Team Composition: Selecting Right Team Members
Sunday, 18 March 2012, Dharmendra Gupta
In continuation of my
earlier blog article Building, Developing and Managing High Performance Team,
In this blog article I am sharing few thoughts of mine on Team Composition.
Background
While it is a well known and documented process but
often many skip it while expanding team or building it from scratch (Easy to
say tough to implement).
1. Clear understanding of what set of goals and
objectives you need to achieve, and as a result what set of unique skills you
need to have it in your team. A clear answer on how will they contribute to the
overall success is also imperative.
2. And the second is what skill gaps you have in your
existing team. This needs a thorough self assessment.
Selecting right people with right skills and
capabilities is the most powerful first step that as a corporate manager you
can take towards starting journey of developing a high performance team. It’s a
highly responsible job which has high impact on future outcomes hence it needs
careful attention and detailed working on
1. Job Descriptions
(JD’s),
2. Key Result Areas
(KRA’s),
3. Key Performance
Indicators (KPI’s) - How are you going to measure his performance levels.
4. Career Path
available in the organization to least next few levels which is often the most
overlooked part.(Sense of career progress and job satisfaction is very important)
Often above 4 elements are not properly articulated
well and debated between internal stakeholders (existing team or up-line
managers) before selecting a new team member. Team leader know only what they
want in limited words but they fail to articulate beyond that. Without having a
clear strategy and thorough understanding of above 4 elements the whole
selection process becomes a matter of chance discovery and dependent on several
other outside factors.
I
Propose Select Members for their Unique Skills
About a couple of months back I came across a very
interesting blog on HBR by some sagacious writer (unable to find it again) a
few lines of which I have noted in my diary. This HBR article brings focus to a
very interesting perspective on team composition it states that “Each person in
the high performance team is a specialist for his own job, that trust every
other person in the team for his expertise and at the same time feels safe and
assured about his own importance in the team thereby reducing conflicts of
ego’s, existence and expertise.” Team composition strategy can’t be said in
more holistic approach than this.
Cognitive Skills like Good Communication, Perception, Problem solving,
Decision Making, Attention to details, Flexibility, Anticipation and Non Cognitive skills like
Perseverance, Reliability, Attitude and Self Discipline are very important
skills which are expected in almost all job positions today. But first before
you measure and judge a potential team member on these important cognitive and
non cognitive skill parameter you need to identify and decide what base skills
are needed to do the job by the team. Like in cricket/football/medical care/space
Mission/Investigation etc, you will select a person for his specialization as
per required position. Once a person has the required unique skills then he
should have important cognitive and non cognitive skills to apply, execute and
move towards success.
I
Propose Select Members for their Passion and commitments
Having a team member who is passionate and committed about
something of relevance is like “Icing on the Cake”. Whether that member is a
Graphic Designer, a Content Writer, a meticulous event planner for a marketing
team or a sector specialist, product specialist, technology specialist, a
region specialist in a business development team. But more often than not I
found people miscast-ed in roles and responsibilities that become drag on the
team. It is extremely important that a member of your team loves his role and
is passionate and committed to move ahead in that direction and at the same
time happy while in that role. Because you need a self driven specialist who
can put his heart and mind into the assignment. And people can be self driven
only in areas where they know the process of moving forward better than others
and team members look forward to him with expectation and confidence. This
confidence in his role creates enthusiasm and self engagement which propels the
team forward towards high performance.
A candidate has highest likeability if they display
their commitment towards a specific career goal which is in alignment with the
team objectives. Recently, when I contacted Mr. Akhshay Jain who is Business
Head with Amar Ujala Group of publication for
its Brand Activation Division asking him what is his criteria of selecting a
candidate he says that “I will see the
‘Will to Excel’ in that team member and also whether the candidate is joining
me with a defined career objective.”
In
an another incidence, When I contacted one very senior level executive in a
leading engineering firm to ask what is the most important criteria when you
select someone for role in sales, marketing or business development team he
gave a very brief answer; "Attitude
and Energy, then everything else." Well
none of us will have any difference with him because without a good attitude
even the best skilled member in a team will make negative contribution to the
team instead of complimenting it. And biggest fear and challenge in front of a
interview boards are; hiring a jerk. Jerks can put the entire team in a
difficult situation by annoying other team members and deteriorating the
environment by being small minded. But during interview people may hide their real
attitude temporarily and can easily deceive. It is extremely difficult to
rightly judge such qualities in a short flash. Hence only extremely experienced
people should only carefully judge attitudes of others.
Optimum Size of Team
Size of the team also plays an important role in the
effectiveness and team performance. Size of the team can also hinder in
achieving high performance in a given situation. Bigger team tends to form
different sub teams, breeding silos within them and then there is a loss of coordination
and coherence. Although there is no conclusion reached in various researches
that were carried out on finding the optimum no of members in a high
performance teams. Mr. Robinson Fernandez, Director GEI
Industrial Systems, has an interesting
view point on the no. of members in a team he says
Conclusion
The composition of a team should be based on unique
skills and perspective. For a new or an existing corporate team, members should
either have at least one distinctive and unique skill to differentiate or they
should develop one differentiating skills in alignment with team objectives. At
the same time they should be appreciative and supportive of the other team
members for their unique skills and help them strengthen and sharpen it
further. This will reduce the ego friction, unproductive debates; enhance trust
and mutual interdependence which are the foundations of high performance teams.
When such a team member with distinct capability enter the team then other team
members also acknowledges the same and then they can collectively play with
each other’s strength which has high potential to generate environment of high
performance.
Coming back to you if you were to choose team members for your
marketing, sales or business development team in your organization, what factors you would choose to select
your team members. How you would ascertain them during the interview process.
Share your experience and tell us your secret strategy of choosing right
candidates.
Reference and Resource Box for Related Readings:
Article
Link: “Team at the Top” by JON R. KATZENBACH AND DOUGLAS K. SMITH from Mckinsey Quarterly -
1994
