84 THE INVESTMENT TEAM
LeBaron, a highly intuitive, creative investor, had discerned a pat-
tern underlying all the data.
Brinson’s third investor is the thinker (T) and judger (J). This
person is action-oriented and quick to move on an idea. Typically
such people don’t complicate their world with lots of different
possibilities. They “keep it simple, stupid.” They know what has
worked for them and, like Zweig and his hero Livermore, they
stick to the rules. Their discipline is often what allows them to win
and to endure tough markets.
The question, though, is how these different personality talents
can come together on a team. How does one harness their distinc-
tive abilities? The way to get teams to work well together has two
aspects: (1) conscious attention to the different styles and (2) a
process for working with those styles. The different styles and their
strengths and weaknesses have already been addressed, so let’s turn
to the process for working as a team.Getting a Team Working Together
Good chemistry matters. In my experience, team leaders are better
off picking members among whom there is good rapport, which
means trust and respect and positive intention—basically, the mutual
desire to achieve a clearly stated goal. Although this may sound
obvious, too many teams start off with poor personal relations (or
even an out-and-out saboteur) and try to work through those
headaches. Some experts say that these headaches are inevitable.
Forming, storming, norming, and performing is natural law and
will happen with any group. To some extent that’s true. All teams
experience some friction. But the leader has to determine what is
healthy conflict and what is destructive to the team’s momentum.
Again, knowledge of personality types is essential for these judg-
ment calls. Otherwise, a “judging” team captain may toss out the
“perceiving” participants because they drag out the discussions and08-13 ware 84 1/19/01, 1:10 PM