Basic background to my question on the ENT list serve (4th April 2012)
At my university, I coordinate the entrepreneurship minor, which is open to all 25000 students, of all majors, and also open to all other university students in Holland. During our 21-week minor, held twice a year, students form 15+ teams (usually 4 members per team), create business plans, launch, and generate revenue. Every Spring, I’m coordinating 15+ coaches and 25+ workshop speakers, all contributing on a volunteer basis.
For me, reducing the complexity of coordinating the minor has often pointed to two major tasks: forming the “right” teams, and preventing student team discontent. When students enter my minor, they are strangers to each other. We expect the students to form teams within the first 10 days of the semester. As your intuition might lead you to believe, there's a big difference between combining people that work well together, and combining people that are hopeless with each other. With 70+ students and teams of 4, there are millions of possible combinations.
This semester, for the first time, I required all students to complete the MBTI (the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory). My idea was to take those test scores, and publish them for all students to see, at the beginning of the semester (to see what I did, please see pp 81-82 of http://tinyurl.com/6vtue3p). Instead of pre-forming the teams, I would simply give students the information, and let them hunt for their preferred teammates on their own. Of course, I spent about 45 minutes during a class period to introduce the most basic parts of the concept of personality, risks and inaccuracies of personality tests, and the 4 dimensions covered by the MBTI.
My impression is that team formation was far, far smoother when I introduced this innovation. Students had a basic idea immediately of the different kinds of working styles in the class.
I have also found that collection of this personality data has helped me in assessing and managing discontent on teams. For example, this semester, I had a CEO on a team approach me and tell me that he had a tough time managing and motivating his team. We discovered that he was a "thinker" and the rest of his team were all "feelers." And indeed, he felt that he had difficulty connecting with his team due to this irremediable difference. The resulting action was that he stepped down as CEO, and the team appears to be operating more smoothly now.
Overall, I'm interested in how other teachers and coordinators of experiential entrepreneurship courses are explicitly using personality tests in their course. I'm happy to compile and send responses to my inquiry, if you wish.
Cheers,
-chihmao
c.m.hsieh [at] uva dot nl
Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship
Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Amsterdam
E2.21, Roetersstraat 11, 1018 WB Amsterdam
+31 20 525 4789 (T) | +1 734-274-5886 (from USA)
At my university, I coordinate the entrepreneurship minor, which is open to all 25000 students, of all majors, and also open to all other university students in Holland. During our 21-week minor, held twice a year, students form 15+ teams (usually 4 members per team), create business plans, launch, and generate revenue. Every Spring, I’m coordinating 15+ coaches and 25+ workshop speakers, all contributing on a volunteer basis.
For me, reducing the complexity of coordinating the minor has often pointed to two major tasks: forming the “right” teams, and preventing student team discontent. When students enter my minor, they are strangers to each other. We expect the students to form teams within the first 10 days of the semester. As your intuition might lead you to believe, there's a big difference between combining people that work well together, and combining people that are hopeless with each other. With 70+ students and teams of 4, there are millions of possible combinations.
This semester, for the first time, I required all students to complete the MBTI (the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory). My idea was to take those test scores, and publish them for all students to see, at the beginning of the semester (to see what I did, please see pp 81-82 of http://tinyurl.com/6vtue3p). Instead of pre-forming the teams, I would simply give students the information, and let them hunt for their preferred teammates on their own. Of course, I spent about 45 minutes during a class period to introduce the most basic parts of the concept of personality, risks and inaccuracies of personality tests, and the 4 dimensions covered by the MBTI.
My impression is that team formation was far, far smoother when I introduced this innovation. Students had a basic idea immediately of the different kinds of working styles in the class.
I have also found that collection of this personality data has helped me in assessing and managing discontent on teams. For example, this semester, I had a CEO on a team approach me and tell me that he had a tough time managing and motivating his team. We discovered that he was a "thinker" and the rest of his team were all "feelers." And indeed, he felt that he had difficulty connecting with his team due to this irremediable difference. The resulting action was that he stepped down as CEO, and the team appears to be operating more smoothly now.
Overall, I'm interested in how other teachers and coordinators of experiential entrepreneurship courses are explicitly using personality tests in their course. I'm happy to compile and send responses to my inquiry, if you wish.
Cheers,
-chihmao
c.m.hsieh [at] uva dot nl
Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship
Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Amsterdam
E2.21, Roetersstraat 11, 1018 WB Amsterdam
+31 20 525 4789 (T) | +1 734-274-5886 (from USA)