2008 - Marketing Educators' Association

STUDENT PERSONALITY TYPES IN TEAM PROJECTS: A TEAM STYLES BASED PERSPECTIVE
Matthew Lancellotti and Thomas C. Boyd, California State University, Fullerton,
800 N. State College Blvd., Fullerton, CA 92834; mlancellotti@fullerton.edu, tboyd@fullerton.edu
Student team projects have been adopted by
marketing educators as a way to enhance student
learning. Through participation in team projects,
students learn to work with others who bring diverse
approaches and ideas to the team setting.
Researchers have found that team projects help
improve motivation and develop communication
skills, cooperation and leadership skills. This exploratory
research seeks to improve our understanding
of student behavior in project teams by developing
an inventory of student team personality types.
Although negative team project experiences can
contribute to negative attitudes about working in
teams, it is our hope that student understanding and
acceptance of the diverse personalities that exist in
a team can help improve performance. One of the
authors some years ago devised an ad hoc set of
personality types that has been used in a humorous
way to make students aware of different ways in
which they may act in team settings. Descriptors of
these personality types were used as the basis of a
survey designed to query students about their selfperceived
attitudes and behaviors regarding their
personalities in teams. These questions explored
students’ attitudes about team communication,
leadership, work styles, division of labor, and goals.
PERSONALITY TYPE FACTOR ANALYSIS
Principles of Marketing students (n = 239)
responded to 27 questions about student behaviors
when working in teams. Using 7-point Likert-type
scales where 1 = describes me very well and 7 =
describes me poorly, participants were asked to rate
the extent to which they agreed with 27 statements
that described their beliefs or behaviors when
working in a group.
Principle Components analysis was used, extracting
factors with Eigenvalues greater than one. The
analysis revealed nine factors that were labeled
based on the underlying trait summarized by the
questions that loaded on them, each representing an
approach to, or style of performing, team work. The
nine factors appear below. These labels are
intentionally irreverent and humorous because we
have found such labels disarm students and are
thus more likely to be thoughtfully considered than
ABSTRACT
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more mundane, academic, or diplomatic labels
would be. A brief discussion of each appears below:
Directors like to lead and take charge, and find it
difficult to give the floor to others or take in ideas
without offering their own perspectives.
Passive-ists prefer to hand the reigns to someone
else. They require hand-holding, and prefer to be
given clear assignments that require little initiative to
complete.
Dictators seek to dominate the substance of team
projects. They feel their approach is the best, and
take offence at being questioned or monitored.
Competitors are driven by a desire to succeed;
success is often measured by outperforming other
teams rather than via qualitative or comprehensive
measures of how much was learned.
Work-Avoidants seek to put off work, and seek the
least amount of work.
Loners may produce good work, but they prefer to
do it independently. These students may have the
most negative attitudes towards team projects.
Communists seek equal work from all, and this goal
is often given higher priority than the actual project
output; equity assessments take precedence.
Control-Freaks are the worriers. They want to be
involved with and notified of all decisions, and seek
success through hyper-vigilance.
Freeloader-Avoiders know their abilities can be
taken advantage of, and seek to ensure each person
has their own responsibilities from the outset.
DISCUSSION
The types revealed by the factor analysis provide
strong support for the broad distinctions in behavior
and attitude towards teamwork they are designed to
highlight. The factors revealed here can be used as
part of in-class exercises to increase awareness of
how one’s personality may affect satisfaction with
the team experience and its outcomes. Additional
avenues for future research include an examination
of how these personality and approach types each
influence student satisfaction with teams and the
success of those teams. Though the results reported
here provide important insights on the personality
types that exist in student team settings, the
underlying mechanisms behind these results remain
unclear and provide opportunity for future research
that increases the benefits of student team projects.