Team Building and Online Games
People playing online games, such as World of Warcraft (10 million+ players), are used to the idea that each of their virtual characters is unique and has a specific role in group adventuring. When encountering enemies, for example, a warrior class character is expected to lead the attack and shield the rest of the team from being hit by the enemies. The warrior class character's unique traits are its super high defense and its ability to taunt and direct the enemy's attack towards it. In contrast, a priest class character's primary role is to heal and keep the warrior alive, while the mage and rogue class character's role is to hit the enemies with its powerful magic and weapon attacks.
While these different classes are designed to complement each other in a team, it doesn't mean that each class is unable to adventure on its own and defeat enemies in a one-to-one combat. The key is to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the class and play them to your advantage.
In real life, however, a lot of people are under the illusion that they are expected to become a super-human. They strive to remove all weaknesses and at the same time improve all of their strengths. This leads to frustration and depression when they realise that such ideal conditions are practically impossible to reach. It may well be more realistic to accept one's characters and traits which are shaped by one's genetic inheritance, cultural background, past experiences and beliefs, and capitalise on one's strengths to navigate the game of life.
How do we identify our strengths? Selecting your virtual character's traits in an online game is simple enough as there are tools to measure its various traits such as stamina, intelligence, wisdom, agility etc. In the real world, however, human traits are notoriously too complex to identify and measure although some attempts have been made to simplify them. C G Jung's Psychological Types theory, further developed into Myer-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), is quite popular in assessing someone's characteristics, which is then useful in finding ideal jobs and professions for that person. There's also the Five Factor model and various others which are commonly used in psychometric tests.
Management by Color offers another approach to facilitate team building by providing a simple-to-use online tool to measure team member's traits, characteristics and preferences, allowing managers and team leaders to understand the team's make up and then deploy the team on a mission with a clear picture of each team member's role that capitalises on the individual's strengths. The tool guides the users through a step by step process to choose the dimensions relevant to the task at hand (e.g. focus, level of detail, communication etc.), evaluate the team members, and then visualise the result in easy to read graphs and reports.
