When working on a team project, have you ever wondered how some individuals got accepted into the team because since joining, miscommunication and turbulence have stunted performance? In the process of looking for the appropriate team members, many organizations rely on recruiting personnel who possess the knowledge and expertise in a specific field to fill a missing gap. However, that knowledge and expertise can only be transferable to the benefit of the team and organization with an understanding of how the new member would fit into the team and organization.
Thus, when looking into team member selection towards creating a team of high performance, sending questionnaires before an interview on behavioral tendencies would aid in establishing a foundation on understanding the selectees’ perceptions and behaviors in a team environment. Then conducting interviews with role-playing situational scenarios that focus on exploring self-perceptions, gauging their polarized thinking, which should be avoided, their belief systems, and their competence of utilizing emotional intelligence should be explored. Having a deeper understanding of these elements will be expressed further on.
A team member with an awareness of self-perceptions in an understanding of how an individual perceives the environment or outside world, or the windows they use for a frame of mind (Dahlke, 2014). Thus, being able to understand how an individual self-perceives the world or situations can create a greater awareness of how biased their viewpoints and mindset maybe with other views or the actual data. Therefore, having this greater awareness of self-perception creates new mindsets and windows of metal frames to become more open in understanding the world around them. In a team environment, having this self-awareness allows team members to see and perceive ideas outside of their boundaries and beliefs to tackle, overcome, and adapt to situations they would normally not be able to accomplish.
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he context of one's mental state of mind in regards to how they think can determine the successes or failures of that person's action. In polarized thinking, "means you swing all the way out to one end of a two-sided continuum-you magnify a situation way out of proportion and exaggerate what is happening far beyond what is actually happening," (Dahlke, 2017a, p. 1). Thus, in polarized thinking individuals are not aware of both sides in the development of a team project and are one-sided in their context of thinking. In this aspect, the team member will lose sight of the overall picture and miss insights from other views and perceptions.
Having an awareness of belief systems can determine the success of a team with the ability to collaborate. In the understanding of a team, efforts made to work towards a common goal with each task, having different belief systems can hinder this process to achieve that goal (Dahlke, 2017b). Thus, having an understanding of the team members' belief systems in how they perform their tasks and how your own beliefs either aligns or conflicts with other belief systems can determine the efficiency and effectiveness of the team working together.
A team member who has emotional intelligence not only has an awareness of themselves but has an awareness of their team members' emotions and behaviors and knows how to navigate through those behaviors and emotions to attain results. In other words, emotional intelligence is, “the ability to identify and manage one’s emotions and the emotions of others,” (Rockwood, 2018, p. 50). With emotional intelligence being a sought after characteristics by CEO’s, is understood by its value and importance towards a team environment (Rockwood, 2018). A team member who holds a high emotional intelligence value knows how to leverage a team towards success and knows how to motivate the team to create an alignment with accomplishing the goal. This quality can allow a team to achieve the goals at a higher performance, in comparison with teams lacking emotional intelligence and understanding its leveraging power.
However, most organizations know about establishing a high-performance culture. After the interview process, the selected team member will go on a probation period for three months where they will be evaluated by a strike team, the team members, and their supervisors to identify their match with the organization and qualities of being a solid contributing collaborative team member.
Therefore, when identifying and selecting a team member to join your team or organization the individual may have the appropriate knowledge and expertise, but can they work cohesively in a team environment for the benefit of the team. Here at Strategiez LLC. we look to help organizations understand this critical factor in building teams and utilize unique assessment tools to gain awareness in both the teams’ strengths and weaknesses with what kind of team member would complement the team and organization. As always, if you have questions on this and are curious about how we at Strategiez LLC. can provide service please feel free to ask.
References
Dahlke, Arnie (2014). Manage the Windows in Your Head.
Dahlke, A. (2017a). Avoid Polarized Thinking.
Dahlke, A. (2017b) Beliefs, Self-Awareness & Teamwork.
Rockwood (2018). The Right Tact: As agile teams move at lightning speed, they must double down on emotional intelligence.
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