As an employer, your main goal is to build a team who are competent enough to work seamlessly without you there. When a team can flourish without their manager present, that is when you can trust they are truly successful.
The trouble is, building up a good team is no easy feat. You need to find people who all have a good work ethic, who all share the same passion to do well, who are willing to share collective responsibility, and who can show initiative amongst themselves in your absence. This is by no means a walk in the park, but there are some things you can do to make building a successful team less of a burden.
1. Find a Leader
The first step to building a successful team is to identify a workable hierarchy. Every team needs a leader, and some people are more natural leaders than others. During the interview process, you will generally be able to spot whether a person has leadership skills or not.
A leader is vital, but two leaders is a disaster. The worst thing you can do is hire two dominant figures to sit within the same team. They will not get along and will butt heads more than anything, and this will be detrimental to everyone in your team and will harm productivity.
You need one leader and several other docile characters in order to create a workable team hierarchy. If you get this wrong, nothing else will go well after this, so make sure you find one leader and no more as a first port of call.
2. Fill in Skills Gaps
The next step is to fill in a skills gap. Not everyone in your team will be good at the same things, and nor should they be. For example, sales team secrets dictate that you might have one person who is great at generating leads, another person who is great at keeping the customer engaged, and a third team member who is the logistical one and who does well with the small print and getting the deal over the line.
It’s absolutely crucial that you have members on your team who each have different skills. If you have three creative people and no technical people, there is a skills gap in your team, and it will need filling sooner rather than later if you want to build a fully autonomous team who can function by themselves.
Look at your team candidates, pick out their skills and weaknesses, and build a well-rounded team based on this.
3. Match Personalities
When building a team, one of the most important things you need to consider is how the personalities will match. Everyone is different and it’s good to have diversity, but you need to consider compatibility. Ideally, your team will be friends with each other, but this can only happen if they get along. If you put two similar personalities together, they could clash.
Likewise, if you put together a team where their ethics, ways of working and senses of humor are polar opposites, you’ll struggle to make them gel. No one wants to dread coming into work, so when building a team, try and pick personalities that you think will bounce off each other well to create a productive environment, but one that is also fun to work in and where people can enjoy themselves.
Summary
Creating a successful team isn’t easy. It may be a process of trial and error, but hopefully, these three tips will help you speed up the process and avoid any major issues.
