How Can I Build Effective Teams?

If you want to go quickly, go alone.

If you want to go far, go together.

African Proverb

One of the most important responsibilities for anyone in business is building effective teams. At least, if you want your business to go far. So how do you do that?

Well, it took me years of trial and error to figure out what worked for me. So here are some of the insights I have learned:

1. Understand the personalities that work best with your personality type. We all respond differently under pressure thus it is beneficial to assess yourself first. There are a number of personality assessment tests that can help you with this if you don't know yourself well enough. Then, pick people who can handle your personality type.

For example, when I am dealing with issues, I am direct and to the point, and don't often shy away from conflict. The people that deal directly with me understand that's just who I am and work well with that. Otherwise, they would have a hard time working directly with me.

2. What are you looking for?  I find this the hardest part sometimes...just understanding what the true needs of the organization are and the type of individual required to move the organization forward. If your situation is rapidly evolving, hiring someone with a lot of "runway" (this is a term used by Jack Welch, former CEO of GE) is ideal. "Runway" to me means someone who has the ability to learn and evolve from their current role.  If your situation is fairly stable or your growth rates are relatively modest, than hiring someone who wants to evolve and grow maybe the wrong choice for you. Better to choose someone who likes the stability.

3. Hire the leader first. I tend to pick the team leader first and spend my time and efforts on finding that person. If I hire the right leader, they take a huge workload away from me. I also invest my time in the team leader until I am comfortable that they understand my goals, hiring criteria, and vision. Once they do, they tend to drive the process of building the right team.

4. Accept responsibility when you hire the wrong person.  A majority of the population will show you their abilities within the first 180 days. For me, 90 days is too soon to find out. The second hardest part about building teams is admitting you made the wrong hiring decision and helping the person become successful elsewhere. And this is where most people fail to act. After a while, resentment starts to build on both sides. Sooooo...MAN UP (or WOMAN UP)! In my experience, most people are right about their hiring decisions 50% of the time. And the ability to act on the wrong decision is what makes the difference between average and awesome.

5. Always be looking. When do you hire the right person? When the right person comes along. I see this all the time, even in our own organizations. We lose an employee, and we start interviewing. We are so pressed to hire that we hire the first acceptable person that comes along. Instead, I believe one should always be interviewing. Make it a part of your job ... so that you have an idea where to pull from if the need arises.

6. Nobody is perfect. What you are trying to do is build a high performance team that can work together. So, what I typically do is hire the leader, talk about goals, objectives, culture, personalities, skills, etc...then work with the leader to design a team. Not a lot different than sports teams - each person has a role to play. If done properly, the team performs better than the sum of its individual players. This is where organizations rise above the rest.

To me, business is a lot like golf. Moving your feet or hands 1 or 2 centimeters can make the difference between your shot going 15 yards or 150 yards. Often times, making adjustments to your hiring approach can make the difference between your business being average or excelling.

Hopefully this gets you thinking about your own internal team building efforts. There is a lot more to discuss thus I welcome your comments (click on Links To This Post) or inquiries. Feel free to post your comments below or look me up on Facebook if you would like to discuss.

BTW, I am an awful golfer :))