It’s an early morning in Philippines for a person who works UK hours, and lives in India. Breakfast is great, with spoiling choices of Japanese, Chinese, Pilipino and Indian treats. Thought in my mind, is to get as healthy breakfast as possible –since it’s Monday and will be a long day.
I love colours (though professionally, word out there is I only believe in black and white!) I like to decorate my plate, then start with one end and complete the circle. While doing my routine, what struck is a thought about how essential is to build a great team. A lot has been written, yet I still chose to write my perspective.
Like my healthy breakfast plate (image on right), building a great team can be a creative but a long and demanding job. But then what differentiates great organizations from ‘ok’ or bad organizations are right teams.
Hire people you know, or people who are known.
One of the greatest pitfalls of hiring is recruiting someone you know and are friends with. This is majorly driven by little or no faith in head hunters. Two benefits of hiring someone you know is that you are sure about the competencies and behavioural aspects of the person. But sometime this evolves into conflict or for lack of better word a power ‘tussle’. In my experience what has worked better is to hire someone who is known to a close but reputed colleague or a friend. Although this has to be substantiated with thorough validations by you and your HR function. The advantage is that the person who recommends this candidate, his reputation is tied into the performance of the recruit (unsaid part of the equation). We can also recruit with a short term-say a 6 months contract, so its easier to get out-if there is a requirement.
Develop confidence and transparency.
Confidence of individuals in their roles is, key to a great and high performance team. Confidence comes from knowledge and knowledge is a function of abilities and experience.
Honesty and transparency in assessing your abilities (and your shortcomings) is, key to individual and a team’s success. Self-awareness is another term widely used for this factor. The proportion between your factual abilities and what you projection of yourself is a key quotient to watch for. We all come across various individuals with very diverse quotients! ; at work, in families and other social arenas.
Keep this quotient in mind for yourself and for every member of your team-always.
People who know me would be familiar with a quote I use extensively “capitalize on strengths and make weaknesses irrelevant” I believe this is the key for all business and personal relationships. Application of this principle is universal.
What’s also important is that, as a team, we are aware of each other’s weaknesses and absolutely sure/confident of strengths. Very often I sit in conference rooms with groups at all levels, where the total experience of the group exceeds 10-20-30 and sometimes more than 50 years of experience!
Teams/Groups almost at all times fail to recognize the true potential of their collective expertise. Conversations like these are key, in igniting collaborative teamwork. Ignition though will help only for a few steps, what is important is follow through and constant ‘fuel’ supply. Understanding individuals will take you, a long way to refuel the team where required.
Have fun!
Creativity and spirit of team is to be further fostered by regular (though not excessive!) doses of fun exercises. Fun has a very diverse meaning across individuals, groups, countries and geographies. The constant endeavor would be to find the correct balance and embrace diversity. Some activities are key to team building and some are required to reboot your team’s computer. In the end we all are humans, and as long as we are aware and hooked on to our purposes- a few long evenings won’t hurt!
Happy Team Building :)
