knowledge-kitchen

Team Psychology - How Individual Personality Psychology Affects Social Team Dynamics

How people think and how that affects cooperation.

  1. Overview
  2. The Human Condition
  3. Motivation
  4. Personality Types
  5. Team Size
  6. Conclusions

Overview

Overview

Individual personality psychology and group psychology play an important role in team harmony and performance.

While there is no single formula for success, having an understanding of how you perceive otherss and are yourself perceived by others may help.

The Human Condition

It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built up upon a renunciation of instinct….

-Sigmund Freud, “Civilization and its Discontents”

Concept

As popularized in the early 20th century by Freud’s “Civilization and its Discontents” and Hermann Hesse’s “Steppenwolf”, humans have long been accused of harboring conflicting motivations:

Sigmund Freud

Solution

While there is no solution, there are strategies for mitigating the impact of this inherent conflict on team performance.

For team harmony, it may help to understand an individual’s motivations and try to provide for their needs.

Motivation

When people appear to be something other than good and decent, it is only because they are reacting to stress, pain, or the deprivation of basic human needs such as security, love, and self-esteem.

-Abraham Maslow, “Toward a Psychology of Being”

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

In the mid-20th century, a social scientist named Abraham Maslow proposed a set of needs of humans in order to explain motivation (or the lack thereof):

  1. Physiological needs - food, water, sleep, shelter, etc.
  2. Safety - personal, financial, and other forms of safety
  3. Social belonging - a need for the feeling of belongingness, social acceptance, and love
  4. Esteem - recognition, respect, and the need for status
  5. Self-actualization - a desire to accomplish everything one can… to maximize one’s potential!

The idea was that you cannot achieve higher needs without satisfying lower needs.

Maslow’s Pyramid

Where does software development fit in this pyramid? Maslow's hierarchy of needs

Tricks of the trade

Safety:

Social belonging:

Esteem:

Self-realization:

Personality Types

Whatever the circumstances of your life, the understanding of type can make your perceptions clearer, your judgements sounder, and your life closer to your heart’s desire.

-Isabel Briggs Myers

Myers-Briggs

Based on Jung’s theory of personality, the Myers-Briggs set of personality dualities are quite popular in corporate America human resources practices.

Carl Jung

Personality Differences

Myers-Briggs

Team Size

Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

-Fred Brooks, “The Mythical Man-Month”

Two-Pizza Teams

Jeff Bezos is famous for the “two pizza” team - a team should only be as large as can be fed with two pizzas.

Rudolf Olah's communication lines

Maybe he’s right. But maybe not.

Tevye the milkman

When you’re rich, they think you really know!

-Tevye, an empoverished milkman dreaming of a life full of wealth and esteem says, in the classic Yiddish story, “Fiddler on the Roof

Conclusions

Thank you. Bye.