Exploring Team Effectiveness of a Collegiate Women’s Basketball Team Using Kirton’s Adaption-Innovation Theory

The purpose of this project and report is to explore how an individual's problem-solving style affects how team members of a woman’s basketball team prefer to work within a team, and to identify how this relationship influences team strategies and their performance outcomes. The paper integrates adaption-innovation theory and aspects of different characteristics amongst teammates. Interestingly, this sample of women’s basketball team members found that the five starting members all had total KAI scores within 10 points of each other, indicating they all preferred to solve problems with the same approach. This high functioning team was incredibly successful as a homogenous group of problem-solving styles. However, adaption-innovation theory offers some limitations for the team’s ability to solve problems outside the cognitive climate range of this team, which may require more adaption or more innovation problem solving preferences.