A successful team is more than a collection of skill sets. When faced with a task of recruiting members for a team, it is essential to focus initially on the appropriate skills, learning, and experiences that are needed to accomplish the tasks at hand. However, more than hard skills alone are needed to configure a successful team. The “art” of team making is selecting those individuals who while possessing the necessary hard skills are able to contribute to their maximum and work well with the other members of the team. Even teams of incredibly competent people can fall apart if the individuals’ personalities and behaviors are poorly suited to one another. Whereas the right team can be an amazing force, capable of both preventing and overcoming any obstacle, a poorly configured team can frustrate the most brilliant project plan and compelling opportunity.

Ordinarily, the only way to determine if a team will achieve its ends is to hire members piecemeal and to see what happens, hoping that things will work out and adjusting on the fly. With the advent of behavioral personality assessment, however, recruiters are now able to predict with a degree of certainty what might happen, based upon how individuals’ work styles and preferences mesh together to create a functional team.

While some people are more likely to prefer working in a team environment than others, most can become effective and productive members of teams if they are working in their comfort zone. Personality testing helps recruiters figure out how individuals relate to the social nexus and where this comfort zone will be.

Determining the factors that cause people to communicate well with each other, to contribute their maximum to the group effort and to establish bonds of trust is critical towards creating a team that will get the job done. Behavioral personality assessment is an established, repeatable method to make sure everyone is on the same page with respect to communication styles, stress management, and work preferences.

Communication is the glue that holds teams together
Communication is overwhelmingly the key toward building a successful team.

Individuals’ propensity to communicate and the way in which they prefer to do so can be determined through personality assessment. Assessment can also determine if they like to take an aggressive role when it comes to getting their point across, or if they would rather write a roundabout memo. Testing can determine if people intensely values other people’s opinions, or if they prefer to go it alone, merely using others as touchstones and guiding posts.

The problem for many teams may not be that the team members are bad at communicating, but that they are not communicating effectively. The method in which the information is conveyed is just as important as the message itself. Individuals perceive communication and messages differently, so in order to communicate effectively, team members need to know how to accurately convey information to other team members so that the message is received in the way it was intended.

If a team is composed of people who all prefer to communicate in the same way, the odds that successful communication will take place are greatly increased. If they have different communication styles, then they can be sensitized to other styles and coached to modify their behavior to maximize performance.

In order for a group’s work to surpass the quality of the best person in a team, the members’ information must be pulled, aggregated and re-disseminated appropriately; must be efficient and effective; and decisions must be operationalized and executed properly and accurately. For teams to be successful, they must address and master the factors that most significantly impact them, and be able to determine what those factors are.

Many assessments accurately profile individuals' customary behaviors, which are often self-evident. However, people have internal needs and motivations that can rarely be seen by others and do not change significantly with age. When internal needs are left unmet over extended periods of time, people move into less than productive behaviors, which are evident of stress. Stress manifests itself in less effective performance, lower achievement, and ultimately, a less enriching life. The real issues are often manifestations of these unmet needs.

Advanced scientific personality testing is a powerful and proven business tool to measure internal needs, motivations, occupational preference, and strengths in order to facilitate more productive behaviors and achieve higher personal performance and achievement in every individual, team, and organization. It is a powerful means to gain critical answers to how potential candidates for a job, learn, think, decide and relate to others.

Team building beyond the hire
After working together for a period of time, a team will grow in ability and focus if it has team members who have been properly matched. A team that has been properly configured as far as work style and communication preferences will be able to:

-- Understand various communication possibilities.
-- Establish more effective communication practices.
-- Assess, assign, and accept assignments according to the available talent base.
-- Set appropriate specific short-term challenges and goals for the team.
-- Provide constructive insights and options.
-- Add individuals with diverse backgrounds to get the best answers or debates.

If the recruiting is done right at the outset, the team will outperform the highest expectations, evolving in potent new directions. Personality testing makes this possible, giving recruiters more information than ever about who they are hiring and whether the team for which they are being selected is right for them.

About the Author:
Taking over for her father, Dr. Roger Birkman, in 2001, Sharon Birkman Fink is President and CEO of Birkman International, Inc. providing a unique assessment tool that accurately measures internal needs, behaviors, occupational preferences and organizational strengths. She can be reached at 713-623-2760 or sfink@birkman.com

About Birkman:
The Birkman Method ® has been in use for over 50 years and has been used by over 2 million people and 5,000 organizations worldwide, including corporations, not-for-profit organizations, governmental agencies, and individuals in their hiring, retention, motivational and organizational development activities. The assessment accurately measures social behaviors, underlying expectations of interpersonal and task actions, potential stress reactions to unmet expectations, occupational preferences and organizational strengths. For more information: www.birkman.com or 1-800-215-2760.