Four Steps in Attracting and Building the Dream Team

Published by ActionCOACH Philippines

Human capital is the greatest asset of any business. A dream team is composed of effective, reliable, enthusiastic, and proactive people who work together to accomplish powerful objectives, while harnessing deeper and richer career satisfaction along the way. 

But sometimes, human resources can also be a huge liability. One of the biggest complaints of business owners is that they cannot find qualified and competent people to join their team. However, business owners should realize that the people they get are the ones they deserve.

This means that to be able to attract and build superior teams, businesses have to become qualified to employ superior employees. The best way to begin the journey of building the dream team is to build the business first by mastering the basics of business so that the organization becomes a magnet for top talent and teamwork.

Step 1 | Craft a Powerful Vision Statement 

The vision, philosophy, and mission of your business is like a blueprint from which the entire organization is built upon. These original documents are not merely used to impress investors to provide start-up capital. 

To be able to attract excellent people and build the dream team, it is necessary for you to know the mission and purpose of your business. Smart and success-oriented entrepreneurs always pay close attention to the building blocks of the business. 

Defining the focus of one’s efforts and then continually redefining it as goals are met and strategies evolve is a process that delivers value at every level of the operation. Before recruiting employees, the business’ focus needs to be taken to heart, sharpened, and clarified.

The vision statement must clearly spell out the following:

• Who are we?
• What business are we in?
• Who are our clients and customers?
• What makes us different from our competitors?

When recruiting team members - whether from inside the business or from outside - the vision statement is emphasized, explained, and delved into a greater length. Interviewing for a position in the company becomes a process that is all about qualifying for membership and inclusion on a team that shares the ideals, ethics, culture, passion, and goals articulated in the vision statement.

Step 2 | Employ Psychology in Selecting Employees

Psychology plays a vital part in any interactive process, and should be creatively utilized to assemble winning teams. Psychologists have created many tools over the years to assess personality traits and categorize them in ways that help us define or predict the general behaviors and attitudes of individuals. 

While no evaluation system, test, or profile can adequately capture the unlimited nuances of a person, these tools can assist us in general ways to more effectively build teams. One of the most popular behavioral assessments used by organizations is the DISC Personality Profile 

DISC Personality Profile

Created by American psychologist Dr. William Marsden, the DISC system is an effective tool for team creation. It divides personality types into four distinct groupings: D - Dominant, I - Influential, S - Steady, and C - Compliant. By pairing these traits, the assessment comes up with four distinct groups of behavioral styles: Outgoing, Task Oriented, Reserved, and People Oriented.

It is important to remember that this personality tool is not meant to define a person. It is simply meant to be an aid for determining characteristic strengths and weaknesses relative to performance and behavior in different circumstances. These are simply metrics to help team builders better understand how team players might best work together. 

Using personality profiling systems like this can be a tremendous asset to any organization, HR department, or leader.

Step 3 | Utilize the Five Keys to a Winning Team

After the recruitment and selection process, the next step is to shape the group into a full-fledged dream team. What you can do as a business owner or manager is to utilize these five keys to contribute to the success and ultimate synergy of the team:

• Strong Leadership - Every successful leader must exhibit passion and demonstrate responsibility. They must take a vested personal interest in those who look to them for guidance, growth, decisions, and development.
  
• Common Goals - Goals offer direction to keep the team focused on the mission and vision statement, and goals should adhere to the acronym for “smart” goals - by being Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Results-oriented, and set within a doable Timeframe.

• Rules of the Game and Action Plans - Delineate boundaries and areas of quantifiable responsibility so that the team players know their unique and specialized roles. Then provide an action plan.  This will ensure the efficiency and effectiveness of the team.
  
• Risk Taking - Without being open to some degree of healthy risk, it is impossible for a team to flourish and push the limits of creativity and performance. To experience a breakthrough, it is sometimes important to get out of the comfort zone and into the risk and reward zone.

• Inclusion and Involvement - Teams need to involve all of their players, organizations need to keep their vision statement publicized, not a secret, and leaders and owners need to share control - otherwise they will eventually lose it.

Step 4 | Put It All Together Systematically

A well-established system makes the team perform efficiently and allows the organization to run smoothly. Supporting the team with tools, training, technology, and well-crafted systems is important for a number of reasons. Most importantly, this ensures that the owner or entrepreneur can run the business without being run by the business. 

Systems can enable you to be free to do whatever you want, whether that means retirement to the golf course, investment in other satisfying ventures, or creation of new dynamic teams. Becoming a master of systems is the shortcut to mastery of one’s career destiny, and learning to build teams is the first step in creating any system that involves human resources.

ActionCOACH is the world’s largest business coaching firm with over 1,000 coaches in 80 countries coaching 18,000 clients weekly. Get a Free Business Health Check today or attend an ActionCOACH Event.