Using personality type differences to form engineering design teams

This paper argues for the greater use ofpersonality type instruments such as theMyers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) andthe Keirsey Temperament Sorter II (KTS II),when forming engineering design teams.Considering the importance of teamworkin all aspects of education and industry,it is surprising that few universities in theUK use personality type information whenforming design teams. This has led tomany courses not getting the best out oftheir students, and more importantly thestudents not getting the most out of theteamworking experience. Various teamformation methods are discussed and theirrelative strengths and weaknesses outlined.Normal personality type distributionsin base populations are presented andcompared with data from recent studies ofengineering students, and the link betweenengineering, design and creativity isdiscussed. The results of this study haveshown that the most important of the typepreferences is the Sensing-iNtuitive (S-N)scale, with its proven link to creativityand learning styles. It is concluded thatboth engineers and designers have muchin common, and a methodology of usingpersonality type choice sets to selectand form engineering design teams isproposed.