Management Series #2: How to Build a Team

10 rules to remember as a leader looking to have a great team

1. Smaller teams are better

4-5 is the golden size, but you can go up to 10 if 1) the members are awesomely autonomous and/or 2) the operations of the team are simple and there’s not a lot of collaborative decision making required.

This is where team size becomes a problem, when they frequently need to get together in adhoc subgroups to work on certain tasks. When the team grows, this becomes exponentially more complex to do effectively.

2. Teams need leadership

There are real self organizing teams out there, but they’re the exception and not a scalable solution. Despite what a certain part of the leadership community will tell you, most teams can not be fully, or even mostly, self organizing.

Teams need leadership. Wise leadership, not micromanagement, but they need leadership.

3. How do you put the team together?

One of two ways.

First, if you need a team that has to work on many kinds of different things, and you don’t even know what all those things will be, then you put together a mixed bunch of people of complementary but different skill sets and personalities. You put together a generalist team. Less effective at any given thing but, hopefully, more adaptable.

Second, if you need a team that you know will work on something that is well known, then you fill your team with similar individuals who are driven to do that one thing. Less adaptable, but very effective at what they’re good at.

Most teams need to be somewhere in between these extremes. Decide where, and the rest will follow.

4. Avoid the hippie mistakes

Mistake: Self organizing teams are possible and desirable.

No, not most of the time. What you want is autonomy and initiative within clear boundaries.

Mistake: Extreme individuality is desirable.

No. It’s good to be able to be yourself in the team and feel at home, but the team is not a stage for selfish manifestation of our personality. A team is a place where we come together, for one common goal.

Mistake: Leaders who do not lead.

Because they’re so afraid of being called micro managers, they don’t make any decisions. Because they’re so infatuated with esoteric leadership ideas, they don’t take action to fix what’s right under their nose. Because they’re afraid.

They sound clever when they talk about it, but they’re not good leaders.

5. Teams are habit machines

You are what you repeatedly do. So is the team.

Focus on what happens again and again, as a matters of recurrence and system. That is almost always more important than what happens exceptionally, even if the exceptions are sometimes spectacular.

6. Some teams are like the sea, and some are a white piece of paper

An old, well formed, strong team which you take over, is like the sea and there’s many deep currents running through it.

You can change them, but it might be hard, and you should decide if it’s worth it. It might easier to find a way to sail with the currents, not against them. Find a compromise.

But sometimes, they need to be broken, because their ways are just not what you need.

And some other teams are not really teams at all, but groups of people, ready to be shaped into whatever. A white piece of paper to draw what you want on it.

Figuring out which situation you’re in is essential.

7. There are critical leadership moments

Most of the times, as a leader, what matters is what you repeatedly and consistently do. You make mistakes, you fix them, you keep going. It’s the direction that matters.

But there are also critical leadership moment where you can lose, or gain, everything, in a few minutes.

Failing to protect your team or a member of your team in the face of injust, unfair attacks, from the inside, or the outside, is one of them.

8. You need high standards

A team needs high performance standards that everyone is held accountable to. With understanding, with consideration, not absurdly, but the standards need to be there.

Without high standards, it’s the best performers who suffer most.

9. When to kick people out of the team

For betraying the team, for being unfair and dishonest with their team mates, for sabotaging them, for lying, and so on, kick them out immediately.

For gross negligence, kick them out immediately.

For failing to perform, as long as they are willing to improve, give them a couple of chances to improve.

10. You have to lead by example

First to work, last to eat kind of leadership. You will get your rewards as a leader, it will come, but you have to put your team first.