Influence of personality on Teamwork behaviour and communication

Abstract

Job characteristics of the operator teams of the Nuclear Power Plant are complex and highly controlled in which there are considerable demands and pressures to behaviour conformity and a person is restricted in the range of own behaviour. Thus, individual differences in personality characteristics are more likely to influence the specific behaviour a person adopts. This type of environment determines and regulates the communication flow among team members that consist of quantity and quality information exchanges. All these circumstances lead our focus on analysing the relationship between the employees´ communication and observable behaviour and their personality traits. We video registered 17 operator teams (N=90) in a Simulator Centre of a Hungarian Nuclear Power Plant and analysed the correlation between the team input (operator personnel´s personality traits) and team process (communication hidden patterns, traceable teamwork-oriented social skills and task-oriented professional skills), and ultimately team output (team performance evaluated by instructors). This study reveals some relationships between personality traits and team-oriented communication utterances. Extroversion and Openness to experience personality factors show positive correlation with Politeness and Relation communication indicators, but contrary to our expectation the Agreeableness personality factor negatively relates with these indicators. The Team-performance has several relationships with personality traits. First of all Professional knowledge and Coordination behaviour markers show correlations with Neuroticism and Conscientiousness personality factors. Team-performance as an output of the team process is directly influenced by the Conscientiousness and the Extraversion personality factors.