Building a team is a common area where mistakes are made as we recruit or choose skills and pick the ‘doers’ rather than recognise the wider characteristics which are important for a happy and productive team.
We can always bring in individuals with specific skills and expertise later.
There are a number of models which consider the way that we work together.
Belbin Model: https://Belbin.com/
- Action-oriented roles
- People-oriented roles
- Thought-oriented roles
Debonos Thinking Hats: https://www.debono.com/
- Blue Hat: organisation and planning
- Green Hat: creative thinking
- Red Hat: feelings and instincts
- Yellow Hat: benefits and values
- Black Hat: risk assessment
- White Hat: information gathering
With my own summary of people having strengths in relation to:
- Exploration
- Connection
- Creativity
- Achievement
- Risk Spotting
We need all of these ways of thinking to be captured within our teams.
We need our explorers to look for the data, being interested in the world and giving us information for us to act on.
We need our creative thinkers to create solutions and think laterally to consider options.
We need our connectors to see the positives, to be able to engage with others and bring people together to collaborate with our vision.
We need our achievers, who can identify the processes we should follow, create our action plans and hold us to account.
We need our risk spotters to prevent us from making mistakes.
These models provide a useful framework for maximising our performance. By considering the strengths and weaknesses of each individual, we can organise our teams in a way that utilises everyone’s talents and fosters productive and creative collaboration.
These characteristics can be bought together to ensure we capture the different elements of managing a project or delivering a service however we can use it as a decision making tool to ensure we consider different perspectives. In Debonos hats, each thinking style is represented by a different hat: By “wearing” each of the Six Thinking Hats in turn, you can gain a rich understanding of the issues you face – and the best ways forward.
No project or challenge will be achieved through one way of thinking and only by recognising and celebrating our diversity of talent will we succeed.
