How the Right Hire Improves Teamwork Dynamics

BY Kathy Crosett
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Several years ago, Sheryl Sandberg, former Facebook COO, spoke at a commencement event about being accepted into Harvard’s MBA program. When she questioned her admission, one of the counselors stated that the strength of her personality made a huge difference. The counselors believed the teamwork dynamics of the class would be improved by Sandberg’s personality.

How the Right Hire Improves Teamwork Dynamics

Obviously, Sandberg possesses many strengths in addition to her personality. But the anecdote contains an important lesson for hiring managers who are expanding their teams. What attributes are you seeking in your next hire?

Recruiters advise jobseekers to emphasize how their technical skills match what employers are looking for. They also note that soft skills such as “self-​awareness, creativity and collaboration” outweigh technical skills. Technical skills can be easily taught, but helping a person develop creativity and self-​awareness can be challenging.

As a hiring manager, you know that candidates are optimizing their resumes with the help of AI. You'll need to narrow down the field. Like many managers, you may be putting more emphasis on your own tools, such as a psychometric assessment.

The Teamwork Fit

The results of the assessment will reveal candidate motivation and their fit with the team they may join. Team dynamics is defined as “the intricate patterns of communication, cooperation and collaboration that transpire within a team.” Hiring managers want to enhance teamwork dynamics with each hire they make, but that can be challenging.

Team Role

Callum Borchers, in a recent Wall Street Journal article, highlights how managers emphasized the need to bring in new hires. To do so in recent years, managers are looking for hires with the best tech skills. This emphasis, especially in light of the growing AI boom, indicates that the soft skills may have been overlooked.

But it’s often these soft skills that contribute to positive teamwork dynamics. On every team, individuals gravitate to roles where they feel most comfortable. Someone will fill the role of creative thinker while another person will act as a devil’s advocate.

Not every role has a positive connotation. One particularly noticeable role has been dubbed the “personality hire.” Many employees would cringe upon hearing others use that term about them.

Why? Because the “personality” on a team is usually the individual who talks with everyone. They bring energy to conversations and to the workplace.

But there’s a downside. Team members with personality also have reputations for being nonperformers. If these nonperformers continue to cheerlead the team without contributing anything of substance, teamwork dynamics can suffer.

Other team members will resent working hard to meet goals and objectives while another employee slacks. Managers who don’t monitor team interactions may find some employees are quitting due to the personality in the department.

Management Action

If your team members are not working well together, address the problem. You can start by learning whether there is any “role confusion.” Employees might be genuinely confused about their specific responsibilities.

Or they could be hiding a deeper problem. For example, one or more employees don’t like their role, and they keep drifting into someone else’s lane.

During your one-​on-​one meetings, listen to what team members don't say. They may tell you they love their job because they think that’s what you want to hear. But if they keep taking on parts of someone else's job, their actions are speaking to you.

Review their psychometric assessments to learn the truth. You may need to adjust the job responsibilities of an employee or two to fix the teamwork dynamics.

A deeper problem may be that an employee doesn’t appreciate the "personality" employee. They expect managers to hold all team members accountable for output.

When you hire for team or company fit, using assessments, you increase the odds that employees will work well together. For many reasons, it will work to your benefit to employ a personality hire. Borchers points out that there may be an era when employees don’t feel as close to each other. However, the right team member can generate interest and loyalty.

But you'll need to monitor teamwork dynamics as each new hire joins the group. And to optimize productivity, be prepared to adjust job responsibilities.

Photo by Monstera Production on Pexels.


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