Many leaders and companies want to form dream teams by getting superstars and
putting them together ad hoping magic happens.
Let me give you an example.
When the United States began using NBA stars instead of amateurs on its Olympic
team in 1992, it was assumed the best players in the world would never lose.
In 1992, 1996, and 2000 Olympic games, these dream
teams crushed all their opponents with a perfect 24-0 record.
But at the 2004 games, talent wasn't enough.
The US team of superstars practiced together for
a week before heading to the Olympics.
In the first game of the competition,
Puerto Rico beat the United States by 22 points.
The Puerto Rican team had played together for years.
The US finished in third place losing more games
than they had lost in the previous 68 years combined.
Bottom line, it's not enough to put your most talented people on the same team and
just hope that magic happens.
Probably the most common question I get when it comes to
how to assemble a team is, who should I put on the team?
Most leaders approach team building like a cocktail party.
They invite their friends and superstars.
As we will see, this is not a good idea.
I've done some research on team building, and I've made two alarming discoveries.
First, the average team size is too big.
According to nearly any standard or rule of thumb.
Second, teams tend to be too homogenous.
They lack diversity.
So if you're ever lucky enough to build the team of your dreams,
I want to help you avoid the two most common building errors,
the Team-Overstaffing Bias And the Homogeneity Bias.
The overstaffing bias refers to the fact that teams are too large.
Just like the American waistline, teams are getting bigger.
In my own research, the average team size is approaching 13 people.
Just over 12 years ago it was about ten people.
Why is this?
People wanna be politically correct and inclusive, so
we've put everyone on a team and teams are no longer special.
So what are some rules of thumb?
I will give you four of my favorites.
Jeff Bezos' two pizza rule.
If you cannot feed the members of your team with two pizzas, the team is too big.
AT&T seven plus-or-minus two rule.
Teams should be between five and nine members.
Harvard single digit rule, teams in excess of nine people are too large.
Bare minimum rule,
choose the fewest number of people necessary to accomplish the task.
The homogeneity bias refers to the fact that
people unconsciously build teams that are, well, too much alike.
Some examples.
Most people choose members based on personality, not expertise.
Unconsciously, people are biased toward their own race.
Think of diversity like an onion, there are several layers.
The outside layer is the superficial stuff.
The inside layer is the deep important stuff.
The ideal type of diversity is deep level diversity.
Based on expertise, training, thinking styles, if you
focus on superficial characteristics to the exclusion of deep level diversity,
you unwittingly create what professor Keith Mernan calls a fault line.
A fault line is a dividing line that separates teams
into distinct subgroups based on one or
more attributes such as race, gender, functional area, etc.
For example, in one investigation a global team at a telecommunications
company discovered they had a serious faultline in terms of the engineers being
primarily men and the marketing group primarily women.
Faultlines in teams create an unhealthy us versus them culture.
How should leaders deal with faultlines?
First and foremost, diagnose them early.
If you are thoughtful about building teams, you will realize it.
Second, create energy and excitement around the task.
When team members are excited about the work,
they're not focused on superficial demographics.
Third, when conflict emerges, build trust.
And remember, there are two types of trust.
Benevolence based trust, and competency based trust.
As your team member, I need to trust your instincts, and trust your expertise.
Okay. Let's sum up.
You get to build the dream team from the ground up.
Best practices to keep in mind.
One, assemble the fewest number of people possible.
Two, create a grid with the potential people as the rows and
their skills and competencies as the columns.
For each person, ask yourself, what skills and
expertise does this person uniquely bring to them?
Third, make sure you don't have overlap.
Avoid homogeneity.
Fourth, check for faultlines.
FInally, truth in disclosure.
Diverse teams do have potential for more conflict.
So we will need some conflict
management skills in our dream team.
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