All leaders want stars on the team and there is plenty of advice available about how to hire the “right” people.
That’s great. I’m all for building the best team possible, but is selecting team members the only way to do that?
My military experience provides an interesting answer. Military leaders seldom if ever have the opportunity to select their own team. Instead, leaders are assigned to an existing team, its members almost always assigned there by a system that takes little notice of individual strengths and weaknesses. Instead the system places people into teams based on complex algorithms that only a computer could love. Those of us who led those teams took what we got.
A recipe for disaster right? Or at least mediocrity. Yet, those teams repeatedly excelled, doing difficult jobs under often very trying conditions. How can that be?
In fact, those teams that seem so randomly constructed are a collection of people with the same core training which makes the team not quite as random as it might appear. Everyone has the same basic understanding of mission and they are taught that they are part of something important and bigger than each of them individually. Also, there are well defined levels of leadership within the organization and each level receives training that is standardized throughout the service. Leadership development starts early and is continuous.
There’s another important factor that makes team building successful even when the leader isn’t able to hand-select the members – encouraging current members to become stars. Rather than trying to recruit stars, which military leaders generally can’t do, they make the people they have into stars.
You can too. Absolutely you should strive to hire the best people you can, but don’t be so busy looking outside your organization for new talent that you miss the developing talent that is right under your nose. I bet you have at least two or three people in your organization right now who have the potential to be stars.
What are you doing to encourage them and help them become more than they are today?
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