Humans have a personality — a set of relatively enduring psychological characteristics. Some of these characteristics, e.g., emotional stability and conscientiousness, appear very important to enjoying life and being productive.

A work group is a “relatively small group of individuals in an organization who are interdependent in their tasks, who share responsibility for the group’s outcomes, and who see themselves, and are recognized by others, as a single unit in an organization” (Malouff et al., 2013). Do work groups have a personality? Yes, according to research done by Lucy Zucker, Nicola Schutte, and me. We asked hundreds of workers in a wide variety of organizations to describe the psychological characteristics of their work group. We identified terrms that several workers mentioned, created a list of those terms, and asked hundreds of other workers to rate their work group on the terms. Using factor analysis, we identified 30 terms that describe the one main personality trait of work groups: how agreeable the group is. The more agreeable the group, the more job satisfaction workers had and the less inclined they were to want to leave the job. Interestingly, this characteristic is similar to the agreeableness personality characteristic found in individuals.

So how agreeable is your work group? You can use the scale below to rate the group. In our research, we found an average scale score of 160, with a standard deviation of 35. So a work group with scale score under 125 would be unusually low; a group with an score over 195 would be unusually high.

Here are the response options:

1=disagree strongly, 2=disagree moderately, 3=disagree slightly, 4=neither agree nor disagree, 5=agree slightly, 6=agree moderately and 7=agree strongly

Here are the 30 items to use for rating your work group:

1. caring
2. cohesive
3. collaborative
4. communicative
5. considerate
6. cooperative
7 easygoing
8. empathic
9. encouraging
10. enjoyable
11. flexible
12 friendly
13. fun
14. funny
15. happy
16. helpful
17. honest
18. humorous
19. kind
20. loyal
21. nice
22. patient
23. positive
24. relaxed
25. respectful
26. rewarding
27. social
28. supporting
29. thoughtful
30. understanding

Add up your responses. The scale score for your group might tell you something about why you like or dislike your job. Your ratings of the group on individual items might also be meaningful. Do you see room for improvement? How might you contribute to that improvement?

For more information about the research, see the following book chapter:

Malouff, J., Zucker, L., & Schutte, N. (2013). Do work groups have personalities? In E. C. Crossman & M. A. Weiler (Eds.), Personality traits: Causes, conceptions and consequences. Hauppauge, NY: Nova.

John Malouff, PhD, JD, Assoc Prof of Psychology