Create a team from personalities: 5 Tips for optimal teamwork

"A Team is only as strong as its weakest link” or “If you work alone, you add up. Whoever works together in teams, multiplies” – around the topic Teamwork many beliefs entwine.

5 Tips for optimal teamwork

Just because several employees work together does not have to lead to good, let alone to the best results.

The Combination from different experiences Competencies and preferences must be specifically designed. And it's not just about expertise, but above all about personality.

1. Heterogeneous suggests homogeneous

The first step should be self-evident: setting up the team in terms of its competencies in such a way that all technical requirements are met. Point. It often stays that way. But it only gets exciting when the informal ones Tasks and roles are cast harmoniously. The following applies here: the more colorful the pile, the better. “doer”, “coordinator”, “Innovator”, “Communicator” – these are all roles that are important for a perfect overall performance.

But how do I know who the right person is for that? A heterogeneous team also needs a strong one Guide and control. If People with different characteristics and value systems meet, this leads to friction and discussions. Homogeneous teams get along well, think and act similarly. This “like and like likes to flock” is good for the climate, but much worse for team performance because it is too one-sided.

2. Motives motivate to peak performance

In order not to have to guess who can fill which positions particularly well, who has which personal inclinations and behavioral preferences, there is an instrument that has already proven itself: the Reiss Profile. Prof. Steven Reiss, motivational researcher at Ohio State University, describes in his theory the human personality based on 16 life motives.

These include power, team orientation, curiosity, recognition, Order, relationships and Status. These intrinsic motives shape how people experience, think and act. According to this, people align their actions to satisfy their strongly developed motives. The individual motivation profile describes what motive satisfaction a person wants to achieve through their actions. An employee with green team orientation, relationship, and status motives will Performance of the team to the outside. This person is ideal as “Seller” and could optimally support a team of thinkers and creatives.

Figure 1: Illustration of an exemplary tear profile

In the Reiss Profile the qualitative (color of the bar: what do I aspire, what is important to me?) And the quantitative expression (length of the bar: how important is it?) Of a motif. Green and red bars characterize a strong motif with different emotional quality.

Yellow values ​​are referred to as “neutral”. People feel feel most comfortable, are most efficient and most motivated when they can fulfill their strong motives through their actions. The more differences there are among the employees in the team, the easier it is to distribute different tasks. The potential scope of the team increases.

Table 1: Needs resulting from the strong character of the 16 life motifs

3. Optimal team composition using the Reiss profile

A good team needs employees with ...

• green power motivation for the leadership of the group
• green team motivation for the cohesion of the group
• green order motivation for the structuring of work processes
• red order-motivation for creativity and flexibility
• green relationship motivation for contact to the outside
• green curiosity motivation for creativity, knowledge acquisition and preservation, further development of procedures and task completion
• red curiosity motivation for the implementation of the tasks
• red emotional rest motivation for changeability

4. If equal and equal joined

In order to be able to compare team members in their motivation structures, a team overview can be created in addition to individual profiles. On the one hand, this helps to distribute the work tasks in such a way that the motifs and Power individual employees can be optimally combined and synergies can be used.

On the other hand, the team overview provides important information about possible "blind spots". The team members are not aware of the one-sidedness in their actions. They find their actions right, confirm this to each other again and again and interpret all possible everyday situations in such a way that “it would not have worked without flexibility”. The Reset around that blind spot can lead the team to be more self-critical about themselves. For a real change, however, you also need team members with a different motive.

Too complex and exaggerated? But then the following may happen: Many creative minds work as lone fighters to develop many ideas. However, these are neither brought together nor compared with each other - and also not implemented, let alone marketed. Each individual follows their individual motives, which can be simplistically described as: “I have the most Fun, when I can tinker, research and develop ideas for myself. For me it is important to submit good ideas. I don't care what other people make of it."

From an entrepreneurial point of view, if the “great” ideas do not turn into anything, the team is not efficient. Even if its members find that too little is being implemented, and decides to do it now: everyone continues unconsciously as before.

5. Guidelines for all team members:

• Assess the motivational characteristics in the team. Consistent profiles are available with the Reiss questionnaire. An approach also works through a foreign and self-assessment in the team.
• Assign tasks and roles according to the strongly developed motifs. This promotes motivation and satisfaction.
• Derive what the team still lacks.
• New team members are deliberately selected according to their motifs to enrich the current team.
• Distribute poorly populated topics over time. Anyone can accomplish a task by knowing their own motivation and the need to perform the task for a limited time through conscious action, even if it is not fun and the internal resistance is more or less high.

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