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The Return Of The Archons
What makes for a good team? Do you want opinionated, dynamic people? Facilitators? Consensus builders? I guess the easy answer is that you want a diverse mix of people and personalities, but that's a cop out: what you really want is to make progress in your work.
In the Star Trek show "Return of the Archons", Kirk and the gang beam down to a planet where everybody is calm and controlled, except for the "witching hour" when they all turn into craven lunatics. Turns out the society is being run by a computer created by Landru. Kirk gets the computer to destroy itself and presumably Starfleet gets sent another big bill for a broken computer on Beta III.
While I'm not advocating ringing a bell during our workday for an hour of mayhem, some amount of controlled chaos is a very good thing. I think the guys in Hollywood call it "creative tension" It's the productive conversation that people have about where they want to go, sharing their difference in views. (For more than you ever wanted to know about conversation as experiential learning, try this site.)
So I think the real trick is how much extreme variation you can have in viewpoints and still move productively towards a solution. Groups that are less diverse and more reserved take longer. Groups that are more diverse and confrontative get there quicker. But only if the common grounds of decency and respect are observed. To me, that's what makes an effective team.
BTW, this is also why "diversity for diversity's sake" is always a bad idea (and I mean diversity of opinion, not the other meanings). If you have a great difference in opinion, but nobody can talk to one another without offense, you have a dysfunctional group.
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