When you are building a team to take your business to the next level. You can often hire for the skills that you need and not take into consideration the team dynamic.
That’s not to say that you hire team members to be friends, but you do need to think about how individuals will mesh; and how they will work with your clients.
Look at the Premier League Football teams, they can have the very best players, who look like a winning team on paper but if the players don’t work well together no silverwork will be won – and the manager may not stick around!
The last thing you want is to invest in building a team and then get to a point where your business accelerates and you get a flood of resignations.
The first time that it happened to me, I was gutted. I’d invested in building a team and just when I was moving up and was preparing my team to step into my shoes, some decided to move to other organisations.
Where did I go wrong?
I had been so busy focusing on delivery that I hadn’t taken the time to properly listen to what my team members aspirations were and I’d tried to mentor them into thinking the way that I did, rather than understanding their unique strengths.
Every individual is different and will bring different strengths, skills and potential challenges, it’s important to make sure that your team dynamic is positive and any conflicts are addressed swiftly.
There are three things I always do when I’m adding or developing a team (for me or a client):
1. Never replace like for like – Always review the role and the business needs to create a revised role that hits the needs of the business going forward.
2. Recruit for a 70-80% skills match so that there will be a period of stretch and development.
3. Look for the personality traits that we may be missing to add balance to the team. There are many personality frameworks; Myers Briggs, Colorworks, Five Voices, etc, that can be used to assess your team and give you a common language to use
Throughout this month I will be sharing tips to improve team dynamics but If you need help with building your team or your team dynamic, schedule a FREE 20-minute Team Strategy Call