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Reprinted with permission by The Productive Leader

The Wisdom of One
By Terry Wall

I recently came across a book that reminded me of one of the great myths of our age. The book was The Wisdom of Teams, and the myth is that all you have to do is get a bunch of people together, call them a "team," and wait for the glorious results to come streaming in. The truth is that establishing successful teams is never that easy. I believe that many team-building efforts fail because we are so focused on the team, that we forget about individuals. You see, a team is a collection of individuals. As a leader, you must always start with individuals when trying to influence team performance. You might call this approach The Wisdom of One.

Why emphasize the individual in a time when everyone is talking about teams? Because individuals are the building blocks of a team, and ignoring the individual is like ignoring the individual bricks in masonry construction, or the individual links in a chain. The best way to build an effective team is to start with individuals, one at a time. Unless you focus on each individual, and remember that each one brings certain strengths and characteristics to the group, your team is much less likely to succeed.

All too often, however, people try to create teams without realizing that real motivation and skill come from the individual. Just as you can't just slap any types of brick together in a masonry project, you can't accept just any individuals for a team-no matter how impressive their technical credentials. That is why the true leader, when putting together a team, first looks at the individuals who would make up that team. Consider how one wrong selection can wreak havoc on a team's performance: show me an individual who isn't self motivated, or prone to cooperate, or likely to share information freely, or to lend a hand to a colleague without any hope of receiving credit, and I'll show you a person who will drag team performance way down.

One of the reasons that the team concept is so widespread is the idea of synergy—the interaction of two or more forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects. But you can also have what I call negative synergy—poor individual performance that has a greater adverse effect in a team environment than the poor performance would have in isolation, standing alone. The negative effect drags down not only an individual's productivity, but the effectiveness of several other coworkers as well.

From Individuals to Teams

You can take certain steps, all focused on the individual, which will help you create teams that are more effective.

• Define very specifically the reason for putting together the team, because this tells you what to look for in individuals. Is the goal to increase sales? Improve customer satisfaction ratings? Develop new ideas or processes for the factory floor? These purposes require different skills. Also consider how-and how often-the team will meet. A team that meets face-to-face doesn't require the self-discipline that might be necessary for a "virtual" team that meets electronically. And a team that meets daily operates differently, and has different expectations for team members, than one that meets very infrequently, but expects team members to be self-managing while working on individual tasks and sharing information between team meetings.
• Determine the specific traits needed for success in meeting team goals. Although you are looking at individual skill, you must also consider how that skill fits into the team component. For instance, if the team must produce a written report, and you select one individual because of strong writing skills, you will be doing the team a disservice if the person doesn't also have a thick enough skin to accept the constructive feedback other team members might provide. So now you need someone who not only has good writing skills, but who is also not overly sensitive or defensive about criticism.
• Screen your candidates to find individuals who possess the traits you desire. Understand how your prospective team members really work, what their true habits and drives are-don't just accept what they claim about themselves.
  
  Here's a way to screen for team membership. Even though you are focusing on the individual when putting together the team, base your decision not just on an interview with the individual, but also include a trial-run group activity. For instance, say you are looking for four or five people for a team. Provide a group of perhaps eight people with a group task, and observe individual behavior as the group performs the task. This will give you true insight as to how the individuals might perform in a group setting. Although the candidates are already employees, you are in effect "hiring" them to be part of a team. Base your selection on how well the individuals perform in a group setting, and be just as selective as if you were making a real hiring decision.
• Assemble the team, and give them the team goals. Encourage the individuals selected for the team to identify specific goals that relate to any team goals. (This provides greater clarity, and appeals to individual motivation, which is essential for team success.)
• Evaluate performance, but don't forget to evaluate individual as well as team performance. Consider having team members assess the performance of their fellow teammates-they know best about who contributed what.
  
  To maximize team effectiveness, you must look at each individual's performance, because individual motivation, skills, and abilities contribute to team performance. So, just as you focus on the individual at the beginning of the team process, you also focus on the individual in the evaluation process. By evaluating team performance only, you miss the opportunity to improve individual performance. And improving individual performance increases synergy and overall team results.

The bottom line: In order to maximize how well a team performs, you must focus on the individual when selecting, coaching, and evaluating a team.

Remember that you must consider The Wisdom of One, before reaping the benefits of The Wisdom of Teams.

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