Short answer: no. Personality does not decide whether you work well on a team. It is a modest lean, and the lean is about the mix of people in the group, not a grade on one person. Agreeableness and conscientiousness are the traits that show up. They show up more clearly when the team is a real, ongoing work group than in a short lab or class exercise. Extraversion, the trait people often treat as the teamwork trait, is a weak signal for the team’s results. A four-letter type is a weak filter. On a PersonalityCareers result, read the Agreeableness and Conscientiousness bars as questions about how you enter the group’s work. They are a pattern in the averages, not a verdict on you.
A team score is not your score
People usually mash this into “I’m a team player” or “I’m not.” The studies below keep a different question: once several people share a task, how does the mix of traits line up with how the group performs?
Researchers turn individual scores into a team score in three ways that matter here.
- Elevation is the average. A high average means the group as a whole sits higher on that trait.
- The minimum is the lowest member. One person can sit far below the rest.
- Variability is the spread. A wide spread means the members are unlike each other on that trait.
Team performance in these studies is usually a supervisor’s rating of how the group did the work. It is still a perception. It is closer to the job than a first impression. It is not a rating of who felt like the leader, and it is not a rating of whether people liked the work. The teams in the main review were small, on the order of four or five people, with one sample of larger crews. A large department is a different question.
What the studies actually find
Peeters, van Tuijl, Rutte, and Reymen (2006) pooled the Big Five studies that scored teams by average and by spread. The set is small. Depending on the trait, it is about four to ten samples, and a few hundred teams. Two average-score links held up. Higher average agreeableness went with better team performance, a corrected correlation of .24. Higher average conscientiousness did too, a corrected correlation of .20. Extraversion, emotional stability, and openness did not show a reliable general link once the studies were combined.
A link of that size is modest. It sits in the same range as the link between conscientiousness and how well one person does a job (Barrick & Mount, 1991). It is large enough to ask a question. It leaves most of the difference between teams to the work, the skills, and the situation. The conscientiousness link stayed positive from study to study. The agreeableness link did not: some studies found almost none, and some found a large one.
Spread mattered for the same two traits in this review. Teams whose members differed more in agreeableness performed worse, a corrected correlation of −.12. Teams whose members differed more in conscientiousness performed worse, a corrected correlation of −.24, which is as large as the average-score link. Spread in extraversion, emotional stability, and openness did not show a reliable link. Peeters and colleagues had expected a mix of more and less extraverted members to help. The studies did not support that.
Those averages hide a split that matches the question people actually ask. In professional teams, the average-score links were larger: about .51 for agreeableness and about .42 for conscientiousness. In student teams, both were about zero. The “more similar is better” result for those two traits showed up in both kinds of team. The professional teams had worked together longer, often a year to three years, on ongoing work. The student teams did short projects, from about an hour to a few months. Peeters and colleagues say you cannot tell whether the split comes from that longer life, from the kind of task, or from how much the members need each other. The studies tangle those together. A handful of professional samples is a thin base for a number like .51. Read it as “the workplace studies we have show a larger lean,” not as a hiring cutoff.
Bell (2007) asked a wider set of questions, including whether the result depends on the setting and on which team summary you use. In lab studies, personality’s link with team performance was negligible. In those short tasks, mental ability and the team’s average emotional intelligence were the composition signals that showed up (Bell, 2007). In field studies, the personality predictors she called strong were the team’s lowest agreeableness score, and the team’s average conscientiousness and average openness. A collective orientation, and a preference for working as a group, also went with better performance in field studies. Those last two are values, not Big Five scores.
For agreeableness, the setting split is the number worth keeping. The link was about .03 in lab studies and about .31 in field studies (Bell, 2007). That .31 is a moderate lean. It is the same story as the professional-versus-student split, told with a broader set of studies: personality composition shows up when the team is real, and it fades when the team was assembled for a study.
Conscientiousness told a similar setting story. The link was near zero in lab work and clearly larger in field work, for the team’s average and for its lowest member. The highest member’s score, and the spread of scores, did not show that lab-versus-field split. Openness is the unsettled one. Bell named the team’s average openness as one of the stronger signals in field studies. The lab and field ranges still overlap, and Peeters and colleagues did not find a reliable general link, so treat openness as a possible lean in ongoing teams. It is not a rule of the same kind as agreeableness or conscientiousness.
Extraversion and emotional stability stayed small. Bell did not find a clear lab-versus-field difference for either. Peeters and colleagues did not find a reliable general link for extraversion, for the average or for the spread. For emotional stability, small effects pointed different ways for students and for professionals, and they declined a general rule.
The two reviews agree on the headline and disagree on the spread. Both find that higher agreeableness and higher conscientiousness go with better team performance, and that this is a workplace pattern more than a classroom pattern. Bell singles out the lowest agreeableness score in real teams. Peeters and colleagues also find that a wider spread on agreeableness and conscientiousness goes with worse performance, and their studies agreed with each other on that point. Across the studies Bell combined, the spread of scores was about unrelated to performance. “Everyone on the team should match” is the claim with the thinner support. “A real team does better when agreeableness is high enough, including at the low end, and when conscientiousness is high enough” is the claim both reviews support.
One caution belongs in the same breath. A high average and a low spread often travel together, especially for agreeableness and conscientiousness (Peeters et al., 2006). Part of what looks like “similarity helps” is “the low scores are not pulling the average down.” They are not two independent levers you can turn separately.
Team results are not leadership, conflict style, or your own job
Personality and Leadership at Work asks who gets seen as a leader and who is rated effective. Extraversion carries more of that story than any other Big Five trait (Judge, Bono, Ilies & Gerhardt, 2002). In the team-performance reviews, extraversion is a weak signal. Being the person others treat as the leader is a different fact from the team doing the work well. A high extraversion bar can mean you take up more of the room. It does not say the room will produce better work.
Does Your Personality Decide How You Handle Conflict at Work? is the habit question. When a stake collides, do you work it out, meet in the middle, give in, push to win, or stay out? Agreeableness has the widest footprint there (Dabiriyan Tehrani & Yamini, 2020). That is a plausible reason a low agreeableness score can matter so much on a team. These team studies did not measure conflict style. They measured the group’s results. Use the conflict post when the question is the argument. Use this one when the question is how the group performs.
Doing your own job well is a third scoreboard. Across ordinary jobs, conscientiousness is the trait that most consistently tracks performance, and the link is modest (Barrick & Mount, 1991). Agreeableness is a weak signal for the technical work and a clearer one when the rating is about helping and cooperation (Hurtz & Donovan, 2000). Does Personality Predict Job Performance? is that post. Peeters and colleagues draw the contrast directly: agreeableness barely shows up until people have to do the work together. A high conscientiousness bar can help both your own output and the team’s. A high agreeableness bar is mainly a team question.
What each bar is asking
PersonalityCareers’ free test scores a Big Five–style questionnaire with items from the public-domain International Personality Item Pool (Goldberg, 1999). The percentage bar is the continuous score. The letters are a later compression. Scoring is on Test Methodology.
Your bar is still one person. The research is about the team’s average, its lowest member, and its spread. Read the bar as a question about the slot you fill in a particular group.
Agreeableness
This is the bar with the widest team footprint. Higher team averages go with better performance in the Peeters review, and the link is a workplace finding more than a student finding. In real teams, Bell finds the lowest member’s agreeableness is the piece to watch, and the field link for the trait is about .31 rather than the near-zero lab link.
A higher score is a question about whether you make cooperation easier: staying with a shared goal when it costs you something, keeping a hard conversation from turning into a feud, passing along what you know. A lower score is a question about whether you are the person the rest of the team has to route around. The same bar can lean toward working a problem out or toward giving in to keep the peace. Those are different moves, and the conflict post is where that fork is spelled out. A high bar is not “too agreeable to be useful.” A low bar is not “the honest one.” The T/F letter only partly tracks this trait.
Conscientiousness
This is the follow-through bar: preparation, standards, finishing. Higher team averages go with better team performance, again more clearly in professional and field teams than in student or lab teams. Bell finds that the lowest member’s conscientiousness matters in field studies too.
The practical question is whether the group can count on the work getting done, and whether one person’s lower standards become everyone else’s extra load. Peeters and colleagues find that a wider spread goes with worse performance, and that this showed up for student teams and professional teams. Bell’s estimates for spread were weaker. Ask the question anyway, and hold it lightly. If you are the person who closes the loop, are you carrying work that was supposed to be shared? If you leave it open, what does the team have to build around you? The J/P letter only partly tracks this bar. The broader evidence for the trait is still individual job performance.
Extraversion
A weak signal for team performance in both reviews. The bar does not say you are a better or worse teammate. It says something about visibility, and about who gets treated as a leader, which is the leadership post. A quiet person can be the reason a team finishes. An outgoing person can help a discussion, or can pull it off the task. A mix of the two was a reasonable guess. The studies Peeters and colleagues pooled did not support it as a general result.
The E/I letter tracks this trait more closely than the other letters track theirs. It is still a cut through a continuous bar. Two people with the same E or I can sit far apart on it. It is the wrong letter to use as a teamwork screen, because it is the trait with the weak team-performance link.
Neuroticism / Assertive–Turbulent
Not a reliable team-performance signal in either review. Peeters and colleagues saw small effects that pointed different ways for students and for professionals, and they declined a general rule. Bell’s lab and field links were both small. The four classic letters omit this trait. The Assertive–Turbulent identity is where PersonalityCareers reports it.
Use the bar for the questions the other posts already cover. Higher emotional volatility leans toward staying out of a hard conversation, and away from the joint search (Dabiriyan Tehrani & Yamini, 2020). That is conflict style. If the question is exhaustion under load, that is Personality and Burnout. Do not read the bar as a teamwork grade.
Openness
The unsettled bar. Bell named the team’s average openness as one of the stronger signals in field studies: a group more willing to take a new frame. Peeters and colleagues did not find a reliable average-score link, and they did not draw a general conclusion from the professional-versus-student split. Ask whether this team’s work needs new approaches, or faithful use of a method that already works. A lower bar can be an asset when the work is to keep a known system running. The S/N letter is a coarse label on this bar, not a creativity grade for collaboration.
Why a four-letter type is a weak teamwork filter
The MBTI Manual presents type as a preference for taking in information and making decisions. It is not a measure of ability, vocation, or performance (Myers, McCaulley, Quenk & Hammer, 1998). McCrae and Costa (1989) compared the Indicator with the Big Five. Extraversion/Introversion tracks extraversion closely. Sensing/Intuition tracks openness closely. Thinking/Feeling and Judging/Perceiving line up with agreeableness and conscientiousness only partly, and Judging/Perceiving also overlaps openness. None of the four letters tracks neuroticism. The correspondences, and why a midpoint cut throws information away, are in Big Five vs MBTI.
That mapping is why a type code is a poor teamwork screen:
- Agreeableness, one of the two traits with a real team footprint, is only partly visible in T versus F.
- Conscientiousness, the other one, is only partly visible in J versus P.
- Extraversion is the letter that tracks fairly well, and it is the trait with the weak team-performance link. An E is not evidence that the team will do better with you in it.
- Openness, which Bell flagged for field teams and which Peeters and colleagues did not settle, sits under S versus N. Popular teamwork rankings tend to skip that letter, or to treat it as a creativity label.
- Emotional volatility sits outside the four letters. In these reviews it is not a team-performance rule. The Assertive–Turbulent identity still reports the trait, for strain and for conflict habits, which are different questions.
Reviews of MBTI-style type find little evidence that the four-letter code predicts job performance (Furnham, 2018). Nothing in the team research licenses a ranking of types as better or worse teammates. There is no finding here that says a given code carries a team, or sinks one.
How to read your PersonalityCareers result
- Name the question. “How does this mix of people do the shared work?” is not “Will I be seen as the leader?” and not “Will I do my own tasks well?” Pay, liking the job, and the argument in front of you are further questions, covered in the posts linked below.
- Read Agreeableness and Conscientiousness before the letters. Those two carry the team pattern. The letters only partly track them.
- Ask where you sit in this particular group. Your bar is one score. The research is about the average and, for agreeableness in real teams, about the lowest member. A low agreeableness bar is a reason to ask whether friction with you sets the tone. It is not a finding that you will.
- Treat a high Agreeableness bar as cooperation with a fork in it. Working the problem out, and peace-keeping that drops your own stake, can share a high score. The conflict post is the fork. The team-performance finding does not tell you which one you do.
- Treat Conscientiousness as follow-through the team can see. The average matters more clearly in ongoing work teams. A wider spread worried one review and not the other. Ask whether the load is shared. Do not turn the bar into a verdict on who is allowed on the team.
- Do not read Extraversion as teamwork skill. The team-performance link is weak. Use the bar for visibility and for the leadership question, then look at what the work actually requires.
- Use Neuroticism / Assertive–Turbulent for strain and for hard conversations. These reviews do not support it as a team-performance signal. Burnout and conflict style are the posts for that bar.
- Remember the gap between a short exercise and a team that lasts. Personality composition faded in lab and student projects and showed up in real teams. If your group will be together for a year and the members depend on each other, the lean is more relevant. If the group is a short project, it is a weak reason to reshuffle anyone.
- If you already have the team, decide from the work. The profile tells you which questions to ask. The task, the manager, and the people in the room still do most of the sorting.
Frequently asked questions
Does personality predict how well a team performs?
Modestly, and only for some traits, and more clearly in real teams than in short lab tasks. Higher average agreeableness and conscientiousness go with better supervisor ratings of team performance. Corrected correlations in the combined studies were about .24 and .20 (Peeters et al., 2006). In field studies, agreeableness’s link was about .31, against about .03 in lab studies, and the lowest member’s agreeableness was the piece Bell singled out (Bell, 2007). Extraversion, emotional stability, and openness do not have a reliable general link of that kind. The links leave most of the differences between teams to the work and the situation.
Do agreeable people make better teammates?
They lean that way, as a team average, and the lean is about the group’s results rather than a moral score. The link shows up in professional and field teams and fades in student and lab teams (Peeters et al., 2006; Bell, 2007). A high bar can also be the person who gives in to keep the peace, which is a conflict-style question, not a performance medal (Dabiriyan Tehrani & Yamini, 2020). Agreeableness is a weak signal for the technical work one person does alone, and a clearer one when the rating is about helping (Hurtz & Donovan, 2000).
Does one disagreeable person drag a team down?
That is the field finding Bell highlights: in real teams, the lowest agreeableness score was among the stronger personality predictors of performance (Bell, 2007). It is a lean about the low end of the group, not a rule that one person decides the quarter. Peeters and colleagues also find that a wider spread in agreeableness goes with worse performance. Bell’s wider review did not keep a general spread effect. Ask whether friction is setting the tone. Do not treat a low bar as a reason to write someone off.
Is conscientiousness the teamwork trait?
It is one of the two traits that show up for team performance, and it is also the trait that most consistently tracks individual job performance (Barrick & Mount, 1991; Peeters et al., 2006; Bell, 2007). Higher averages help more clearly when the team is real and ongoing. In one review, teams whose members were less alike on conscientiousness performed worse, and that result showed up for students and professionals. The other review did not find a general spread effect. Follow-through is the question. A matching set of personalities is not the requirement.
Does extraversion mean I am better at teamwork?
No. Both reviews find a weak, unreliable link between extraversion and team performance (Peeters et al., 2006; Bell, 2007). Extraversion is the trait most consistently tied to who gets seen as a leader, which is a different question (Judge et al., 2002). A mix of extraverts and introverts was predicted to help teams. The pooled studies did not support that. Read the bar for how much of the week is live contact. Do not read it as a teamwork grade.
Can my MBTI type tell me if I am a good teammate?
No. The four letters omit neuroticism, only partly track agreeableness and conscientiousness, and are a preference vocabulary rather than a skill measure (McCrae & Costa, 1989; Myers et al., 1998). The two traits with the team-performance footprint are the ones the letters only partly show. The letter that tracks well, E versus I, sits on the trait with the weak team link. Type has little support as a predictor of job performance (Furnham, 2018). Use the continuous bars, then the actual team.
Should a team be made of similar people?
Not as a general rule. Peeters and colleagues found that less spread in agreeableness and conscientiousness went with better performance, in student teams and in professional teams. A high average and a low spread tend to travel together, so similarity is partly “nobody is pulling the average down.” Bell’s review, which included more studies and separated lab from field, did not find a general spread effect. Match the team to the work. Similarity on two traits is a question. It is not a staffing policy.
Start here
- Take the Free Test and read Agreeableness and Conscientiousness before the four letters
- Browse Types and treat the Career page as an environment sketch, not a teamwork ranking
- Read Test Methodology for how scores map to letters
- Read What Our Personality Test Measures for what the bars are and are not
- Read Big Five vs MBTI for the letter–trait correspondences
- Read Does Your Personality Decide How You Handle Conflict at Work? when the question is the argument
- Read Personality and Leadership at Work when the question is who gets seen as the leader
- Read Does Personality Predict Job Performance? when the question is doing your own work well
- Read Personality and Burnout when the question is exhaustion under load
- Read How to Job-Search by MBTI Type before treating a letter as a career gate
Personality shifts the average odds that a real team’s mix of agreeableness and conscientiousness lines up with how the group performs. The task, the time you will actually spend together, and what each person does with the work still do most of the sorting.