Building Great Teams - Consider Skills, but Select on Personality

The Famous Five embark on another adventure...

As a child, I loved reading Enid Blyton's series of books about the Famous Five. 

It was evident, even at that age, that the team of Julian, Dick, George and Anne (OK, plus Timmy the dog) was something special. Of course, they always came through against the forces of evil, but not without the odd scare here and there.

Whilst I probably wasn't conscious of it at the time, the reason that they always won was because they were a carefully composed mix of personalities. This enabled them to compliment each other - you know - the old sum is greater than the total of the individual components idea.

In this paper, David Winsborough and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic explain why having the 'right' mix of personalities in a team matters, equally, if not more than, the technical or professional skills and knowledge that they bring to the table.

The five psychological roles that David and Tomas mention in this article form the basis of the Hogan Team Report, a ground-breaking tool designed a few years ago by Dave and Gus McIntosh, his colleague at Winsborough Ltd.