How to make your team work better
What makes teams compatible, align to a common vision and deliver at a whole new level? Teamwork is both an art and a science. While leaders have sought to master the art, very little has been understood about the science of building highly functioning teams.
From the boardroom to project management to sales, teams are at the core of what makes businesses successful. Unfortunately, most teams don’t live up to their potential, and that often causes big problems.
When you take a look at the teams you manage, or the teams you’re in, in many cases you will find challenges and barriers that hold the team back. This is not an external issue, it’s an internal issue within the very make-up of the team itself.
For years we have relied on psychometric testing to help bring some science into recruiting where there are gaps in teams or where we need to recruit whole teams. However, we have still not been able to accurately predict whether those candidates will work well together.
It’s difficult to find real help with figuring out where the problems might lie. Of course, you’ll find plenty of advice, including online, in books, and from experts. Yet when you apply what you learn, any improvements are usually marginal at best.
On paper, your teams probably have all the right members. They’ve been to teambuilding workshops and have participated in trust building exercises. They might have been to a workshop on effective communication. And, of course, they’ve been assembled to ensure that the members bring the right qualifications to the table.
So why aren’t they working together more effectively? Why aren’t they getting better results?
Sometimes, teams get lucky. They’re highly successful and work well together. Sooner or later, though, something changes. One person moves on and has to be replaced. Suddenly, the team no longer works as well as it used to, even though the new person seems to fit in perfectly.
Where there used to be smooth, collaborative working relationships among team members, there may now be friction. The members are rubbing each other the wrong way. What to do?
The challenge of building a compatible team
HR departments work hard at assembling the right kinds of teams. As they hire new members, they look at the prospective members’ skills and experience. In addition, they have long used various personality assessment tools like Myers-Briggs and DISC to figure out who might be a good fit. Unfortunately, these tools offer somewhat limited results when it comes to assembling effective business teams.
If anything, they could actually be counterproductive because they lead to teams with lopsided personality traits that could exacerbate the teams’ conflict potential. What’s needed are tools that allow HR managers to truly understand what makes teams work, and then easily and quickly determine who might be the best fit. Getting these things right would make any particular team much more productive.
Get help with building compatible teams
For over 5 years now New Level Results have been researching and developing a science-based solution that enables Leaders and HR Directors to predict the success of every one of their teams and instantly apply changes to optimize team performance.
With its new technology, the New Level Results Team Compatibility Programme has revolutionized how teams are built. It allows HR managers to use psychometric information to predict in advance how any particular new team member will affect the interpersonal dynamics of an existing team.
Unlike the more traditional psychometrics tools, however, this new technology focuses on how the various personality traits function in business and within teams. It can determine how various new members might fit into a team at the touch of a button.
Recruiting new team members is expensive, and getting it wrong can be a disaster. With a tool that matches the new member’s personality traits to those of the company’s existing teams, getting the right person will be much easier and faster. The result: strong relationships and highly functioning teams. Those in turn lead to gains in employee engagement and retention, and, ultimately, the company’s success.
To find out more about the New Level Results Team Compatibility Programme, and get a sample personality analysis, visit https://www.teamculture.uk
