Team effectiveness: beyond skills and cognitive ability

Area of Science:

• Organizational Psychology
• Human Resources Management
• Team Dynamics

Background:

• Effective team performance is crucial for organizational success.
• Predicting team performance requires understanding individual and group-level factors.
• Job analysis provides a foundation for identifying relevant performance predictors.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the validity of general cognitive ability, job-specific skills, and personality traits in predicting human resource work team performance.
• To examine these predictors at both individual and group levels of analysis.
• To determine the unique contribution of personality traits to team performance.

Main Methods:

• Utilized job analysis results to inform predictor selection.
• Assessed 79 four-person human resource work teams.
• Aggregated team member trait and job skill scores using a conjunctive model of task performance.
• Collected peer ratings, supervisor ratings, and objective performance measures.

Main Results:

• At the individual level, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness predicted peer ratings of team member performance, beyond cognitive ability and job skills.
• At the group level, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness predicted supervisor ratings of team performance, accuracy, and work completed.
• The personality trait Agreeableness consistently predicted Interpersonal Skills at both individual and group levels.

Conclusions:

• Personality traits, specifically Agreeableness and Conscientiousness, are significant predictors of individual and team performance in human resource settings.
• These personality traits offer incremental validity over general cognitive ability and job-specific skills.
• The findings underscore the importance of considering personality in team composition and development for enhanced work team effectiveness.