So you're putting together a team.  Naturally, your first thought is to invite people who possess the necessary skills and knowledge required to get the job done.  But let's say that you have at your disposal a large pool of candidates with rather similar abilities and experience.  What criteria, then, do you use for choosing your teammates?

With all things being equal, your next step is to look at the potential personality mix. But this raises an interesting philosophical question:  Do you select a homogenous group with similar personalities and the potential for common vision and harmony, or do you go for a heterogenous team with diverging personalities and the potential for energetic discussions from varied viewpoints?

Both strategies have their advantages, as well as their pitfalls.  With a group of homogenous personalities, for example, you are likely to have far fewer conflicts. Everyone gets along, everyone's communication styles are fairly similar.  There are fewer fights, a common vision…but somehow, this kind of group doesn't always perform up to its potential.  It seems to need the energy boost that comes from the impassioned, sometimes conflicting discussion of ideas.

With a heterogenous group, you get a different kettle of fish.  Personalities clash, and different communication styles can lead to one misunderstanding after another. Meetings seem like a war zone.  And yet, from the crucible of conflicting personalities and ideas can often arise some wonderfully creative energy and invention…IF you can keep teammates from killing each other.

Consider the case of colleagues Jean and Diane.  Jean has spent the last three years as a member of a homogenous workgroup characterized by a fondness for brainstorming. Ask a question on her team and everyone enthusiastically throws out a dozen ideas.  Idea generation is their talent, their "personality"; culling these ideas and making actual decisions - this they are not as good at.  But boy is it fun in this group thinking out loud and bouncing new thoughts off each other.

Diane, on the other hand, has spent the previous two years as a member of a team characterized by quick analysis and decision making.  Her group's "personality" is to hold up one idea at a time for group consideration, and then to assess that idea- either implementing or discarding it based on the person's ability to convince the others of the idea's merit. 

Now Jean and two of her fellow "brainstormers" find themselves on a four-person team with Diane and two of her fellow "assessers".  Rick, their boss, thinks this is a fine idea, in theory - creating a heterogenous team of "idea people" and "implementers": the best of both worlds. The reality, however - at least initially - is something of a battlefield.  At this new group's meetings, Jean and her gang consistently try to lead the team into idea-generation sessions.  Diane's posse, in response, attempts to assess each idea as it arises, constantly interrupting the other trio's brainstorming flow.  When Diane's group dominates, Jean's group feels shut down and unable to shine.  When Jean's partners prevail, Diane and her allies feel frustrated and impatient, forced to sit around uselessly, adding no input, while the other people spin their wheels and no decisions are made.

It strikes me that what we're talking about here is stability vs. dynamism.   When building a skyscraper, for example, you need to start by constructing solid base, but you can't simply stand pat when you've finished firming up the ground level.  You then need to reach upward, building each initially wobbly new level one at a time, until that new level has been stabilized. And then you reach upward again, dynamically. So, too, with teams.  You try to create as homogenous and as stable a team as you can, with a common purpose and an agreed-upon vision.  But too much homogeneity and stability leads to stagnation and complacency, and the team's productivity eventually degrades.  So you reach "upward" and add some "imbalance" - new teammates who shake things up with their different personalities and their conflicting outlooks.  Sparks fly…and dynamism happens.  The danger is that too much "dynamism", in the form of arguments and personal attacks, might knock the building over if not monitored and managed with skillful process and communication.

Rick's team, in its heterogeneity, has enormous potential.  If its group members can learn to communicate skillfully and understand each other's strengths (and weaknesses), their ability to generate innovation and change, and then to implement successful action plans, is virtually unlimited.  What the team needs, however, is a willingness to take turns letting each faction do what it's good at.  Jean's group might, for example, request very specifically, "Please let us brainstorm and think out loud for 5 minutes, without interruption. That's how we come up with our best ideas."  And Diane's group defers - this time - knowing that soon their chance will come to assess and implement the best of those ideas.   Neither faction may like the other group's style, and they may not always navigate the interactions skillfully, but they know the big picture: that the occasional conflicts are worth the pain for what they can help the team achieve together.   

And that's how you build a team skyscraper, my friends.  With the right mix of homogeneity and heterogeneity, of dynamism and stability.