6 Encourage athletes to communicate with team-mates using behaviors and methods that are compatible with the communication preferences of the focal person. This suggests a minor amendment to the well known saying ‘treat others as you would like to be treated’. Instead, athletes could be encouraged to ‘treat others in the way that they wish to be treated’.
7 Identify potential barriers for communication that may involve potentially con- flicting personality characteristics. Athletes could be encouraged to play devil’s advocate with their own opinions and try to see things from the perspective of their team-mates.
8 If members exhibit tendencies that might be in conflict with those of others, develop rules for effective communication. One example corresponds to the ‘Four-Sight’ model of communication outlined by Lothian (1997), which involves: (step 1 – intuition) using the imagination of all group members to come up with new ideas; (step 2 – sensing) gather the relevant data; (step 3 – thinking) analyze the processes required to implement different objectives; and (step 4 – feeling) give consideration to how the chosen strategy will affect different people.
Future research directions and conclusions
Perhaps the most appropriate way of seeking to propose directions for future group/ personality research is to look to the past and in particular to the comments of Lewin (1951) when he asserted that ‘there’s nothing so practical as a good theory’ (p. 169).
That is, to develop effective and practical solutions to pressing social issues, theory driven-research is required. Unfortunately the study of personality within sport and exercise psychology has, to date, been largely atheoretical. It is our assertion that if researchers are to effectively understand what role personality plays within inter- dependent settings (and intervene accordingly) then sound conceptual frameworks are needed that drive theoretically considered research hypotheses. The study of groups represents a particularly fascinating context in which to examine interpersonal behaviors. It is possible that the value of personality research in sport and exercise settings lies not in its direct predictive power (or lack thereof) in relation to individual independent athletic functioning but, as Carron et al. (2005) suggested, in the extent to which personalities ‘mesh’ within interdependent group settings that is of real importance.
Over the course of this chapter a number of possible future research avenues have been highlighted. These include the use of group personality composition models to examine the extent to which maximum/minimum, mean and variance in personality traits are related to salient team dynamics outcomes such as group cohesion. We have also highlighted the importance of identifying personality characteristics that might be associated with the emergence of leaders within sports teams. Another particularly fruitful area of research within sport and exercise psychology relates to the use of type- based personality models that assess athlete preferences. Although a considerable amount of research and professional practice in areas such as counseling and manage- ment consulting involves such models, the extent to which they have been employed within sport and exercise has been markedly limited (Beauchamp et al., in press; Laval- lee, 2005). Nevertheless, the few intervention studies that have employed personality preference-based frameworks suggest that such approaches can be used to facilitate both salient individual- (e.g. personal growth) and team-level (e.g. cohesion, intra-group trust) outcomes in sport.
Summary
A number of prominent reviews have addressed the role of personality within sport and exercise psychology research, many of which have painted a fairly pessimistic picture regarding the utility of personality assessment. In this chapter, we have out- lined conceptual and methodological advances involving sport-based research as well as approaches taken outside of the sport and exercise psychology literature that have potential to inform our understanding of conjoint functioning in groups. A vast amount of behavior in sport exists within group settings and we believe researchers should (re)engage in personality-based research and begin to understand how person- alities blend (cf. Carron et al., 2005) to result in highly effective as well as dysfunctional teams.
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