Psychology Study: Team Personalities and Team Cohesion

Hi all,

Teamwork plays an essential role in just about every career that is relevant to this site. I'm currently working on a research study (3 Undergrad, 2 Grad Students + 2 Professors) for my Industrial Organizational Psych class that is attempting to find a link between individual personalities and team cohesion in the white-collar office setting. It is our goal that through this research, we will be able to determine the ideal personality composition for teams, in hopes of helping managers to build the most productive teams possible.

Here is where I need your help. We have had the pleasure of surveying about 40 teams to extract data from, and this is a rather limited sample. If any of you are in positions of leadership within your firm to the extent that you can have all members of your direct team or group fill out 2 surveys (5-10 minutes total / person), it would greatly assist us in our endeavors. (We might not (probably can't) be able to include your responses in the official published journal, this is because all groups included in the published the surveys have to be hand administered by one of us 7 on the project.) BUT, I think it would be really neat if I got enough responses from here, I could possibly make inferences about personalities and team cohesion in the financial world juxtaposed to the white-collar professional the study is primarily focused on.

If you're willing to give use some of your group's time, we will certainly keep you updated with all the findings and progress we make in this study. There really hasn't been much research done linking the big 5 personality traits and team cohesion, so this has the potential to be a groundbreaking project that really should provide some useful insight.

I understand that our industry is becoming more and more regulated with each passing year. Due to this you can rest assured that all information will be kept confidential in our report, and nothing will get published that you are not comfortable with. Which is likely everything, but that is expected and as long as we can use the quantitative data, it's all well and appreciated.

If you would be willing to help us, and progress your understanding of what personalities drive team cohesion, please do not hesitate to reach out below or DM me.

-- Little bit of background if you care to know more about me.
I'm currently a finance student due to graduate this May. I've interned for the same group for over two years now, and the personalities conflict on an extreme level.. to the point I often question how anything gets done. However, we also have the highest production out of the office, and debatably the most pleased clients. This lead me to begin to wonder about how much team cohesion really determines team success. Sadly, not much research has been done in the I/O world to draw conclusions on this, so wanting answers, I decided to do what I could to figure it out myself. I had to take 4 prerequisite psych classes to get into this class. And I can't even declare Psychology as a minor because by the time I became aware I wanted to do this, I already had more than 90 units and the university wouldn't allow me to declare that late into the ballgame. Not that I'm bitter at all or anything hahah.

To those of you that are still reading, thank you. You will never get those 2-3 minutes back, but hopefully I will one day be able to provide you with a more insightful guidebook to building teams that not only perform at the optimal level, but get along to make work all the more enjoyable as well.

Thank you,

Elliot