Mitigating Chemical Engineering Design Team Miscommunications with Knowledge of Myers-Briggs Type

摘要

The differences between successful and unsuccessful engineering teams seem quite stark on paper. The quality of deliverables like presentations or reports, the interactions of the team members, and the value of questions asked to instructors become increasingly worse as teams collapse. But are these teams really so different from their more successful peers? And what can instructors and the teams themselves do to mitigate difficulties and avoid complete team breakdown? To answer these questions, we investigated the engineering teams in a chemical engineering design capstone course for seniors. We assessed the possibility that the differences, rather than being due to team demographics or GPA discrepancies, were actually due to minute personality type differences among team members. We gave students the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) at the beginning of the course, but did not reveal their types to them so that they would not modify their behavior based on that knowledge. Throughout the course, the instructor kept notes on student interactions during team meetings and presentations. At the end of the course, we analyzed the instructor's team interaction notes, the students' peer evaluations of one another, and samples of student work for evidence of MBTI type-related difficulties over the course of the semester. We found that teams experienced difficulties related to all four of the MBTI dichotomies which proved to be detrimental to team success, both perceived and actual. Based on our results, we recommend familiarizing students with their MBTI type and the differences between each of the four dichotomies in their first year engineering courses. Knowledge of their MBTI type and the types of others, as well as the different ways in which individuals function, may mitigate the minute miscommunications related to type that contribute to the unexpected failure of some engineering teams.