Why do smart teams often fail?

As Jim Collins says in Good to Great, one of the most important things in creating success in any business is to “get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus and the right people in the right seats.” Then, and only then, should you decide where the bus is heading.

So, after a great deal of effort, you’ve gone through an extensive recruitment and restructuring process and you’ve got all the right people – sales, marketing, finance, HR, Operations, and, if you’re a larger organisation Legal, Commercial and Strategy.   

What many people now discover is that getting the right people was the easy part.  The real challenge kicks in after you’ve got your team members on board. 

If you’re going to get the best from these stellar individuals, you now have to help them grow and develop into a focused collective with the same sense of purpose and direction – a team.

You’ve selected people based on their individual attributes and your perception of how they will fit together with their colleagues, but the truth is that you’ll only discover how well they work as a team once you have brought them together.

Some people are naturally quieter than others and, potentially, more reluctant to share their opinion or speak up when someone is dominating the room.

Others are unable to stay quiet when they would get more benefit from listening.

Some people are naturally good at building relationships and intuitively understand how to gain consensus support for their ideas, while others are more focused on themselves and achieve their goals independently without support. 

Many businesses give people the technical and soft skills they need, but their teams still don’t necessarily achieve their goals. That’s where emotional intelligence comes in. 

Everybody experiences emotions differently and emotions lead directly to behaviours.  

Teams perform better when people are able to regulate their behaviour and, in order to do that, they need to be able to identify, understand and manage the base emotions that drive the way they act.

It’s not necessarily about achieving harmony and consensus all the time.  Creative tension and positive challenge are fantastic for dynamic business growth, as long as the tension and challenge are controlled.

Understanding why your team members behave the way they do and giving them the tools to understand and regulate their emotions could be the very best investment you make in your business.