How to Attract, Assess & Grow the Ideal Team Player

By fostering teamwork, and encouraging a team player, you are creating a work culture that values collaboration and allows everybody involved to understand and buy into the idea that all of the processes that your company carries out, including the planning and decision-making, are better when done as a team.

While hiring the ideal team player might be a hard task to tackle, leading or molding a current or new employee into being the right kind of team player for your company culture is a great practice in order to keep a people-focused culture alive and well. However, to build the ideal team player, you’ve first got to define what that means for your company.

Team players are well-rounded individuals that have a special mix of confidence in their personality and work ethic but don’t have an excessive ego. This perfect mix allows employees to be team players, highlighting the strengths of other individuals and the team as a whole while also being able to contribute effectively to the collective success of the goal at hand.

They are also passionate and driven to succeed and possess the ability to encourage as well as be encouraged. This is one of the most important aspects, as these types of workers will always be looking for ways to learn, grow and add more to their professional palette as well as to the team’s, but they should also be able to listen to the advice and words of encouragement of others with the same enthusiasm.

And, finally, the ideal team player should be intuitive. Anybody working in a team dynamic should have good character judgment and be able to read situations to ensure they’re flowing easily in and out of the dynamic in a way that is conducive to the situation. They should be mindful of the impact of their actions and words and be able to intuitively assess those of others.

Being able to assess the behavioral tendencies of your job applicants means you will have far greater insights into what you can expect from them in the workplace. Understanding which qualities you expect from a team player within your organization and assessing potential candidates before they’re thrown into your company’s culture can avoid costly hiring mistakes and facilitate a faster overall transition into a great team dynamic.

These types of assessments, whether they’re done as part of a pre-hiring process or even during or after onboarding, are beneficial at making employees, and leaders within your company, aware of the strengths and potential weaknesses of each player to ensure that everybody is well-equipped to make better choices about the way they behave. Once everybody understands the ways in which others work, they’ll be able to improve the communication and dynamic within which the team operates and even improves.

Now that you’ve established what a team player should look like in a broad sense for your company, and you’re aware of the need to assess their qualities before bringing them into the team dynamic, you’ll want to focus on how management can help craft a culture of rewarding behavior that exhibits outstanding teamwork.

While it’s important for leaders at every level to exemplify this attitude, it really should run in the veins of every person at every level of your company in order to seep in and really take hold as a part of the core culture. To create this culture, first, you’ll need to ensure your management has great communication skills.

Executive leaders should be able to communicate, clearly, their expectations of teamwork and what that means in regards to the function and roles of your business. They can do this by opening lines of communication between themselves and their team and by encouraging everybody else to do so.

They should make it clear that no one person completely dominates a work process or project, and that everybody is open and receptive to feedback, new ideas, and innovation. They should never forget to model the type of teamwork behavior they expect from all individuals within the organization to ensure they’re setting a good example for others to follow.

After establishing an effective model of what is expected, it should be clear that these types of behavior are recognized and rewarded. Positive reinforcement will go a long way in crafting your ideal team player, and this can take shape in the form of bonuses, formal recognition or other non-monetary incentives that ensure they know their contribution is being recognized.

Focusing on the bottom line here allows you to not only ensure you’re getting the most out of the effort you’re putting into your employees and their development but that they’ll give the most back to you as well.

It’s important to remain patient and dedicated to a consistent culture surrounding these values and reassure your employees that with the right communication, strategy and understanding of their natural strengths and weaknesses, they can be transformed into the best possible version of themselves.

Choosing the right tools for your team will go a long way in crafting a framework within which to cultivate a true sense of teamwork and open communication. Give the gift of organization and help your employees naturally succeed with Homebase’s free team management tools so you can focus on growing your business in other ways.