The Key to Creating an Exceptional Team
By embracing certain characteristics, you can enhance your ability to work effectively within a team, according to Kevin from Talent Acquisition Premier Recruitment.
When assembling a group of five, eight, twelve, or more individuals, the success of their collaboration can be uncertain. The larger the group, the more challenging it becomes.
This situation is similar to dining out with friends, where each person has their own culinary preferences, making it difficult to find a shared interest. Shared interest is the vital force that drives teams, and successful companies understand how to foster it. But how is it done?
In 2012, Google embarked on a quest called “Project Aristotle” to discover the recipe for building the “perfect team.” After analyzing data and conducting interviews with over 180 teams, Google found that the individual personalities within a team were not the critical factor. Abeer Dubey, a manager in Google’s People Analytics division, stated in an interview with The New York Times that the data did not demonstrate that a mix of specific personality types, skills, or backgrounds made a significant difference. “The ‘who’ part of the equation didn’t seem to matter,” Dubey explained.
Instead, the researchers identified five key characteristics of high-performing teams:
1. Psychological safety: All team members feel safe taking risks without fear of embarrassment or punishment.
2. Dependability: Every team member consistently delivers quality work on time.
3. Structure and clarity: Each team member understands their specific expectations, which should be challenging yet attainable.
4. Meaning: Every team member finds purpose in their work, such as financial security, supporting family, or contributing to the team's success.
5. Impact: Each team member sees the positive impact their work has on the organization's overall goals.While Google’s findings may hold some truth, numerous scientific studies have challenged them, suggesting that personality, not just skills, significantly influences team success. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, a professor of business psychology at Columbia University, and psychologist Dave Winsborough argue that personality plays a crucial role in an individual’s contribution to a team.
Chamorro-Premuzic and Winsborough state in a Harvard Business Review article, “Too often, organizations focus merely on the functional role and hope that good team performance somehow follows… A more effective approach focuses as much on people’s personalities as on their skills.”
One study conducted at Hogan X provides an alternative perspective to Google’s findings. The researchers discovered that individuals within under-performing teams were predominantly pragmatic (100%) and lacked relationship-building traits (0%).
One way to consider this is through the “left brain vs. right brain” theory, which suggests that each person has a dominant side of the brain (left or right), influencing their personality, thoughts, and behavior. Right-brained individuals are deemed intuitive, creative, and collaborative, crucial to a team’s success. On the other hand, left-brained individuals are considered logical, analytical, and objective, preferring words and numbers over visuals.
While right-brained skills are essential for successful teamwork, left-brained traits are merely table stakes and do not differentiate individual contributors.
Although pragmatism is not inherently negative, it tends to limit thinking to linear paths. Technical skills are crucial early in one’s career, but as individuals progress, they need to develop right-brained skills to build meaningful relationships with others.
In essence, while left-brained attributes help secure a position, right-brained skills contribute to career advancement.
The good news is that one does not have to choose between left-brained and right-brained traits. Combining pragmatism with strong relationship-building qualities enhances the value an individual brings to a team. Regardless of being left-brained or right-brained, it is possible to adopt both traits. Here’s how:
1. If you're right-brained:
Cultivate a strategic mindset by understanding what drives the company's success.
Establish expertise in relevant areas and be known for it, whether in financial acumen, scientific knowledge, or specialized fields like tax law or M&A accounting.
Practice tackling complex problems, leveraging your linear thinking skills to delve deeply into issues, particularly in response to challenging interview questions.
2. If you're left-brained:
Develop learning agility, moving away from relying solely on tried-and-true approaches and being open to new ideas.
Embrace ambiguity, become comfortable with uncertainty, and make decisions even in the absence of complete information.
Utilize your social leadership skills by motivating and influencing others or establishing deeper connections with teammates, discovering that you may actually enjoy it.Creating effective teams involves more than merely assembling people in a room or connecting them through technology. By gaining self-awareness through introspection, individuals can become the change they want to see in their teams and companies.