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Abstract: Personality preference is a key determinant of productive, effective healthcare teams. It is important that educators understand the impact of personality typology and incorporate strategies to enhance a student's leadership capacity. This non-experimental survey was designed to examine pretest/posttest findings about personality typology and participant feedback. The 18 health profession undergraduate students participated in a leadership program from September 2013 through May 2014. Their learning objectives focused on the relationship of personality typology to team-oriented processes. The students completed the Myers Briggs Type Indicator before and after the leadership program. Findings indicated that the most common personality profile among these students was ENFP for the pretest (n = 4, 22%) and ESTP for the posttest (n = 4,22%). Insights gained from students ' leadership experiences helped them better understand their individual personality and the personalities of others which they found were critical to successfully optimize interpersonal, group, and team processes.
Key Words: Personality Typology, Leading Teams, Health Professions Students
Introduction
new challenge for educators in the health professions is to prepare students to understand how personality typology can influence interpersonal processes. This preparation includes helping them to understand their individual preferred style of engaging others and how they interpret the needs and preferences of other individuals (Laurenson, Heath, & Gribbin, 2012). Empirical literature about health professionals in clinical and academic setting has explored personality typology and leadership skills, specifically in leading teams and engaging others; these studies were conducted both outside of the United States (US) (Qureshi & Dhaliwal, 2016; Laurenson et al., 2012) and inside the US (Latham, Ringl, & Hoga, 2011; LockwoodRayermann, 2003; Plonien, 2015; Savage et al., 2014). However, there has been limited empirical research on preparation of health profession undergraduate students to increase competencies in: (1) understanding about the different types of personalities; (2) how to recognize their own personality typology; and (3) how the interaction of personalities within the team environment affects team effectiveness. Furthermore, these limited studies have not reported any research findings based on data collection.
Descriptions of leadership programs in the US for undergraduate students in the health professions that have used personality assessments and that have looked at factors influencing team success have been published in peer-reviewed sources - yet no data from these...