You may remember group projects at school, and the woes of having teacher assigned groups. Some of us may have been fortunate extroverts that click well with classmates, others may have been bullied by their tablemates. But, many will be familiar with the scenario of someone who you do not want to work with is added to your group, usually because they never actually contribute to a group project. Similarly, with seating charts, and disruptive students were moved to sit with well-behaved classmates that would chastise them for being a distraction, or refuse to give positive reinforcement in the form of a reaction. Did that ever work at school? It never happened at mine.
So, say you’ve started utilising Organisational Network Analysis but something is still missing? Your teams are still unable to make progress toward their goals. There’s friction, and it’s unclear why.
Kerry Goyette found that in workplaces, when teams are not put together with the project in mind, it may fail due to that reason in itself. When you put a team of high performers with one or two individuals that do not perform as well, it can be disastrous. She explained that these kind of workers, were “toxic, they create chaos around in their group, so we need to be about how we engineer our teams”.
Have you ever played fantasy football or even dungeons and dragons, where the individuals you select and their performance influences the outcome of the games? Of course there is an element of randomness with the roll of the dice, and whatnot, but, when you formulate a team for your fantasy football league, you have control over the individuals you put on your roster, but similarly to DnD, the fallout of the games would be down to chance. But, why do each of the quirky rag-tag team of miscrients go on this quest? What made them do this? Goyette explained that “the secret to motivation is that it’s not a one-size-fits-all [experience]”.
By using motivation as a topic of interview practice, and by not necessarily interviewing for likeability, and instead, how they seem to perform is a greater, and more ideal way to curate your workforce.
Goyette explained later in her talk that there is genuinely no correlation between whether an individual’s performance, and whether they were liked in the interview. You need to find people that are going to perform, and by hiring people you like, you may find yourself being clouded by the candidates and their charisma. This is why some retail environments require a trial shift in order to observe first-hand whether the prospective hire is ideal for the role.
Furthermore, we need to understand our motivations and communicate, ensuring that someone who is motivated by the pursuit of pleasure in projects with that as the end goal, instead of allowing individuals that are motivated by the avoidance of pain. Understanding this distinction, should allow for a greater sense of who should be in what teams.
Based in London, U.K., and founded in 2016 by Arvind Mishra The Agile Works (www.TheAgileWorks.com), is an up-and-coming recruitment and Agile consulting company. Arvind is a Certified SAFe SPC and regularly delivers both private and public SAFe certification workshops.
He is a design thinking expert, Sr. enterprise, portfolio Agile Coach with over a decade of experience working as an Agile coach in diverse industries such as banking, pharma, retail, auto, oil, gas, consulting and government.
The Agile Works; a small team of three strive to help shape the leadership's mind-set and values in readiness for their business transformation journey challenges. With Arvind at the helm, we strive to provide you with the agility tools to make your company that can thrive, and not just survive.
To book a consultation, or for any enquiries, you can contact Arvind via the following email address: arvind@theagileworks.com
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