Personality tests for group work

It’s an idea I’ve been batting around with – assigning groups based on personality tests.

I first thought of doing a Myers-Briggs styled personality inventory. But that would give me FAR more information than I needed. I really don’t want to know if my students are sociopaths.

There are other “business personality tests” on the web, some for free. But they’re pretty skewed, biased, and just plain odd.

So I decided to build my own. I’m going off of @baconred‘s system, with a bit of a twist. Greg’s using a system that he tweeted about:

It wasn’t quite ideal for what I was doing. He designed his for peer review. I’m looking to have students do a semester-long group proposal in my Tech & Business Comm class. But I liked the simplicity of the circle graph. Here’s my modification:

At the start of class, I’ll have every student complete the “test”. Then I’ll group them based on two factors.

1. Organized people get to work together. That should make for less group stress.

2. Big picture and detail people get distributed. That should make division of duties more intuitive.

Will it work? Don’t know. I’ll tell you on Tuesday.

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2 Responses to Personality tests for group work

  1. Greg wilson says:

    This looks great and much cleaner than mine. I wonder if there is a less judgmental word than “messy”? People might not self-select “my work process looks like a serial killer’s office wall.”

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