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The purpose of this study is to show that the presence of strong personality traits in management teams may have limiting effects on the teams' ability to adapt to critical changes in their business environments.

The financial operations characterizing ten management teams have been traced over three years, and the personalities of all managers were measured during the first phase of the project. A critical incident in the market signalled a need to adapt after about 20 months. The ensuing adaptation was analysed and related to the presence of strong personality traits, plotting all data in two‐dimensional space to visualize the relationship between personality and business operations.

The intra‐team maximum traits were systematically related to a tendency to perform habitual business in the teams. Only intelligence and stability were related to better performance after the crisis, suggestion that other strong traits may impose rigidity.

The sample is limited to ten management teams, but these are followed for three years through 33 observation points. Also, a visualization technique based on factor analysis is used in addition to regression equations as one of the main methodological tools.

Managers composing teams should observe the presence of strong traits and take action to prevent obstructing adaptation after crises. This knowledge may induce efforts to overcome rigidity and understand the value of reflection‐in‐action for teams.

The paper presents a new way of conceptualizing the role of personality in management teams and shows its immediate impact on business performance in a real‐life setting.

Belbin team role scores derived from the 16PF5 personality questionnaire data were obtained from a sample of volunteers drawn from industrial and local authority organizations. The volunteers, comprising male and female managers and non‐managers, with approximately equal numbers in each of the four possible categories, were set into teams. Approximately half of the 55 teams comprised solely managers, the other half solely non‐managers. The distribution of Belbin team roles over all the teams was not controlled. All teams completed a business game typically used for training managers in team decision making. The distribution of Belbin scores amongst all the volunteers and the results of the business game provided evidence in support of the claim that Belbin’s team role theory can be applied to non‐managerial personnel.

Further to the development of the team climate inventory (TCI), a multidimensional team‐level measure of team‐working style, this paper reports the development and psychometric validation of the team selection inventory (TSI), an individual‐level version of the TCI for use in selection. The importance of examining selection at both person‐job and person‐team levels of analysis is discussed, the team climate literature briefly reviewed, and the need advocated for methods and measures to evaluate person‐team fit. The TSI was developed by changing the context of the TCI, from asking respondents about the actual climate of their existing work‐team, to what their preferred or ideal team‐working climate would be. Having developed items for the TSI through this change of context, six studies (total n=1,029) were carried out over a two‐year period to establish the underlying psychometric properties of this new measure. This paper reports the results pertaining to TSI factor structure, the newly developed social desirability scale, internal reliability, test‐retest reliability, and construct validity of the TSI compared with the NEO PI‐R and 16PF Version 5. Overall, the findings of these studies revealed acceptable levels of reliability and validity, showing promise for the TSI as an individual‐level measure of team climate preference for selection and development purposes in industrial, work and organizational psychology and human resource management. In conclusion, potential uses for the TSI in team selection and development are discussed.

Consideration of Belbin’s team role model led to the view that some of the roles proposed might require the exercise of control, but others much less so. A hypothesis which indicated which roles might be expected to manifest expressed and wanted control was developed and then tested using Schutz’s FIRO‐B questionnaire. A mixture of graduates in employment and undergraduates still at university were utilised as subjects for the investigation. After consideration of the validity of Schutz’s constructs, the data obtained were construed as supporting the hypothesis and adding weight to the claims for the validity of the Belbin team role model.