Conflicting personalities

- One thing I love about cross-functional teams is people bring their unique personalities to that team. Not all personalities work well together. Some people are outgoing and loud while others prefer to be quiet and reserved. Some are risk-takers and some are more risk-averse. Since a cross-functional team brings people together from different functions, the team is going to have to work with many different kinds of personalities. There's always going to be conflict in these situations. Some things you can do to deal with this conflict are first, size up team members. Assess their personalities. Organize the team to either minimize conflict or balance out some traits. For example, put a risk-taker with someone who's risk-averse. Put an extrovert with an introvert, and put the introvert in charge. Put someone who's more logical with someone who's more emotional. Beware of placing too many people with similar personalities together. That can create risk or conflict of its own. Several…