The start of effective teamwork, is choosing the right team members. How do you decide which people should work together, on day-to-day tasks, as well as on short/long term projects?
Your goal should be to form a team whose members:
- When considered together, possess, or have the potential to develop, the Knowledge, Skills and Abilities (KSAs) needed to do the job.
- Personalities are in sync with the task in which they are required to perform.
- Reflect a sufficient amount of diversity.
- Are not too small or large in number.
Let’s look at each of these in turn.
1. Having the ‘Right’ skill mix is important
The skills to consider include:
- Task Knowledge = Technical and Functional Knowledge (the most important thing in selecting your team): Do They Know What to Do? To assess this conduct a task-related skills analysis to see what KSAs you need. Then select best-fit team members depending on their skills levels and provide training needed to close any skills gaps.
- Teamwork Skills: Teamwork skills are the abilities that a team needs, over and above task knowledge, to work as a real team. If teamwork skills are present, the team’s performance is greater than the sum of the members’ individual performances (i.e. 2+2>5). Desirable teamwork skills are interpersonal (conflict resolution, collaborative problem solving and communication) as well as self management related (goal setting and performance management and planning/task coordination).
- Adaptive Attitude: An adaptive attitude embodies a skill set over and above task knowledge and teamwork skills, and it is driven by its members’ decision-taking skills, problem-solving ability, capacity to develop versatility and tolerance for ambiguity.
2. Personalities must be suited for the particular task
An understanding of team member personalities, through assessments or other such tools, can help assign the right tasks to the right individual. In addition the constructive use of personality differences - for the team to get the benefit of what each member has to offer, needs to allow time, space, and encouragement for the differences.
3. Diversity
If there is too little diversity in a team, then creativity is stifled. On the other hand, too much diversity, leads to conflict. Therefore you need to aim for a decent mix of personality type, gender, age, cultural background, different professions, experiences and employment history.
4. Right size
Some studies have shown that the ideal size of a team is 7. This can be larger if members are emotionally mature and the team should have sufficient members to have all the required KSAs. You have the right team size if you can answer ‘yes’ to the following questions:
- Are all of the must-have KSAs represented in the team?
- Does the team have the potential to develop the remaining KSAs?
- Can the team meet easily and frequently?
- Can all members communicate with each other easily and frequently?
- Do all members participate in team discussions?
There are many issues that I’ve covered in this article and I realize that detailed information on how to address each one is not provided. However, my goal is to provide a broad roadmap of items to consider, so that you know what needs to be done.
In the next post on effective teamwork, I will cover the stages of team development, team dysfunctions and how you can overcome them to keep the team functioning optimally.