Psychometric diversity in student teams: what counts?

In courses in Higher Education, group projects are used as a mean to manage effectively the students’ learning experience and as an opportunity to develop valuable transferable skills. In both cases, diverse and multi-cultural teams play a central role, particularly in universities with an international outlook. Similarly in modern organizations, teams are essential to attain high performance as they are deemed more effective and efficient in response to the demands of complex problems. However, the criteria for team formation are often unclear (to teachers, managers, and team members) potentially leading to uncertain outcomes. Previous studies identified both positive and negative effects of group diversity. Although it was suggested that there may be an optimal level of group diversity, the two most consistent but contradictory findings are that increased diversity leads to 1) an improvement in innovation and creative thinking, 2) a decrease in group cohesion, and increase in intra-group conflict. In this paper we present some ongoing work at its early stages which explores the relations between individual difference and the performance of student teams within the MSc in International Business and Entrepreneurship at GU. The aim is to explore the correlations between a number of well known psychometric measures and to evaluate team success in order to inform the current course management practices. The results will provide an opportunity to relate measures of styles, personality and emotional intelligence, but also to demonstrate the potential for using the psychometric profiles in practice to inform the process of team formation in university courses. In this paper the focus is primarily on the exploration of team diversity through a psychometric lens.