient andparsimonious way of describing personality, themore specific facets can offer higher fidelity oftrait descriptions and greater predictive validity(Saucier & Ostendorf, 1999; Stewart, 1999).Figure 1 presents a hierarchical model ofteam member personality, defined by the BigFive trait dimensions of emotional stability, extraversion,openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness.These traits are composed of themore specific facets that we believe are relevantto team effectiveness. In the following sections,we describe each facet and its relationship to
PERSONALITY AND TEAM EFFECTIVENESS251TeamworkEmotional Stability Extraversion Openness Agreeableness ConscientiousnessAdjustmentDominanceFlexibilityTrustDependabilitySelf-EsteemAffiliationCooperationDutifulnessSocialPerceptivenessAchievementExpressivityFigure 1.Hierarchical Model of Facets Related to Teamworkteam performance. In some cases, these facetsare linked to team performance through existingempirical research, and in other cases, we attemptto develop that connection based on arational extrapolation from related literature.This process is complicated somewhat by thefact that little research has been done on personalityand team performance at the facetlevel. Where appropriate, we note facets that aresimilar to the facets we have defined, drawnfrom existing personality inventories such asthe NEO-PI-R (Costa & McCrae, 1992), HoganPersonality Inventory (HPI; Hogan, 1986), thePersonal Characteristics Inventory (PCI;Mount, Barrick, Laffitte, & Callans, 1999), the16PF (Conn & Rieke, 1994), and the CaliforniaPersonality Inventory (CPI; Gough & Bradley,1996). Because there is no direct correspondencebetween measures from different scales,these comparisons are meant solely to be illustrative.Emotional StabilityThe trait of emotional stability refers to a lackof anxiety and nervous tendencies. Those whoare emotionally stable tend to be well-adjusted,calm, secure, and self-confident. Viewed fromthe negative pole of neuroticism, those whoscore low on this trait tend to be moody, anxious,paranoid, nervous, insecure, depressed,and high-strung (Barrick & Mount, 2001). Inpast studies of military teams, Haythorn (1953)and Greer (1955) reported that emotional stabilitywas positively related to team effectiveness.Several researchers have claimed thatemotional stability is a significant factor inteamwork or any task that requires coordinatedbehavior (Barrick, Mount, & Judge, 2001;Driskell et al., 1987; Mount, Barrack, & Stewart,1998). The facets of emotional stability thatwe believe are most relevant to team interactionare adjustment and self-esteem.Adjustment. Adjustment has been definedby Hogan (1986) as freedom from anxiety, depression,and somatic complaints. Watson,Clark, and Tellegen (1988) have viewed lack ofadjustment as negative affect, a general dimensionof subjective distress and unpleasurableengagement. Gunthert, Cohen, and Armeli(1999) described neurotic individuals as“caught in a web of negative behaviors, cognitions,and moods. . .They seem to experience(perhaps generate) more interpersonal stressors,their perceptions of daily events are more negative,and their coping choices are maladaptive”(p. 1099).Given that those low on adjustment are proneto be distressed, upset, hostile, irritable, andnervous, they are not likely to excel in interper-
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What makes a good team player? Personality and team effectiveness

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