Team Development Without Touching

A bunch of intelligent, ambitious and proud financial wizards are intent on starting a business together, but they are geographically dispersed, have quite different personalities and have some emerging concerns that this combination of factors could scupper their new business almost before it gets started. Bankers are not known for their indulgence in psychological theory, but they do tend to be fearful of failure and anything that is likely to restrict their earning potential. If a tool can reduce their anxiety level and increase their confidence in making money, it's got some hope of grabbing their attention, at least for a while.

Could a personality profiling instrument like the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) be of any value in helping them find ways to work together effectively, despite their lack of contact? Could it help them avoid the frequently misleading mind reading we all tend to engage in when we don't t spend enough close up time with people?

This challenge was put to me by a friend recently, together with a MBTI profile of said team. I had not met these folk, but was mindful of the common prescription not to judge a book by it's cover. On the other hand, I recall from my days as a psychology student as well as more recent research, that human intervention is not always necessary to achieve positive behavioral change. Sometimes interacting with computers acting as therapeutic proxies can do a pretty good job. So why not interpret personality data at a distance and trust that the feedback will act rather like the therapeutic computer, causing them to ask questions and engage in a fruitful debate between themselves?

As my friend and I discussed their situation, I realized that my not having met these characters became a creatively liberating process. Freed from the prejudices that come from first meetings, I could focus solely on the mapping of their types and their level of dispersion across the preferences. They displayed considerable diversity (in terms of personality at least), coupled with a series of overlapping links between certain individuals on particular preferences. It struck me that this mixture presented them with their greatest risk (they are quite different in many ways and may find it impossible to work together) as well as their greatest opportunity (by building on the chain of connections across the team, they could achieve strength). It was also pretty clear that if they openly acknowledged the differences, it might spur them to actively experiment with the way in which they worked together. This might, in turn, increase the odds of them accelerating their formation as a successful team. Of course, into the mix must come the influences of their various talents, experiences and energies, but the basic exercise we undertook may point to an opportunity for on-line consulting with a new USP: workshop-free team development. Maybe in some situations face to face interaction between consultant and client is way too complicating - perhaps we should just keep it simple and fill in the forms.