The Relationships of Team Role- and Character Strengths-Balance With Individual and Team-Level Satisfaction and Performance

Abstract

Teamwork has been argued to play an increasingly important role in numerous jobs, and several studies focused on the effects of team composition for work-related outcomes. Recent research has also identified individuals’ character strengths and positive team roles (e.g., idea creator and relationship manager) as conducive to work-related outcomes. However, there is a scarcity of research on the role of character strengths or positive team roles on the level of teams. In the present study, we extend theoretical assumptions of team role theories to the study of character strengths and positive team roles: We examined the associations between character strengths and team roles with work-related outcomes on the individual (i.e., job satisfaction, self- and supervisor-rated performance) and the team level (i.e., teamwork quality, self- and supervisor-rated team performance). Further, we examined how the team composition relates to the outcomes, that is, whether balanced teams (i.e., all team roles or character strengths are represented in the current team) go along with desired outcomes and whether an overrepresentation of team roles or character strengths in a team (i.e., a team role or character strengths is represented by multiple team members) goes along with undesired outcomes. We studied a sample of 42 teams (N = 284 individuals) who completed measures of team roles, character strengths, teamwork quality, job satisfaction, and self-rated individual and team performance. Further, supervisor ratings of individual and team performance were collected. Results corroborated the relationships of team roles and character strengths with individual outcomes such as that specific roles and character strengths go along with individual performance and work satisfaction. Further, the results suggested that teams in which more team roles are represented report higher performance and teamwork quality. Also, teams with higher average levels of the character strengths of teamwork and fairness, and teams with more members scoring high in fairness and prudence report higher teamwork quality. Further, there is no evidence that having too many members with a particular character strength has detrimental effects on teamwork quality, work satisfaction, or performance. We conclude that extending the study of character to the level of teams offers an important advancement.

Character Strengths in the Life Domains of Work, Education, Leisure, and Relationships and Their Associations With Flourishing

“…Early Adolesc. 39, 864-903. doi: 10.1177/0272431618791286 Wagner, L., Gander, F., Proyer, R. T., and Ruch, W. (2020a). Character strengths and PERMA: investigating the relationships of character strengths with a multidimensional framework of well-Being.…”

“…Character strengths have also been shown to relate to adaptive coping strategies in the workplace and lower levels of work-related stress or burnout (Harzer and Ruch, 2015;Allan et al, 2017). Further, some character strengths go along with better self-and supervisor-rated work performance (Harzer and Ruch, 2014;Gander et al, 2020a), including both task performance and contextual performance. Finally, differences in character strengths have been observed in working versus retired individuals after controlling for age in a sample representing middle adulthood to old age, although the observed effects were small (Baumann et al, 2020).…”

The Character Strengths Response: An Urgent Call to Action

“…Willibald Ruch and his colleagues established a reliable measure of these roles as self-reported by employees, established the validity of this seven function classification, developed an algorithm that utilized all 24 VIA character strength scores for each individual, and found that this algorithm predicted which roles individuals reported as enjoying and performing well ( Ruch et al, 2016 , 2018 ). They then looked at actual work teams and discovered that balance across the team in these character strength related roles predicted self-reported and supervisor-reported measures that included quality of team experience and aspects of performance ( Gander et al, 2018 , 2020 ). For example, self-rated work satisfaction and teamwork quality were predicted by a number of character strengths, most strongly teamwork and love.…”

“…With regard to non-linear effects, Gander et al (2020) found that certain team roles, that are differentially predicted by character strengths profiles, have a quadratic relationship with team performance, meaning too little of that role in a team hurts performance and too much of that role also hurts performance. In this same study they did not find any quadratic relationships between specific character strengths representations on a team and team performance.…”

What are character strengths good for? A daily diary study on character strengths enactment

“…Character strengths are defined as positively-valued personality traits (Peterson & Seligman, 2004). These traits are associated with a broad array of important life outcomes, including life satisfaction across the life span (e.g., Baumann et al, 2020;, academic achievement (e.g., Lounsbury et al, 2009;Wagner & Ruch, 2015), work performance (e.g., Gander et al, 2020;Harzer & Ruch, 2014;Littman-Ovadia & Lavy, 2016), relationships (Wagner, 2019;Weber & Ruch, 2012), and health-related behaviors (Proyer et al, 2013). While character strengths are related to a variety of desirable long-term outcomes across different life domains (for an overview, see also , they may also be associated with more proximal outcomes and they could be capitalized upon to achieve specific goals or purposes.…”