Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.
Michael Jordan
Gathering professionals into one group of people and distributing tasks to them is not teamwork.
What teamwork is:
- There are common team goals.
- There is compatibility with the company in terms of cultural values.
- There is a mutual understanding of each other’s characters and actions.
- There is a leader (can also be informal).
- There is a desire to work together and win.
If there is all of the above, then this is a single organism that is ready to achieve any goals. If not – it is simply a group of professionals. If something is missing, then a team building process is required.
Roles in the team (Belbin’s model)
This is a critical component of dream team building. And the most effective way to determine team roles is the “Belbin model.” It takes into account not only the competencies of each team member, but also their human factors. According to it, there are 9 possible Belbin team roles.
Team roles and responsibilities:
- Plant (PL) or Idea generator.
- Monitor-Evaluator (ME) or analyst.
- Coordinator (CO).
- Implementer (IMP).
- Completer-Finisher (CF).
- Resource Investigator (RI).
- Shaper (SH) or Motivator.
- Team Worker (TW) or Diplomat.
- Specialist (SP).
Each person on the team can play a different role, one of the nine or several at once. The more diverse a team is, the more balanced the team is and the better able it is to accomplish its goals.
Life cycle of a team
A team is a living organism and analogies are ubiquitous. The five stages of the team building process, or life cycle, are just that. One of the most popular models of this approach is offered by the American psychologist Bruce Tuckman. In his view, any team goes through 5 phases or stages of team development:
- Forming stage of group development or Team building stage.
- Storming stage of group development or Conflict stage.
- Norming stage of group development or the stage of transition from personal goals to common goals.
- Performing stage or the stage of maximum result with the highest efficiency.
- Adjourning stage of group formation – Nothing lasts forever.
Of course, some stages can blend in with others. Sometimes it happens that after one stage you have to do everything all over again. But on the whole, any team has such a life cycle. And to go all the way as comfortably as possible and with good results, it’s important to choose the right people.
The right people are great teamwork
My model for business is The Beatles. They were four guys who kept each other kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other and the total was greater than the sum of the parts. That’s how I see business: great things in business are never done by one person, they’re done by a team of people.
Steve Jobs
Interview
The first and most important step in recruiting players for a dream team is the interview. There are many recommendations on what to do and how to do it, but for any interview the following are important:
- Interview preparation and the right job interview questions. It is necessary to create a portrait of an ideal candidate: who is needed for the team and what criteria this person should meet.
- Job description. It is important to write concisely and briefly: what is the essence of the position, what are the professional requirements, and what are the advantages of working for a particular company.
- Selection of people for the interview. It is important to initially select from those applicants who best fit the specific requirements for the candidates. This way you have a better chance of finding the right person.
This is the basic way of searching, selecting, and hiring specialists for a dream team. But to keep the team strong for a long time, you need to be able not only to select people, but also to keep them or replace them in time.
An employee has decided to leave, how do you keep an employee?
An employee’s desire to move to another company, to quit the company, or to become a hermit – this can happen at any time, and you should be prepared for it. But what should a leader do when the leaving of a particular person from a project and a team is extremely undesirable?
Find out the reasons for their decision. And here it is important to understand that there can be two types of reasons for leaving a company:
○ external (family moves, illness, change in life priorities, and similar);
○ internal (problems in the team, unsatisfied salary, career goals, and other reasons).
Based on this information, offer an alternative that will motivate him or her to stay in the team.
These are two simple actions that hide a huge amount of work. And you should always remember that sometimes it is impossible to influence a person’s leaving the team. And sometimes there are times when it’s not worth trying. We talk about that next.
Reasons to fire an employee
A team is a living organism that sometimes needs to be renewed by adding new members or getting rid of old ones. There are the following reasons for the latter:
- Theft, drunkenness, and similar things – fire immediately.
- A person who doesn’t fit the company’s cultural values (a toxic person).
- An employee who doesn’t perform the assigned tasks (not suitable from a professional point of view).
- Failure to comply with the work discipline (sets a bad example for others).
As for how to dismiss an employee, there are no universal formulas. But the main thing is never to do it emotionally or without understanding the situation! And to do this, it is important to properly build interactions within the team and evaluate the work of employees according to clear criteria that everyone understands.
Conclusion
In building a truly effective and flexible team that can get to its goal, it is important to build communication between the team members and understand each other. To have the right people in the team who can do the tasks, look at the project critically, or understand that the project is at the finish line. This is why it is important not only for members to have professional skills, but also to have personal and communication skills, as well as an ability to work together.