If a team is a mishmash of completely different people, then, regardless of the boss’ experience, he will hardly be able to ensure a concerted effort: the team’s chemistry is not right to work jointly with maximum efficiency, HR experts say. Nonetheless, the said chemistry may be created, if you observe a few crucial criteria when recruiting your team.
Business Chemistry for Fun
“Based on Deloitte’s Business Chemistry, I think that the principal character in the team is the “integrator” who is also a diplomat and a team-building component, says Darya Naumova, Event Management Partner, Sinergia Business Club. This has to be a tactful person who finds the right approach to anyone: the relationships inside the team and the quality of work will depend on this person”. His downside is low activity: such people think longer than act. That’s why such people should be balanced with “groundbreakers”. Most commonly, such people are resourceful and energetic, willing to take risks, trust their intuition, think big, are fond of creative approach to tasks. Nevertheless, you should also be careful with such people: a 10-member team should not have more than two “groundbreakers”: their nature is revolt, creativity, and imagination, which will exert an adverse effect on the performance of the others.“Now, we look for the “watchdogs” for our team, Darya Naumova continues. This is the critical component. They control the process and make it follow the pre-determined scenario. They will let no detail go unnoticed, therefore, they are in charge of the budget, cost estimate, and all the documentation. Based on my experience, I can say that it’s not always easy to find common language with them and they should be kept from “groundbreakers” as far as possible. It will be best if you provide them with a separate room or put them next to an “integrator” or the “drivers”: “watchdogs” work well with them due to their shared fondness of facts and logic.
Meanwhile, you need to remember that the “drivers” themselves are fond of challenging tasks and move the business forward, but they don’t get along with the “integrators”. The former appreciate the result, they are categorical, address the problems head-on based on available data and logic, while the latter are far too diplomatic. “This is why I try to make sure that they interact through a mediator – the “watchdog”, Darya Naumova explains. Nonetheless, there is no universal ratio: every project needs its own formula that depends on the company’s business line, she says.
“For instance, if we talk about any company’s sales department, it should be filled exclusively with “groundbreakers” and “integrators”. But when we asked a pronounced “groundbreaker” to work out a business plan where everything is compartmentalised and there is no room for creativity, the result was deplorable,” says Anna Varzhina, Director of Elisey Recruitment Agency.
In order to secure the team’s maximum efficiency, you should clearly realise what kind of tasks each individual employee has been hired to tackle, continues Maria Obodnikova, HR Director, Baltika-Trans Group. “It is like a puzzle: a marathon runner will be good for a certain position, while a sprinter — for another. But an ideal team cannot be built without the common basic values and ideas that all the team members share, regardless of their types,” she says.
Conflict, Not a Family
The crucial thing is to make sure that the team is not dominated by one or two types, warns Ekaterina Kononova, CEO, BAKE Pro. This is hard to avoid, simply because the company’s chief executive would select similar types of people for top management positions. Often, this is made subconsciously, and this may only be prevented by an attentive HR.“A team is a living organism that requires all the components. While a “driver” is running head-on to the target, a “watchdog” will point at the important little things, and a “groundbreaker” will enrich the project with innovative ideas, Kononova says. You cannot put all your bets exclusively on “groundbreakers” or “drivers”: the most interesting effect will result from the sparkles between the various types. Recall Jobs and Wozniak.”
Nikolay Molchanov, Partner of Eldey Consulting Group, suggests the accounting department as an example – a department that is as far from creativity and innovations as you can imagine. “Even here there will always be a young girl who would voice out new ideas: how to automate certain processes, improve 1S, modify the document management protocol. This is an “innovator” and the management’s common reaction is to entrust the implementation of the idea with the person who voiced it out which stalls the whole process,” the expert stresses. The thing is that “innovators” are more comfortable with inventing than with implementing. Therefore, the “innovator’s” efficiency will be equal to zero until you pair it with an “adaptor”. “This is a different girl able to write the new protocol, attend the meetings with IT guys, and test the changes,” he clarifies.
Unfortunately, an “innovator” will not be able to find common grounds with an “adaptor”: the system will not work without the third component – a “bridge”. Meanwhile, according to Nikolay Molchanov, the “innovator” – “bridge” – “adaptor” system created in each department accelerates the company’s reaction to changes in the market and customer behaviour. The leader should be the “bridge” by balancing the team’s work: by translating the “innovator’s” non-formalised idea to the language of specific tasks that the “adaptor” is able to understand.
“Despite the common belief, a successful team is not a family where everybody tries to reach a common decision. The project participants should be in the state of a certain permanent conflict: if all the participants are looking “in the same direction”, this implies that they don’t see certain risks or have lost their heads due to the success of the project, says Sergei Tiunov, Managing Partner, BDO Unicon Outsourcing. A team like that will definitely bankrupt a business.”
Not Chemistry Alone
However, not everyone believes in the success of Deloitte’s system.“I have no chemistry in my work, but I do have two principles: the people should enjoy what they do and be committed to the brand,” says Anton Moshkin, Head of Social Media, Alfa-Bank. You simply shouldn’t interfere with the people’s work”.
Margarita Kashuba, Marketing Director, Englishdom, is more supportive of the X, Y, Z generations theory and recommends that the team should be built by balancing the interests and capabilities of each generation as a whole rather than the types of their representatives.
Business Coach Yana Chursanova has an approach of her own: “The chemistry of my dream team is as follows: employees’ common sense of humour, respect to people, respect to and willingness to hear another person, as well as mandatory presence of a person with the “top-down view” skill and a person who can focus on details.”
“My experience in the operating business is 10 years, during a half of which I worked as a top manager. My recipe for the most efficient team is as follows: each employee should want something, in other words, be motivated by career, creative, or professional ambitions,” says Anastasia Dankova, Business Coach, OD&M Consulting (Gi Group international HR holding). This approach assumes that it doesn’t matter how many “watchdogs”, “integrators”, or “sprinters”, etc. a team has: the key is the leader’s talent to maintain their personal motivation, rather than their good combination.
Dmitry Tomchuk, Director for Rybakov Fond Business Programme Development, equally believes that the crucial component of the dream team formula is inspiration. “To that end, Airbnb organised a “happy hour”: our entire team would share an informal lunch to get to know each other better and to find ideas in common. And Xsolla would from time to time hold a skype-conference call with the founder who would explain his decisions to the team,” the specialist says.
“We select people based on the company’s value system, rather than based on common features in behavioural models. This is due to the fact that the person’s feeling of being at the right place is key to his productivity,” says Alexey Gerin, President of TransLink.
Finally, Kirill Krasnov, Director of Business Club R2, confesses of having built teams using both Ichak Adizes methodology and Myers–Briggs Type Indicators including 16 personality types; he also used other systems suggesting various compatibility formulas for different characters, but came to the opinion that none of those teams was any better than the natural teams. “Over the years, I invented a formula for my ideal team that comprises two components, he says. It doesn’t matter who we are: we all believe in the attainability of our common objective. Each team member is a businessman who supplies his product for the common cause.”
According to Kirill Krasnov, in the most successful team, each member is a micro-company that sells something to others and buys something from others, continuously competing with the external market.
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