Characteristics Of Good Team Players

Working in teams, especially on multidisciplinary projects, is becoming more and more common in engineering as well as in other work environments. However, despite the importance of “team-work” in engineering, there is little data on the characteristics of “good” and “poor” team players. This paper presents preliminary results from an ongoing, horizontal study of this issue in two engineering design courses, one at the sophomore level and the other at the senior level. The courses are offered each fall and spring and results contained in the paper are based on the documentation obtained from 214 students working on 57 project teams for the 2002-3 academic year. Individual demographic, academic, personality (Myers-Briggs type indicators) and personal data, as well as interest and skill level, were gathered from the four classes. The data for those individuals judged (by a peer evaluation) to be above average team players and those judged to be below average team players were then compared both to each other and to the class averages. The conclusions reached are listed below: ♣ The better team players were older with more work experience and more engineering related work experience. ♣ The poor team players were younger with less work experience and less engineering related work experience. ♣ The better team players tended to have better drawing abilities and were better self-critics of their own drawing abilities. ♣ Factors appearing to have little influence were personality type, gender, and high school and college grade point averages. ♣ The expressed motivation for the course or for working in teams and interest in the project seemed to have little influence on ones own performance on the team. ♣ Issues related the ethnicity and SAT scores are discussed but no conclusions are presented.