Team Building

by Ronni Kahalani, Copenhagen School of Design & Technology.

​

Striving to build high-performance teams.

​

Dream team synergy is when everyone has the right skills, root goals, diversity of thought / perspective, commitment and insights.

Who am I?

Thank you for stopping by.

​

I’m Ronni. I hope you’re well and wish you a safe and worthy journey.

​

This presentation is part of the Software Engineering Series, from my lectures at Copenhagen School of Design & Technology.

​

You can view the Introducing Myself, if you want to know a little more about who I am.

​

All my presentations and materials are free and available at my blog post: Software Engineering.

​

​

Don’t let me uphold you,

continue your journey, go to next slide.

2

X /Twitter

@RonniKahalani

�LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kahalani/

�Blog�LearningIsLiving

Agenda

• Purpose of Personality type tests.
• The No Asshole Rule.
• Team Culture.
• Personality type tests.
• Myers-Briggs, Big 5 Traits & Basadur.
• High performance- vs. dinosaur teams.
• A talk about teams for the obligatory assignment.

KEA - Datamatiker

3

The No Asshole Rule

The book focuses on the toxic effects of jerks (referred to as "a**holes") in workplaces and provides strategies for identifying, avoiding, and eliminating such behavior to create a healthier work environment.

​

Sutton argues that tolerating jerks leads to decreased morale, productivity, and long-term organizational harm.

The No Asshole Rule

Purposes of Personality Tests

• Self-awareness: Helps people understand their strengths, weaknesses, and preferences.
• Career and education guidance: Matches personality traits with suitable roles or fields.
• Improved relationships: Enhances understanding of others' behaviors and communication styles.
• Team dynamics: Aids in forming complementary teams and resolving conflicts.
• Therapeutic purposes: Offers insights for personal growth or overcoming challenges.

KEA - Datamatiker

5

Team Culture

High-performance is a culture, the culture of proactivity and value creation.

High Performance Team Culture

• Proactive, embrace changes, take ownership and are helpful
• Share goals and identity and have a clear plan to achieve great performance
• Writes down the committed actions each person owns on the path to goal achievement (and they waste less time determining who owns what)
• Feel a sense of personal ownership and have a shared intention to accomplish the results they’ve committed to the team
• True transparency, facts and status enable team members to work more effectively together
• Frequent feedback, the team get and ask for regular feedback on their work (code/design reviews and social behaviors…)
• Avoids silo thinking, focus on an open mind and manage a creative process.

Dinosaur Team Culture

• Reactive, hate changes, rejects ownership and are less helpful.
• Sees threats and fear exposing their flaws or lack of knowledge or interest.
• Makes U-turns in the middle of a sprint or find a way to do something else than what’s on the board and ignore what the team is committed to.
• Are often pessimistic to all suggested solutions, but doesn’t want (or can’t) use any effort to find solutions themselves
• Doesn’t care about wasting your time.
• Keeps a preference for their “Darlings”, even though it should be replaced.
• Try to keep their cards (designs and code) secret, and often don’t want others to comment or work on their code.
• Doesn’t like improvement suggestions and often thinks everybody else is less competent.

Healthy Team Culture

• Asks questions and focus on shared team commitment, via a team contract.
• Proactively helping each other, by sharing knowledge and insights.
• Adapts to roles and responsibilities, so everyone can contribute when needed.
• Everyone can contribute to frontend-, backend and devops needs (fullstack)
• Pair-programming (mentor and mentee roles)
• The team acts professionally and assists the Product Owner (PO), ScrumMaster (SM) & shareholders, customers and end-users.
• When challenges arise in the team, you address it at retrospectives, make an action plan and the SM will take care of the impediments (challenges that stops or slows down the team).

Team Leaders

• Strives to deliver their insights and facilitate a high-performance culture, to their team(s).
• Continually striving to know what our team(s) needs.
• Serves their team(s) and assure an optimal environment and resources, to perform.

16 Personalities (Myers-Briggs)

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

Categorizes people into 16 personality types based on four dichotomies:

• Extraversion (E) vs. Introversion (I)
• Sensing (S) vs. Intuition (N)
• Thinking (T) vs. Feeling (F)
• Judging (J) vs. Perceiving (P)

​

12

Myers-Briggs preferred personality type

13

Test: http://16personalities.com

Info: http://learningisliving.dk/jung-personality-type

Myers-Briggs test in

4 simple questions

Try to validate your 4-letter code from 16personalities.com

Validate your new 4-letter code

Simple Personality Type Test

• When you’ve got your 4-letter code the test at 16personalities.com
• Lets try validating it, via 4 simple questions.
• Be ready to write down 4 letters, identifying your preferred personality type, from the four questions.

​

15

1. Are you outwardly or inwardly focused?

• Could be described as talkative and outgoing.
• Like to be in a fast-paced environment.
• Tend to work out ideas with others, think out loud.
• Enjoy being the center of attention.

16

• Could be described as reserved and private.
• Prefer a slower pace with time for contemplation.
• Tend to think things through inside your head.
• Would rather observe than be the center of attention.

E

Extroversion

I

Introversion

If you

Then you prefer

Then you prefer

2. How do you prefer to take in information?

• Focus on the reality of how things are.
• Pay attention to concrete facts and details.
• Prefer ideas that have practical applications.
• Like to describe things in a specific, literal way.

17

• Imagine the possibilities of how it could be.
• Notice the big picture, see how everything connects.
• Enjoy ideas and concepts for their own sake.
• Like to describe things in a figurative, poetic way.

S

Sensing

N

Intuition

If you

Then you prefer

Then you prefer

3. How do you prefer to make decisions?

• Make decisions in an impersonal way, using logical reasoning.
• Value justice and fairness.
• Enjoy finding the flaws in an argument.
• Could be described as reasonable and level-headed.

18

• Base your decisions on personal values and how your actions affect others.
• Value harmony and forgiveness.
• Like to please others and point out the best in people.
• Could be described as warm and empathic.

T

Thinking

F

Feeling

If you

Then you prefer

Then you prefer

4. How do you prefer to live your outer life?

• Prefer to have matters settled.
• Think rules and deadlines should be respected.
• Prefer to have detailed step-by-step instructions.
• Make plans, want to know what you’re getting into.

​

19

• Prefer to leave your options open.
• See rules and deadlines as flexible.
• Likes to improvise and make things up as you go.
• Are spontaneous, enjoy surprises and new situations.

​

​

J

Judging

P

Perceiving

If you

Then you prefer

Then you prefer

What is your 4-letter code

20

Does your 4-letter codes match,

or are they almost alike?

Big 5 Personality Traits

The big five personality traits are the best accepted and most commonly used model of personality in academic psychology. If you take a college course in personality psychology, this is what you will learn about.

Big 5 Personality Traits

22

Test: http://openpsychometrics.org/tests/IPIP-BFFM

Info: http://learningisliving.dk/big-5-personality-traits

This is my personal result from the Big 5 traits test.

Basadur

Basadur Test

Measures the cognitive diversity and innovative thinking styles on teams.

24

https://www.basadur.com

Basadur Test

25

Basadur Test (My profile)

26

Basadur Test (Generators)

Generators

• Get things started, get involved, gather information, ask questions.
• Sense problems, imagine possibilities, see opportunities.
• View things from different perspectives.
• Prefer generating more ideas rather than evaluating existing ones.
• See relevance in almost everything.
• Comfortable with ambiguity.

​

27

Typical occupations include

• Academics
• Artists
• Marketers
• Non-Profit/University Administrators
• Teachers
• Training and Development
• Advertising Creatives

​

Basadur Test (Conceptualizers)

Conceptualizers

• Like defining problems and producing ideas.
• Like to see the big picture.
• Form quick connections, see opportunities and benefits.
• Distil seemingly unrelated observations into integrated explanations.
• Don’t like proceeding until situations are fully understood and problems well defined.
• Want theories to be sound and precise.

​

28

Typical occupations include

• Designers
• Market Researchers
• Organization Development
• Product Developers
• Research & Development
• Strategic Planning
• IT Senior Consultants

​

Basadur Test (Optimizers)

Optimizers

• Turn abstract ideas into practical solutions.
• Like single correct answers to problems.
• Can sort through large amounts of data, and pinpoint faults.
• Confidently make sound evaluations and select the best solutions.
• Have little patience with ambiguity.
• Interested in idea evaluation, selection and action planning.

​

29

Typical occupations include

• Engineering/Engineering Design
• Manufacturing Engineering
• Finance
• IT Programmers/Analysts
• IT Systems Developers
• Accounting
• Technical Customer Support

​

Basadur Test (Implementers)

Implementers

• Enjoy getting things done and being involved in new experiences.
• Excel at adapting to specific circumstances and making things work.
• Like to try things out for real rather than mentally test them.
• Risk takers: don’t need to completely understand something before acting.
• Willing to try as many approaches as necessary until they find one that works for everyone.
• Enthusiastic and at ease with others but can appear impatient or even pushy when moving to action.

​

30

Typical occupations include

• IT Operations
• Secretarial/Administrative Support
• Project Managers
• Sales
• Customer Relations
• Manufacturing/Production
• Logistics
• Purchasing

​

Questions?

Anything? What’s on your mind? Come on ask me anything…

​

Feedback?

Thank you for your precious time.

I hope it was worth it and would love to get your feedback.

​

Please share your feedback here