How do you get the best quality insight into your team's dynamics?

One way that is very popular is to complete an online questionnaire, that produces an automated report. It then tells you in black and white what is happening in your team. This sounds an easy process to follow, and it often is. But it is also highly flawed.

Most of the leading questionnaires that look at personality or dynamics in a team are supported by reliability and validity studies that provide an indication of how accurate the results of a questionnaire are, on average. This means that there are several problems with taking the report or results of a questionnaire as stating the truth about what is happening in your team:

- the results could be wrong - no personality or team questionnaire is 100% reliable

- there is a tendency for readers to take what is written as true of themselves or their team, even when it isn't true (this is known as the Barnum Effect)

- your team is not necessarily "average", but has its own unique characteristics, so the average results of a questionnaire may not apply to you/your team

These problems do not mean, however, that all questionnaires are worthless or it is pointless using them. They have value if used in the right way, recognising their limitations. It is akin to listening to weather forecasts - we know they are not 100% reliable, but we still listen to them and use the information in the forecast to think about how many layers of clothing to wear when going out, whether to take an umbrella, etc..

In a similar way, the real value of team questionnaires is to listen to the results, recognise they are not 100% reliable, but then use the information to discuss the issues that are relevant for the team. That is, to get the best quality insight for your team you should

- use questionnaires to get (tentative) feedback on the way the team is operating but then:

- use the results as the basis of a discussion amongst team members on what you need to do to improve the way you work as a team.  This involves recognising that the results have a degree of truth in them, but you can't be sure how much that degree of truth is.

As far as the Team Dynamics Assessment is concerned, that means you should collect data and produce the report, but then sit down with the team and discuss what the results mean. Don't take the results as gospel truth (though, don't dismiss them either). Rather, consider the results as akin to a weather forecast, and let your team interpret the implications for them through discussion and the application of common sense.