How would you rank your team? Do you even know who your team is? Building a team of rock stars isn’t easy and it certainly isn’t automatic. We often put people together in either long-term or short-term situations and expect them to automagically act as a high-performing team. We all know that isn’t the case and yet we continue to expect that result.
We have all been on successful teams without ever really realizing how it happened. I supposed that makes it logical that we expect it to just happen and when it doesn’t we end up frustrated. Why is it that we have been on great teams but cannot build one ourselves? Lack of patience and investment in time and resources to cultivate a team are usually the primary source of failure. Don’t allow the frustrations of your team not coming together cause you to build a team of dependency. When you build a team of dependency, they become unable to act without you around.
To build a team of rock stars you have to start with the right questions. Answering the following questions as you go about building your team will help you close any gaps in strengthens and weaknesses and on-board the group in a way that ensures their success.
How strong is my recruitment process? I’ve worked for a great number of companies who view recruitment as an event rather than an ongoing process. This leads to being shorthanded and desperate to bring new folks on. You should always be on the lookout for top talent and when you find them make room for them. Waiting until there is a vacancy is implementing mediocre failure. Building a team of rock stars mostly consists of pruning those who don’t fit and replacing them with others who will.
Is the on-boarding blueprint strong? This is another common point of failure. We hire people, bring them on and them sit them at their desk and forget about them. They are left to wade through the ocean you tell yourself you are not trying to boil. The right on-boarding processes need to be in place if you want the top talent you have invested so much in to be as successful for you as you had expected them to be. Set new hires up for success not failure. They need the right knowledge, tools and resources in order to hit the ground running. Throwing spaghetti against the wall to see which ones will stick is pure insanity.
How relevant is your initial and ongoing training? It would be embarrassing if I told you how many of the companies I have worked for that had documented training for the roles I have been in. It has to be relevant to the job you are asking them to do. The training needs to align to their 90-day goal plan. It absolutely has to be documented not just someone telling them the steps or having them watch someone perform the tasks.
Answering these questions will give you the solid foundation needed to build a team of rock stars. Having these questions answered will help you build the team that can achieve the organizational goals, strategies and objectives with the highest quality in the fastest amount of time.
Last updated on March 6th, 2018 at 09:42 am
