Pick the Best Team
The most effective people are those who understand themselves and their strengths and weaknesses. It allows them to develop strategies that match the needs of their working environment.
By sharing some of your personality traits with the people you work with, you will have a better understanding of preferred team roles, and therefore the effectiveness of your team will be improved. An effective team will require a diversity of skills and roles, since the work that your organisation does covers a range of tasks and problems. A great team needs Hares to brainstorm the solutions, Owls to choose the best strategies, Tigers to work out the structure, and Squirrels to get the results. Only with a mixture of all four will your team have the H.O.T.S. When people work together effectively, they can achieve more than they would on their own, capitalising on each other's skills, experience and strengths.
| Characteristics | Creative, imaginative, unorthodox; solves difficult problems; redefines problems; advances new ideas and strategies with special attention to major issues and possible breaks in approach to group problem. |
| Allowable Weaknesses | Ignores incidentals; needs to focus on following through with their projects. |
| Suggested Task Allocation | Should do most problem solving or be responsible for generating new strategies or ideas and proposing solutions to rest of team. |
| Characteristics | Sober, strategic, discerning; sees all options; judges accurately; analyses problems; evaluates ideas and suggestions so team is better placed to take balanced decisions. Turns concepts and ideas into practical working procedures; carries out agreed plans systematically and efficiently. Ensures team is protected as far as possible from mistakes of both commission and omission; actively searches for aspects of work that need a more than usual degree of attention. |
| Allowable Weaknesses | Somewhat inflexible. |
| Suggested Task Allocation | Should be responsible for ensuring all worthwhile options are considered; needs a key role in planning; an arbiter in event of controversy. Best person to be appointed organiser, responsible for procedures and practical steps to be taken once team reaches significant decisions. |
| Characteristics | Mature, confident, good chairperson; clarifies goals; promotes decision making; delegates well; recognises where team's strengths and weaknesses lie and ensures best use is made of each member's potential. Challenging, dynamic, thrives on pressure; drive and courage to overcome obstacles; shapes way in which team effort is applied, directing attention generally to objectives and priorities; seeks to impose some shape or pattern on group discussion and on outcome of group activities. Maintains sense of urgency within team |
| Allowable Weaknesses | Can be seen as manipulative; offloads personal work. |
| Suggested Task Allocation | Should be best person to co-ordinate group effort; ensure that everyone has a useful role and team works towards common and agreed goal. Person best suited to overcome obstacles and opposition; create a sense of urgency and ensure that talk is turned into worthwhile action. |
| Characteristics | Extrovert, enthusiastic, communicative; explores opportunities, develops contacts; explores and reports on ideas, developments and resources outside group; creates external contacts that may be useful to team; conducts negotiations. Supports members in their strengths; e.g. building on suggestions, underpinning members in their shortcomings, improving communications between members and fostering team spirit generally. |
| Allowable Weaknesses | Inclined to worry unduly. Slow to respond to new possibilities. |
| Suggested Task Allocation | Should be best person to implement the action plan; keep things moving, and deliver the objectives on time and within budget. Squirrels don't mind working with detail. |
Most of the work we do falls into four categories:
Solutions are for Hares:
Brainstorming ideas to exploit opportunities and solve problems.
Strategies are for Owls:
Picking the best ideas and making a strategy.
Structure is for Tigers:
Working out the reference points and planning how to acieve the goals.
Results are for Squirrels:
Getting the action plan to work.
Some teams have lots of new ideas but nothing ever seems to happen? These teams need Tigers to focus on the objectives and make a plan, and Squirrels to implement the plan. Conversely, a team of Planning Tigers and Detail Squirrels can run a great system with lots of activity, but no innovative ideas or products to move forward. If you have Idea Hares and Planning Tigers you will create an endless debate of harebrained concepts and critical hair-splitting. If you have a gap you can always bring in outside Owls to work on projects and make the team more balanced.
So how do you release the synergy and power of this team? – You get the right people doing the right work – which vastly improves the speed and capacity of your business.
Here's an example of the profile we can do for each member of your team << Click Here >> It covers the following personality traits:
- Overriding need
- Seen by others
- Sees self
- Works best
- Works least well
- As team member
- Leads by
- Ideal organisation
- Ideal boss
- In relationships
- Makes mistakes
- Decides
- Sees change
- Thinks
- Communicates
- Irritated by
- Irritates by
- As a parent
- Relaxation
- Under stress
If you would like us to send you an individual profile for each member of your team << Click Here >> to dowload a simple questionnnaire.
HOTS profiles are based on our extensive research on the Jung - Myers-Briggs typological approach to personality and influenced by the work of Allen Fahden and Marie West as described in the best selling book The One Minute Millionaire
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