How to Have a Balanced Team…
Summary
- Embrace extremes because extreme gifts often come with extreme weaknesses.
- Don’t always look for someone who is well-rounded for a job; focus on their key strengths.
- When hiring, understand that weaknesses in one person can be balanced by strengths in another.
- Build a balanced team with complementary skills rather than expecting each person to be perfect.
- Focus on getting people to work in their strengths and surround them with others who fill in their gaps.
Video
How To Take Action
I would suggest implementing the strategy of embracing extremes in people's skills by focusing on their key strengths. This means not getting hung up on one person's flaws, but instead, understanding how they excel in specific areas. For example, if you're hiring a marketing head who is great with creative ideas but not detail-oriented, don't dismiss them. You can find someone else on your team who excels in organization to balance that out.
A good way of doing this is to create a skills map of your existing team. Identify what each person is really good at and where they may have weaknesses. This will give you a clear picture of where you might need additional skills and help you hire more effectively.
Build a team with complementary skills rather than expecting each individual to be well-rounded. This means intentionally looking for people who can fill in the gaps. For example, pair a creative thinker with a detail-oriented project manager. This will ensure that tasks are both innovative and meticulously executed.
Encourage your team to work within their strengths. Assign tasks based on what people are best at and find ways for them to collaborate with others who complement their weaknesses. This not only boosts productivity but also increases job satisfaction because everyone gets to do what they're best at.
Regularly hold team meetings to reassess how well your current setup is working. This helps identify any new gaps that may have developed or areas where people’s strengths are being underutilized.
These are low-cost and high-value strategies that can be quickly implemented to make your team stronger and more cohesive. By focusing on leveraging individual strengths and balancing them with complementary skills, you'll set your business or personal growth journey on a successful path.
Full Transcript
when it comes to spotting high potential players is to embrace extremes extreme gifts are often matched by an extreme weakness what's interesting is that a lot of people are looking for someone who's very well- grounded they're looking for a head of marketing and they're like wow this guy he's so good at marketing but he's just not great with details in organization this is why we have teams and not just people because I don't look at it as what person and how balanced one person is but I look at how balanced a team is the reality is if you want somebody to be incredibly good at one thing probably ignored and not nourished other areas of skills but you don't want those shortcomings to scare you away from the fact that they might be really freaking good at the job and so instead of focusing on someone's flaws you want to try and get them only working in their strengths and then find people to put around them whose strengths are their flaws this is how you build a team it's not that every person is perfect it's that there's opportunity in one person's flaws for the other person to be strong there and that's how they balance each other out
