Work teams: Selecting members for optimal performance

Teams are a growing phenomenon in the Canadian workplace as organizations face constant pressure to flatten the traditional hierarchy and maintain a structure that allows constant adaptation to the changing business environment. When teams are successful they have the potential of providing many benefits such as increased flexibility and creativity. However, when teams fail, they waste considerable resources. Therefore, organizations need to be concerned with maximizing the probability of team success. One of the simplest ways of doing this is to focus on team membership. Personality, which has been shown to contribute to the prediction of individual performance may also have a role in predicting team performance. The purpose of this paper is to establish what we currently know about personality as an individual and team selection measure, to establish a systematic research plan for team selection using personality, and to suggest the implications of what we do know about personality as a team selection measure.