Building Your A-Team – Have the Right People in the Right Seats

Do you have the right people in the right seats?

This is a question that many managers and team leaders have to answer at one point or another in their careers.

The goal of every good manager and employer is to build their perfect A-team. They want a team that solves a problem and works to make other people’s lives easier. They don’t want to spend each day putting out fires started by mismatched employees in the wrong team roles.

Building a successful team takes time and patience. As a business owner, it requires a lot of effort and can get pretty stressful if the business is failing to produce the results you expect.

This is why it is essential to have your A-team by your side at every twist and turn – a team that is made up of qualified employees for job positions that fit them best.

Finding the most suitable candidates for a job role is not an easy thing to do. It is one of the bigger challenges that managers have faced over the years. However, it is one that cannot be ignored.

If you want to know what it means to have a successful team that produces results and how you can build one by hiring the right people, keep on reading.

What are the Qualities of a Successful Team?

Before you go about building your perfect team, you need to know what characteristics a successful team possesses.

A successful team is able to work together with each other in unison to produce good work and accomplish big goals. Each member of the team is encouraging to the other and respects the expertise every individual is able to bring to the table.

Overall, a good team makes the job of the manager significantly easier.

How a team comes together to achieve shared goals would differ from company to company. But there are a few standard qualities that you’re A-team should maintain in order to stay successful:

• Goal-oriented. A good team has shared business goals that it works towards together. Team members are more open to collaborate and lend their efforts to achieve a common goal.

• Diverse. A diverse set of personalities and experiences can bring in expertise that spans a larger dimension. Teams with a diverse range of individuals from all kinds of backgrounds are much more resilient in the face of challenges and are better problem solvers. 

• Open to communication. For any team to thrive, communication is key. It is essential to boost productivity and get the work done. Great teams are open about what works and what doesn’t. All opinions are valued and appreciated to see where things can improve. 

• Eager to learn. Business trends and best practices are an ever-changing phenomenon. A team that embraces learning readily adapts to any changes in the environment. They stay on top of innovation instead of getting lazy and putting out fires later.

• Share accountability. Accountability is an important part of team growth. When teams share this aspect amongst each other, they are able to celebrate together in the good times and take responsibility during the bad ones. Everyone helps a team member who needs it.

• Foster a supportive environment. The most important quality for any team to be successful is to help each other and build positive relationships amongst one another. Fostering a supportive environment reduces employee burnout and keeps the productivity up, allowing every team member to work at their true potential.

5 Steps to Building Your A-Team by Hiring the Right People for the Right Seats

1. Create an Organizational Chart and Start Planning

An organizational or accountability chart is a visual representation of a company’s internal structure. It contains specifications and details about the different job roles, their responsibilities, and the relationship between all the individuals of the company.

They can be used to both broadly depict an organization’s structure as well as drill down to the specifics of every single job position.

While building your A-team, you should start by defining everyone’s roles within the company. Organizational charts – or org charts - will help you graphically represent each employee’s hierarchal status in relation to that of their colleagues. In this way, org charts will serve to be extremely useful in letting you recognize what is missing and where.

Defining the “right people for the right seat” means identifying the following factors in a candidate:

• Connection to your brand’s vision and company culture

• Experience level

• Attitude and personality traits

• Soft skills

• Ability to meet work requirements such as location, logistics, etc.

Ask yourself who exactly are you looking for and then create an avatar for each seat that needs filling.

Create an avatar for each seat in the chart

You can have the best talent in the world but if you are not putting them in the right job roles, you won’t be able to benefit from their expertise. This is why creating an avatar of the ideal candidate for a job role is so crucial.

Define the set of skills and experience you want the right fit to have. These skills could include hard skills such as technical expertise, education level, licenses, and relevant experience.

It could also include soft skills that the candidate has cultivated through self-learning such as interpersonal skills, communication skills, and problem-solving skills.

Creating an avatar would help you create a job description that attracts the right candidates. It will enable you to create a job description that perfectly summarizes what the ideal candidate’s core responsibilities would include and what success could look like for them in their particular role.

Another area where creating an avatar can help you is asking the right interview questions to land the right candidates. By designing questions around the skills you want your candidate to possess, you are better able to assess who is the right person for a particular position.

2. Review Who Currently Has the Seat

Before you decide to hire a new employee, review if a replacement really is required. Take a look at your existing workforce. Recognize whether those people are the right fit for their roles or if there is someone that can be promoted to a higher level of management. 

Does the existing employee understand their responsibilities? Do they like their job? Do they have the capacity to actually “do” what they need to do, both mentally and emotionally? Do they embody your business’s core values and model them to everyone? If the answer to any one of those questions is no, then you don’t have the right person in the right position.

It is important that team leaders promote people who fit the company culture. Managers are responsible for making sure that a team runs as smoothly as possible and adheres to the company code and culture. They need to ensure that their team members are clearly able to realize how their work contributes to the company’s overall vision and mission.

It is also important that employees that show natural intuition are promoted and given certain positions. If you feel like an existing employee can be coached up and has the aptitude to drive success in a high-level role while still embodying your core values, then they should be given a chance. The right person may be in the wrong position and a change of role might be perfect for them. A good leader knows this and utilizes this opportunity to maximize their employee’s skills by giving them the necessary training and tools.

With that said, no matter how perfect a candidate may seem for a job role on paper, they will not be a good fit for the company if they don’t have the drive and hunger to consistently learn and do better. People who take initiative and provide innovative solutions by always working to excel at their jobs not only drive teams but also organizations towards success.

3. Hire Employees That Relate with Your Brand Vision

Having a qualified and experienced worker is great. But the most important question that needs to be asked of any potential employee is: “What are their core values?”

This question helps uncover the most important aspects of a candidate. It helps you determine whether their goals and values align with that of yours and your business’s. This helps you identify the right people for your team.

Prioritizing your company culture can potentially be the most important thing you can do to have the right people working for you. If a prospective employee does not fit in with your company environment, it means there just is not a right seat for them to fill within your organization.

You can teach an inexperienced candidate the technical skills needed for a job role through training. But you can’t teach a person to align perfectly with a company culture that they don’t relate with on a personal level.

Never be shy about putting your core values at the forefront. Hiring people that value your culture will allow you to build teams that work together and support each other. This will boost workplace teambuilding and foster a positive community within the organization.

It would also lead to employee satisfaction in the long run and decrease your company’s turnover rate resulting in an improved bottom line. 

Core values are not just important during the hiring process. They should be evaluated during the review process as well to see where an employee is taking the organization with their presence.  

4. Set Expectations from Day One

Once you have set the roles, you need to set the expectations. Part of ensuring that an employee fits in perfectly with their role is making sure they know what is expected of them.

You want your team to know what it looks like to meet their goals and requirements successfully. Your expectations from individual roles to collective projects should be communicated effectively.

Clearly defining your hopes for the future from day one will help keep the projects on track. It would also allow you to avoid any future arguments and complaints that can arise due to confusion or ambiguous communication. Minimal complaints also translate into minimal time being wasted in achieving growth goals.

The key to setting the right expectations from the get-go is communication, which leads us to our next point.

5. Emphasize Accountability and Communication

Every step in your team's success will rest on the foundation of communication and accountability.

It is vitally important for you to know how your employees are performing so that you know you are hiring the right people for the right seats. It also means that employees don't get lazy and are empowered to produce solid work. You are also better able to recognize poor fits and replace them with better ones.

Accountability can be put into practice by utilizing performance tracking tools, setting clear expectations, and measuring your employees' success against those expectations. Tracking their performance would help you analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your employees. This would then help you in choosing who to promote and where.

Along with accountability, communication and feedback are key. Don’t limit yourself to evaluating your employees solely based on numbers and graphs. Try implementing ways to encourage communication. Nurture an environment that allows for them to comfortably communicate their problems and opinions.

This would help in overcoming their shortcomings and expanding their expertise to take the company to the next level.

Not only will you have a better sense of whom to promote, but you will also be able to identify the right candidates for the right position based on their priorities and skills. 

To Sum It All Up

Building your A-team is dependent on who you hire. Having the right people in the right seats can make or break your organization’s success. In the long run, it not only affects you but also the people who work for you.

By being thoughtful in who you choose to hire for a certain position, you enrich your company culture along with the lives of those who are part of that culture.

Therefore, define who you want. Hire them. Keep them engaged. And once that is done, take your organization to new heights by producing work that matters.