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CASE STUDY - Feedback for the manager and the team

The Issue
No two people can be exactly the same, even if their personality profiles were identical. However, people with similar personalities are likely to perceive and experience situations in a similar way. This could, depending on the situation, be either an advantage or a potential risk. If the team is formed from very similar personalities, they might concur just too easily; their solutions of job tasks might be too dull and the team might lack heterogeneous team roles. If, on the other hand, the differences between the team members are too sharp, it might sometimes be rather difficult to achieve their targets due to the substantial differences in ways of solving job tasks and situations. It is therefore very important for any team that its members are made aware of their own dispositions, as well as of the dispositions of their colleagues, and can handle them appropriately.
 
The Background
The subject of this case study is a team working on a long-term mission abroad. It is thus very important for team members to understand each other, to effectively cooperate and for their team to be as balanced and harmonized as possible.
 
The team profile analysis in this case was based on a personality test called Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI). This test describes the human personality in seven key dimensions:

  • Adjustment - reflects the degree of self-confidence, self-esteem, and composure under pressure
  • Ambition - evaluates the degree to which a person seeks status, values achievement, and desires leadership roles
  • Sociability - assesses the degree to which a person appears talkative, gregarious, and needs social interaction
  • Interpersonal Sensitivity - reflects social skill, tact, perceptiveness, and ability to maintain relationships
  • Prudence - concerns self-discipline, responsibility, and conscientiousness
  • Inquisitive - reflects imagination, curiosity, vision, and creative potential
  • Learning Approach - reflects the degree to which a person enjoys academic activities, staying current on business and technical matters

Team Profile Analyzer was selected as a tool to process the team members’ profiles.

Project design
In order to receive individual HPI profiles from all team members, data was entered in the Team Profile Analyzer program through its Data module. In the Analysis module, team subgroups were identified and differences between them were tested. Afterwards, all that was needed was a couple of clicks and the Report module supplied us with a full final report with the profile of the entire team, specification of subgroups in terms of personality profiles and properties that distinguish these subgroups from each other. 
 
Team Sociomaps

The Sociomap is one of the essential TPA outputs. Sociomaps enable the recording of similarities between individual team members.

Rules for interpreting the Sociomaps:

  • Each team member is represented by one point on the Sociomap. 
  • Distance between them corresponds with the similarity of their profiles. The closer they are, the more similar they are.
  • Height (expressed by relief and colour) corresponds with the selected characteristic (average similarity of profiles, Ambition, Prudence).

Distances express the similarities between team members. Thus, we can easily see that, for example, John and William or Brenda and Mery have very different profiles. On the other hand, Brenda and Paul are very similar in terms of their profiles

Height on this Sociomap corresponds with the average similarity of the team member with others. That is, the higher situated the team member, the more similar he/she is to others, and the lower he/she is, the more diverse he/she is. William, therefore is the one who differs the most from the rest of the team. Michael is the one who is the most similar to the rest.

Sociomap Nr. 1 clearly shows three subgroups (click on the 1st icon in the left toolbar to view them):

Subgroup 1: Brenda, Paul and Michael
Subgroup 2: Martin, Mery and William
Subgroup 3: Carl and John

During the detailed analysis, it became obvious that the largest diversities in personality profiles were revealed between Subgroup 1 and Subgroup 2. Sociomaps No. 2 and No.3 also imply that the personality profiles of people from Subgroup 3 were often located somewhere between the marked profiles of these two subgroups.

The principal question of the analysis was in which characteristics did the team conform and in which characteristics did the main differences show up, and what was their importance. Team Profile Analyzer enables us to project the individual characteristics measured by HPI into the height of the Sociomap and to subsequently test the differences between the subgroups. This enables us to easily answer that question. It is obvious from Sociomaps 1 and 2 that people from Subgroup 1 and Subgroup 2 significantly differ in levels of Ambition and Prudence.

Left Sociomap (Ambition): Height represents level of Ambition
Right Sociomap (Prudence) : Height represents level of Prudence

People from Subgroup 1 are therefore “leader-like, energetic, driven and focused on achieving goals and success“. They are flexible and “comfortable with change and innovation“, but, at the same time, they could be too competitive and unwilling to listen to other people’s opinions and they could act on impulse.

People from Subgroup 2 show exactly the opposite characteristics. They prefer having their tasks assigned by someone else; they would rather be led than lead themselves. They are also “orderly, dependable and responsible“, they adhere to processes and they are attentive to details. They could, at the same time, be indecisive, non-assertive and comfortable with the way things are. Also, they could have the tendency to control things too much and they could handle changes with difficulties.

The Outcomes
It is obvious at first sight that the primary source of potential tension in the team is the polarity between Subgroup 1 and Subgroup 2. What is substantial about this set-up is the fact that the team manager belongs to Subgroup 1, and he can therefore, be it even unknowingly, prefer the way of judging issues and behavior patterns which are inherent to this group. Inasmuch as Subgroup 1 is noted for high ambition, it is possible that the people of Subgroup 2 are often a bit looked over. And this is one of the great risks of this team. Very uneven distribution of Prudence in the team might also result in disagreements about how professional tasks should be solved and how to achieve goals.

 

Under the given circumstances, this feedback was extremely useful for the team, also thanks to the comprehensibility, accessibility and the interactive nature of Sociomapping. Based on the information, the team was made aware of the potential risks and advantages which stem from the diversity of its members. Understanding of the differences between people also improved amongst the team members. 

 

Attachments:
 Case study team report[Case study sample report automatically generated from TPA.]378 Kb