Working Together, Better!
As you grow your business, chances are, you’re thinking about your team mix. Do you have the right combination of operations, finance, and marketing? Are you appropriately staffed with both senior leaders and individual contributors? Of course these types of questions will help you build out the team most suited for running your business. However, have you also thought about how the personalities on your team will work together to achieve your goals?
As your team forms, (or as you wonder why your existing team is not working well together), it can often help to take a step back and assess your team’s skillsets. Though we might first think about hard skills such as technical aptitude, tools experience or data manipulation abilities, the soft skills that your team uses everyday can be just as important. And with the right team mix, you’ll find that team members organically pick up the slack for their colleagues in areas aligned with their natural strengths.
There are myriad personality quizzes available today - many with free, online versions. When these assessments are used as a team building exercise, each member of the team will learn the strengths that they bring to the group (eg. Leadership potential, Analytical skills, People-focused prowess and/or Risk-taking capabilities).
It’s certainly useful for each team member to have this self-assessment. However, the magic truly happens when the group shares their strengths, and the team understands how those with varied personalities can avoid conflict and instead bring out the best in each other. The group leaves the session feeling like a more cohesive team with a better understanding of how they function as a unit, as well as where any gaps may be.
Without fail, I see that this type of assessment has a direct impact on the team’s productivity, as we iterate on our resourcing strategy to align strengths with program or project roles. For example, those who are natural organizers or relationship-focused tend to be the project managers and work best with cross-functional stakeholders. The more spontaneous teammates are your top brainstormers, and those who are more data-driven often develop the most insightful solutions. If the team is missing out on some of these skills, we adjust our hiring goals to include the target qualities.
In my time using this process at Google, I’ve seen every team I’ve worked with energized by the knowledge brought forth in this kind of team building work, and I’ve seen several teams truly transformed when they begin using what they know about each other to work together towards their goals.
Are you ready to take your team to the next level? Let’s talk about how I can help in team building, assessing team mix and more! Request a consultation with Ashley Bernstein.
