Struggling to Get the Right People on your Team

Enjoy this interesting article from our guest contributor, Chris Hardwick

In 1965, a psychologist named Bruce Tuckman developed a well known model that captures the various stages of team development. Tuckman’s five stages of team development include forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. Each one of these five stages of team development represents a step towards developing your team, aligning it towards your vision and completing the team objective. 

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How do you get the right people on your team? 

Who do you want on your journey to achieving your goals? 

Here are some points to ponder when deciding who should have an exclusive seat on that journey of team development.  

• Will this team member help propel you, your team and the goals forward or would they hold you back from accomplishing your goals?
• Does this team member have the right attitude?
• Do they work well with others? 
• Are they an individual who can keep you, your team and themselves accountable?
• Do you see them playing a significant role in helping you achieve the outcome?

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Hire for Attitude & Train for Skills

You may probably have heard of the phrase “hire for attitude and train for skills.” From my years of experience as a Business Owner, CEO, Project Manager and Entrepreneur the most successful companies thrive leveraging the key ‘core people’ proposition. 

There are 5 key reasons why you ought to hire candidates based on their attitude as opposed to their skills. 

1. Most of the top leading brands and companies, the world over, do it all the time.  
2. A candidate who has the right attitude equates to one that can be easily coached. 
3. Employees with the right attitude tend to have a fresher perspective and dedicated approach to the work at hand.
4. Employees who have personal values that align with the values of the team/organisation will make them better engaged with your vision. 
5. A skilled candidate can come with bad habits that need to be untrained to fit a new environment. 

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Here are some examples of why hiring an employee who possesses lesser experience, but has the right attitude can:

• Deliver more value in terms of loyalty, engagement, commitment, productivity, and growth
• Has the willingness to take ownership of their errors and issues
• Has a deep passion for both collaboration and communication
• Is more likely to demonstrate consistency in submitting quality work and meeting deadlines
• Able to empathize with co-workers and key stakeholders
• Motivated to learning and developing new skills

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“Hire for Attitude and Train for Skills”

The results are undeniable!

Tuckman's - Team Building / Team Development

Once you have your team together, forming collaborative motivation and passion for a project is essential for your vision to thrive and produce a high performance team. Tuckman’s Stages of Group Development / Team Development run through the five steps that teams go through to work together efficiently.

Forming - Tuckman’s initial forming stage of team development is the process of building the structure and culture of the team that will ultimately carry your vision. The team leader is so important at this stage as they will set the tone for how the team operates.  

Storming - Once a team starts working together, it is important to acknowledge that they will ultimately face challenges that the team will have to work through in order to be successful. By working together, honestly, openly, managing conflicts and creating healthy project boundaries will keep any team moving forward to success. 

Norming - When a team becomes settled, aligned with processes, leadership, vision and the rest of the team's roles and responsibilities, they can work together more effectively creating higher levels of trust that can help get projects underway. 

Performing - The performing phase is the happiest stage for any team. The team is working together efficiently, getting into the groove of workflow, structured processes, and healthy collaboration helping the team perform to its full potential. 

Adjourning - This stage of group development recognizes team accomplishment and team disbandment once a project is complete. 

Whether you have a team already, you’re adding to your team, or you’re building a brand new team, there is no better time than now, to access your ‘core people’ values and make sure your team is in alignment. 

Every team member is an extension of your accountability partners, who are going to help you achieve your goals and your vision, keeping them at the forefront of everything you do.

Team Leadership is essential to your bottom line, coaching and peer level leadership support can help to keep your team responsible, accountable and consistently showing up to communicate your mission and goals with clarity.