Companies are built and championed by teams of people. If the team is incredible, the company will do well. In the early days, it may seem easy to overlook bad qualities in team members and later on it might seem necessary to fill desks. Bad team members and poor talent can kill the prospects of even the largest companies. Twitter is a prime example. This means it critical for every organization and executive to take a valued interest in selecting only the best candidates as they go about building the right team.
1. Understand your needs
Whenever you are putting together a team, one of the most important steps to get started, whether forming a team from scratch or expanding a large group, is to understand your needs. Teams need to function as a cohesive unit with proper delegation and the necessary skillsets to empower success. Sitting down and outlining what types of players your team needs can help prevent hiring too many of the same skillsets and makes evaluation easier.
Just as a baseball team has a set line-up of a pitcher, catcher, first basemen, etc. teams of any size, skill, or task need to have specific “players.” This may be as simple as a business person and a tech person or as complex as a dozen niche scientists launching a rocket. Once your line-up of needed team members is set up and you know what specific skillsets each person needs you can begin to identify what candidates are best for each role and easily compare them with set metrics.
2. Talk to references
Talking to references might seem like a tedious and unfruitful task, but the unfortunate truth is that most people misrepresent themselves to make themselves seem better than they are. Seeking out references allows you to gain a better picture of who you are talking to and potentially considering for your team. This involves not just calling up the references they give you, but also independently finding references for them. Your goal should be to actively prove they have no red flags.
Look for people from past ventures, past managers, family and friends, and anyone else who can speak as objectively as possible about their integrity in and out of the workplace. Once you have a list of people to talk to, make sure you ask the right questions and are looking for the right information. Most people will not openly speak badly about someone and if asked to recommend someone for a position, will likely say yes. Try to ask a mixture of seemingly vague and specific questions that do not let people give you the answers they think they should be saying. Even more so, try to double check information and ensure the candidate is not lying.
3. Establish effective management
Teams are not simply the best people, but rather the best people to work together for a common goal. This means there needs to be effective management to bring out the best and suppress the worst traits in each team members. Additionally, there needs to be the guidance to keep everyone focused on the goal at hand. Without effective management, even the best teams can crumble and underperform. One important step towards effective management is setting up a clear organizational tree.
At the center of every good organizational tree is a COO. While it may be unclear what a COO does, ultimately the COO is responsible for making sure the people in the company are efficient and productive. Particularly as companies grow, this can increasingly difficult. Many organizations will opt for COO training since it can help with the growing pains of expanding teams and organizations. A great COO is able to keep tabs on every unit in the organization and have strong relationships with employees so as to know where the company is thriving and struggling.
4. Innovative vision
One of the best ways to build the right team is to simply offer a project that entices the right candidates to come to you. People inherently have certain ambitions for their work, most notably is desire to be excited about what they are doing. If you can do innovative work and excite potential hires, you will have people begging to join your organization. From here you can easily choose the right people for each spot on your team. However, how can a company ensure it is offers the right balance of excitement and realism?
As you begin to enter recruiting or simply to better understand your organization, think about why your company will be dominant in one decade. How about in even longer term? This vision for your organization will help capture the interest of potential recruits. Just as you would sell this vision to investors, learn how to sell this to hires and get the word out about how cool your organization is.
You might not always have the option of working with the perfect team, but putting together the right balance of available skills and available resources can be enough. Effective management and empowering vision often times will help push teams to superior performance and work through even the worst of times. Understand what your team needs and how to ensure optimal performance, since that is what will allow your organization to have long term success.
Shruti is a blogger & a digital marketing consultant at Rankmebest.com with lots of passion to write about technology, startups & other niches. She has contributed to a number of famous websites. She live and breathe in digital marketing. Her aim is to spread her thought-provoking ideas to all generations. Stay tuned with her at:@shruti_gupta01 or via skype : shrutigupta2811
