They say no two people are the same, but some people are incredibly alike, and that’s almost the same thing. When it comes to hiring people to join your team, there are many things you need to consider, including how well the prospective candidate will get on with your team. You might think the best course of action is to find the most skilled candidate who is much alike your existing team members in the hope they’ll get on and give you an efficient and dynamic team, but that’s not the right thing to do.
Whilst it’s important to avoid personality clashes, the best teams are diverse and have a mixture of people in them. After all, no one person is good at everything; everyone has their weaknesses which means if you hire multiple versions of the same person, your team will have weaknesses that no one can fill.
If you’re looking for a way to better your team or encourage team building, here are three types of people you need to hire.
1. Dominant
The world consists of natural-born leaders and natural-born followers. Some people thrive with responsibility on their shoulders, whilst other people prefer to blend into the background and avoid being at the forefront of a task. For this reason, you need to make sure your team has one dominant person. Two dominant personalities are a recipe for disaster and conflict, but having one person who can comfortably take the lead and offer direction, advice and assertiveness is a must. Dominant people tend to be confident, outgoing, and extroverted, which makes finding them relatively easy.
By employing a dominant person in your team, you’re making sure you have someone who can methodically lead everyone else whilst taking accountability for any mistakes or wrongdoing. They need to be a fast learner and relatively thick-skinned so as to take any criticism that may come their way as a leader.
All that being said, you need to make sure they’re calm, respectful, and fair, otherwise they could quickly become disliked and there will be a discord within your team.
2. Methodical
In the same way, there are leaders and followers, there are also organized and disorganized people. Every team needs a methodical person who will evaluate every possible scenario and go through things step by step in order to offer cautiously educated advice. Methodical people might take a bit longer to complete tasks because they’re so often perfectionists, but the time they spend on checking everything is a blessing when things go wrong because they will always have an answer for why something has happened. Methodical people log things, make lots of notes, and are as good as Google when it comes to finding out an answer. They never miss a beat and will give your team the structure it so desperately needs.
Whilst you want everyone on your team to be somewhat organized, not everyone will be, but that doesn’t mean their quality of work is any less. Instead, hire a methodical and analytical person – odds are they’ll take great pleasure in helping other people keep on top of things, but you don’t want to hire two. There’s nothing worse than a disagreement, and methodical people can get very protective over the way they work and evaluate situations, so minimize the risk and only hire one.
3. Steady
Some say steady people and dominant people clash because their approaches are so different, but a lot of the time, they can work in complete harmony. You’ll want a steady person on your team to be the voice of reason. This is the type of person who is exceptionally friendly and warm, and they have a knack for making people feel better about themselves and for calming people down. They’re almost like the mother hen of the team – they’re always available in a time of need. Steady people tend to be calm and passive, making them the perfect people to reason with an overly dominant character without losing their temper, and this can be of great comfort to other members of the team.
Summary
By hiring one of the above, you’re covering all bases and ensuring there is a member of your team who can cover any potential weaknesses. This should ease tension and give you a cohesive team who can work together at maximum output with minimum conflict – especially whilst working remotely, and that right there is the dream of any employer!
