How To Build a Team

As many of you know, what I write about is often as a result of something that has happened in the world or with clients and this week is no exception. Today the topic is on building a team. An actual proper team, not a group of people told to work on the same project or product.

In my 30 years in the public and private sectors, I have seen too often an overemphasis on technical or professional skills rather than on people factors. And there is probably a partially valid reason for this. A company needs to build a product and that product relies on xyz technology. So then the hiring manager is asked to throw together a position description and they focus on the technical skills because that is often the safest place to be.

Do you know what you need or did you copy/paste?

The result is a copy/paste exercise of searching the internet for keywords or phrases or even whole position descriptions copied from others. And often then someone in the recruiting team adds on the requisite catch phrases used such as “team player” or “detail oriented.” Now you can imagine how quickly I get frosty when I see these soft skills descriptions. What team doesn’t need someone who wants to be part of the team? And good communication skills? Of course you need them to collaborate on a team. So why do we see these phrases over and over and over again in professional jobs when it is beyond insulting and unproductive to state the obvious.

Unrealistic requirements lead to less diverse teams

And then we can get into a conversation on inclusion, diversity, and even just general professional knowledge of the history of work. How many times do we see a description that wants someone with fifteen years of experience and a masters degree to do a job that will pay less than 75K. Or asking for a specific degree that didn’t even exist when that person with twenty years of experience would have been at university. I can’t tell you how many times I have looked at a description for a program manager and they want twenty years of experience with a bachelors in computer science. Well as someone who graduated in 1991, I can tell you that there were few universities offering an extensive computer science program, much less degrees in the United States.

If we are looking to create diverse teams then the skills and abilities that they possess far outweigh the university degree that is often of little to no value to the job being advertised and let’s focus on who will enhance our mission and goals. When we ask for degrees that provide no value or merit to the mission at hand then we are playing into a system that is already exclusionary but also not even relevant. AND we are creating a culture where one hand says one thing and one hand wants something else. If we are just ticking a box that someone attended university, we have to ask ourselves why? Why is that box so important? Who does that bring to the table that will enhance the team beyond someone who went to a technical or trade school or a community college or even just studied and took independent courses on the very specific skills we need rather than Literature 101.

How do we change this problem and hire and onboard for actual team cohesion?

First we need to change the parameters under which human resources (there might be another article on why that name isn’t even OK) and recruiting operate. We also need to train hiring managers to think beyond technical or professional skills and really understand the makeup of who they need on their team to be high-performing and successful.

Secondly, we need to change the dynamics of communication and interviewing. Our guest blogger, Lalitha Kakulapati, wrote a blog about her experiences with interviewing and onboarding and she pointed out that the corporate experience begins from the first interaction someone has with a company. That interaction may be the website or social media profiles or it may be the job description itself through a posted link. Whatever that first touch is, you are already making an impression and this is the chance to exude those values that should be critical to corporate success.

And then we have the interview itself to consider. If there is an already established team at the time of the interview and someone is joining the team, then the entire team should be involved in this process. I won’t reiterate this process as I have covered it  some time ago in my blog post entitled Interviewing as an Agile Team. I would recommend reading the process I outline in this piece as the next step in changing how you recruit to your teams. If there isn’t a team already in place then the hiring manager, recruiter, senior  leaders, and team members from other groups may take the same approach.

And if there is no team already in place and you are creating a new one with a new product vision, then this next step is really critical. Now I know some of you are going to cringe when I say these two words but here they are: TEAM BUILDING! And I don’t mean free falling to see if anyone is going to catch you. That figurative trust has to be built over time. In a blog post from this time last year entitled Using a Team Canvas To Build High Performing Teams, I talked about the first step. And on my YouTube channel there is an entire series devoted to the different parts of building a cohesive team. This allows the team to create an identify together of who they are and how they will embrace the corporate values and mission as a team. If the team is already in place, I recommend a modified version of these steps in order to include the new team members, not to enforce or tell them what to do but to give the team a chance to embrace new ideas and get consensus on old ones.

Case in point…

Here is a story (you know I always have one) of how making these changes could go a long way in creating a new team dynamic and thus creating higher-performance. I have more than 20 years of experience working with the public sector both as a consultant and a government employee. When contracts are awarded, the vendor usually has 30 days to pull together the team and kick off the project. I asked a consulting firm once as part of a study how they did this. The answer I got back was not at all surprising. The recruiter goes into overdrive and uses all of their tools to keyword search the desired skills and then starts calling or emailing as many possible candidates to get in for interviews and it is a flurry of activity with CVs going back and forth, screening calls set up, and interviews conducted. At the end there will be a team of people, each of whom ticks a set of skills, certifications, and education boxes.

How do you know you have hired a team?

Of course, my question was “but how do you know you have hired a team?” And the predictable answer was “when all of the skills we need are filled, we are all set.” And of course, you all know how I reacted to that response. That is not a team. That is a group of people using the same charge code for the project. I then asked how they brought the team together before starting the product development and was told “well we have a kick off with the client/customer.” And now you all know why I have my work cut out for me. If we take the approach that a team will just magically come together if everyone has the right skills for the job, then we have no hope of reaching high-performance or even a sense of collaboration. Creating a team takes significant work and if people are just thrown together, then that job is even much harder.

Are you ready to work with your team to create the culture that you want? Join us for one of our group coaching programs on teamwork and collaboration where we cover this and many other topics.

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