What Personality, Polo and Business Have to do With Team Development?

The world of business and polo is not so dissimilar. Escanaba Polo Mallet Company is a good works start up that not only seeks to create top of the line affordable mallets and encourage new polo players but also help teach about start-ups in America. Just like if you are starting your own polo team and/or start up company you will need to develop a cohesive team. The personality traits impact the quality of both and picking the right personality will make or break your plans (business or polo team). 

If you are like most people in a position to hire/recruit others, you want to find hard charging people who seek to focus on the tasks at hand. What you don't want is them to be so self oriented that they create dysfunction and conflict. Any team will be quickly destroyed by toxic personalities.

Teamwork is a process of recruiting the right mix of people through their skills and personality to build a strong performing team. Agreeableness seems to be one of the traits you can look for in a potential candidate. We often look for the most bold but we need more game players than starts. The right mix can create an unbeatable team.

Let me give you an example. 

Agreeableness was found to have significant impact on about 93% of other traits. It was a bridge between multiple traits and in many ways seemed to influence them as a general outlook. You can read about that that study in 'Agreeableness a helpful trait for general success in life, study finds'

Whether you are recruiting for your polo team or you are creating your next business team you will want to ensure that you look for people with a level of agreeableness. They are the ones who can work with others and share the ball and other opportunities in the spirit of group cohesion.

While such traits don't guarantee success they do foster the right team characteristics. Having both star performances mixed with the right team players can make a difference in overall outcomes as they are the supporters of the group. 

Long term success is in the development of the right team with the right personalities. A single player may be able to hit the ball or create a new venture from time to time but it is the total team that can produce results over and over in a way that leads to long term success. 

The next time you do some recruiting, whether polo or business, think about the softer side of people with a level of agreeableness as an untapped source of team formation.

Michael P. Wilmot, Deniz S. Ones. Agreeableness and Its Consequences: A Quantitative Review of Meta-Analytic Findings. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2022; 108886832110730 DOI: 10.1177/10888683211073007