It's the Team, Stupid (Part 2)

Ian Whittingham, PMP is director of Calixo Consulting, providing project and program management expertise from initiation through to implementation, covering business transformation, workflow process re-engineering, and enterprise data integration. He is a regular contributor to ProjectManagement.com. You may contact Ian directly at [email protected].

 

INFJ, ENFJ, ENTJ, INTJ, INTP, ISTP. They resemble snippets of DNA code, a logically sequenced combination of building blocks that are transformed, one letter at a time, from one state to the next. Their logical coherence suggests precision and balance, a self-regulating system.

Some of you may recognize the taxonomy to which they belong, others may be able to decode the meaning of the constituent letters, and the truly adept among you will be able to convert these cryptic strings into relatively complex descriptions of behavioral propensities. They represent one system among many for profiling project team member behavior. Following on from Part 1, this article will look at two such systems and the insights they provide into the internal dynamics of project teams.

Since the 1940s, the concepts and language of behavioral psychology have been applied to the workplace with increasing subtlety and sophistication. Today, many executives are conversant with the latest theories and models. These are readily accepted and adapted by organizations as a means of enhancing corporate performance. In particular, the benefits of their application are generally realized at the departmental or team level, which makes them especially attractive to project practitioners who are seeking to get the best performance from their own teams.

Many of these …

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