We’ve all been there. Part of a team that just clicks—energised, motivated, and thriving. That feeling is positively contagious. We’ve also likely experienced the opposite: a dysfunctional, draining, or even toxic team environment. The difference between these two scenarios often comes down to one critical factor: the leader.
Effective team building isn’t about trust falls or after-work drinks. It’s a strategic process that uses an evidence-based understanding of people to drive efficiency, engagement, and results.
The Leader’s Role is Pivotal
According to Dr. Robert Hogan, founder of Hogan Assessments, the primary goal of leadership is to build and maintain a high-performing team. This means a leader’s success should be judged by the performance of their team. A high-performing team is one where members work toward a common goal, share a common fate, and see themselves as a collective unit.
However, there’s a disconnect in many organisations. Recent Gallup research showed that manager engagement has dropped, and as a result, nearly half of all employees are considering leaving their jobs. A staggering 44% of managers have received no formal management training, often promoted for technical expertise rather than their ability to lead people. Leadership is not a “soft skill”; it’s a hard skill that is observable, measurable, and can be developed. When leaders are highly engaged, their teams are too, leading to better outcomes for the entire organisation.
Understanding the Two Sides of a Team Member’s Role
To build a team strategically, it’s crucial to recognise that every member plays two distinct roles:
- The Functional Role: This is the formal, task-oriented side of a person’s contribution. It’s about their subject matter expertise, technical experience, and ability to get things done.
- The Psychological Role: This is the informal, yet fundamental, aspect that team members bring. It encompasses their personality, motivations, values, and how they respond to stress and change. This psychological diversity is what brings different perspectives to the table.
Ignoring the psychological side is a missed opportunity. People process information differently, have varying levels of resilience, and display unique behavioural preferences that can be either an asset or a challenge.
Using Personality to Unlock Team Potential
Personality is fundamental to workplace behaviour and is a powerful tool for strategic team building. By understanding the personality makeup of a team, leaders can foster an environment that leverages diversity for better results.
A real-world case study of a tech startup illustrates this perfectly. The company, committed to sustainability, used Hogan personality assessments to understand its people. The data revealed that while the leadership team and staff shared a common value for altruism and science-based decisions, there was a major disconnect on the value of Security. The entrepreneurial leadership team was comfortable with ambiguity, but the staff valued predictability, which led to anxiety and employee turnover. This insight allowed the company to adjust its communication and recruitment strategies.
The analysis also showed that the leadership team was clustered with high Ambition (results-driven) and high Inquisitiveness (innovative), but had a low preference for Prudence (detail, planning, implementation). This meant they generated many fantastic ideas but struggled to execute them, ultimately contributing to a failure to secure further funding. This highlights the critical need for personality diversity—the team needed the voice of someone focused on practicality and detail, but that voice may have been lost.
The Building Blocks of a High-Performing Team
Research from a PBC white paper, “Personality and High Performing Teams,” identifies several personality characteristics common in successful teams. While a healthy spread of personalities is always ideal, high-performing teams often show strengths in these areas:
- Adjustment: Calm, composed, and resilient under pressure.
- Ambition: Driven, goal-focused, and strategic.
- Sociability: Enjoy connecting with others, affiliative, and engaging.
- Interpersonal Sensitivity: Caring, diplomatic, and emotionally intelligent.
- Affiliation: A shared value for connectivity and collaboration, which serves as a strong foundation for team success.
Leaders must also be aware of potential derailing behaviours—strengths that become overused under pressure. Traits like being sceptical, cautious, or imaginative can derail a team if they morph into cynicism, indecisiveness, or impracticality.
Measure What Matters: Taking an Evidence-Based Approach
You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Tools like the High Performing Team Assessment (HPTA) allow a team to rate itself on key domains like performance and culture. This diagnostic helps pinpoint specific strengths and opportunities for improvement, creating a clear path for action planning. When combined with personality data, it offers a powerful, holistic view of team dynamics.
In conclusion, strategic team building is a critical leadership function. By understanding and leveraging the diversity of personality, recognising the psychological roles people play, and using evidence-based tools to measure effectiveness, leaders can move beyond guesswork and intentionally build teams that are engaged, resilient, and primed for success. Remember, the leader is central to the team’s performance—so judge the leader by the team.
