Converting any "Team" into an "Effective Team"

I was relatively early on in my tenure as CEO at Baker Tilly when I had a powerful realization:

The way I thought about building effective teams was wrong—it wasn't working.

I had built a leadership team as I thought you should... You know the old saying, "Put the smartest people in a room together."

So that's what I did. I took the smartest and most talented people in the organization and I put them on a leadership team together.

By doing so, I built a great committee, not an effective team—there's a big difference.

Once this team was assembled, I experienced a lot of friction with how we operated.

We weren't coming up with new, bold ideas. We weren't acting on our strategy or willing to BREAK THE MOLD™ to achieve differentiated results. We weren't coming up with new ways to drive results and growth in the organization and we struggled to agree on paths forward.

Instead, we spent a lot of time wanting to organize and analyze data and quickly move to implement solutions.

It wasn't until I was introduced to the idea of the Team Management Profile that I realized something profound:

Effective teams weren't built simply by having the smartest people in the room.

Effective teams are built by having the right smart and talented people in the room.

So how do you know who the right people are?

Keep reading.

Smart Doesn't Equal Effective

So why doesn't a team of smart people work?

Because working as an effective team is about interpersonal relationships and dynamics. Effective teams don't just need to make decisions about things, they need to be able to directly work together to accomplish goals and create differentiated outcomes.

Effective teams need people comprised of different skill sets to work together to complement one another so the whole becomes more effective than just a sum of its parts.

Think about a sports team...

If you had a basketball team of five of the most talented point guards, it's not an effective team when put up against a team properly composed with a player at each position.

If you had a hockey team made up of five of the best goalies in the world, it's not going to go well...

It wasn't until I brought in an outside expert and learned about the Team Management Profile that I learned about the different personas that people on a team can play and the importance of having a well-rounded team made up of each of the personas.

The Team Management Profile

I'm by no means an expert in the Team Management Profile and this is in no way sponsored. I want to introduce you to the idea so you might do some additional learning of your own because I found it very useful.

The Team Management Profile helps people understand their tendencies, how they work, and how they interface with other people on a team.

The various personas within the TMP.

At a high level, people on a team are assessed and put into one of the above categories. Each category reflects work preferences and tendencies of how the person operates in a team setting.

(If you want to explore the Team Management Profile more in-depth, ​you can do that here​)

The main point I want to make is that an effective team is made up of people who represent each of the different personas.

It doesn't mean an effective team needs 8 people, but ideally, the people on the team should be distributed across the various personas.

If they aren't? You end up weighted too far to one side of the circle and the team experiences friction. That might mean:

• the team doesn't communicate or interact effectively

• the team struggles to make decisions

• the team doesn't accomplish meaningful things

• team members don't enjoy being on the team

That's not a formula for a team you want leading an organization—or any team, for that matter.

What to Do Next

What I learned about my leadership team was that a majority of them represented personas on one side of the wheel while I represented the other side.

Essentially, I wanted to lean into my characteristics and archetype while I had a group of leaders resisting those tendencies rather than having a balanced group to engage in a meaningful collective conversation.

It led to an ineffective team to lead the organization.

By the way, it's not because either of the personas are right or wrong. It led to an ineffective team because we had an imbalance in the makeup of personas on the team. The imbalance, not the personas themselves, is the thing that was wrong.

So, I made the decision to restructure the team. That meant removing some people and adding in some new people to make the personas in the group more balanced and therefore more effective.

I'll tell ya... It worked.

Having a more diverse group of personas, work preferences, and experiences led to a team that could effectively operate to think differently, plan effectively, and bring ideas and initiatives to life.

I wanted to share this with you because whether you've built a leadership team or will someday, be intentional about the makeup of the team.

It's not about having the smartest people in the room.

It's about having the right smart people in the room.

Without it, you're likely limiting the effectiveness of the group and therefore the success of your organization.

Was this idea helpful? Let me know by sending a reply and if you want to chat about my experience with TMP or how you might benefit from a similar exercise, I'm happy to do so.

With intention,
Alan D Whitman

P.S. a colleague and fellow newsletter reader, Liz Gaume, just published an excellent blog article on the Kansas Society of CPAs blog about the importance for CPA firms to BREAK THE MOLD™.

It featured a lot of the writings and ideas we talk about here and presented them in a new way. You can find it here. Excellent work, Liz, thank you for sharing.