The importance of establishing personalities in esports teams

Are you looking for ways to optimize your team in esports? Do you want to become a well-organized team? A team that can work together despite different personalities? Then this article may be just for you. In this article, we take a look at how understanding your teammates’ (and your own) personality can strengthen your team. However, we will not be covering all areas of personalities and how they affect your teamwork. Instead, this article intends to explain the importance of establishing personalities in esports teams and what you can do to become aware of these personalities.

When playing games in teams, whether it be League of Legends (LoL) or Dota 2, there are always different roles on your team. Examples of roles could be Top-laner, AD Carry and Support in LoL, or Hard Carry, Mid and Offlaner in Dota 2. The more different roles you have on your team, the better the team becomes. It’s the same outside the game, when working as a team in esports.

No one is identical and let’s appreciate that. But we can have similar personality traits that helps understanding what kind of personality we have. Our personality affects everything we do and therefore, it’s tied to how we act in a team. Understanding your different personalities in a team helps your team to work together on becoming aware of your strengths and weaknesses you possess. And that leads to creating common goals, which leads to better communication, which leads to optimized teamwork, which is important in esports.

It can seem difficult to write all your personality traits down and understand their meaning. Luckily, there are tools like personality tests that can help you define your personality. An example of that, is 16Personalities. This site gives you the opportunity to take a personality test. It also contains articles and theories about personality traits.

16Personalities divides personality into 4 categories (Analysts, Diplomats, Sentinels, and Explorers) and each category is divided into 4 sub-categories. Understanding your own personality opens the door to objective self-awareness. It helps you see aspects of yourself that could be improved and how you can optimize your strengths. This is important in a team in esports. By developing self-awareness, we become better at communicating with others. That helps you work on your teamwork, motivate each other, create common goals and help you understand how every person plays a part in your team, despite different personalities.

In order to increase your skills in resolving conflicts in a training, there are several approaches to take into account. All these approaches help choosing the best method for resolving conflicts described earlier.

Some of those approaches are:

• Active listening – Involves making note of a phrasing, then responding with the same wording. This not only demonstrates that you are listening, but also helps clear up any confusion regarding your argument.
• Patience – People will often hold their stands (simply because we want to be right) until they are right or are proven wrong. It’s important to keep in mind, that the conflict may not be solved right away. No matter the conflict and how long it may take, it is important to listen to every participant and respect each argument.
• Calmness and positivity – Being positive can help keeping the progress moving forward. Also, no conflict will be solved by anger, tears and bad language. Keep a good tone, stay positive and respect other participants arguments. Do not point fingers or become impulsive. Keeping calm will affect the others and eventually leading the progress forward.
• All three approaches help you navigate between the methods for resolving conflicts. Active listening helps you understand the problem. Patience involves knowing that conflicts aren’t always solved in a matter of minutes and sometimes you need to switch between methods depending on the conflict. Calmness and positivity help you keeping the progress forward. That leads to better communication, which leads to understanding the problem. And that eventually helps you choosing a method to resolve the conflict. However, we need to keep in mind that all three approaches, in some way, are connected.

  Conclusion

  To sum it all up, understanding your team’s different personalities is a vital factor in esports. Taking a personality test (16personalities.com) and talking about it with your team is a good start. This creates self-awareness which helps understand our own weaknesses and strengths. This leads to better communication, which leads to better teamwork, creating common goals, increased motivation. And that leads to better team performance in esports.

  Take the test:

  16personalities.com

  Litterature

  Kyle (2020). Is It Important to Know My Personality Type for Work?
  URL: https://www.16personalities.com/articles/is-it-important-to-know-my-personality-type-for-work

  Darrel (2020). How to Create a Better Team Using Personality Traits.
  URL: https://www.16personalities.com/articles/how-to-create-a-better-team-using-personality-traits

  Tang, W. (2018). Understanding esports from the perspectives of team dynamics. The Sport Journal Vol 21. United States Sports Academy. ISSN: 1543-9518