Managing teams requires you to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each of your team members. This must be considered in allocating tasks. Giving assignments to someone you know does not have the capacity for delivery shows that the intention is to humiliate that individual, or you are not interested in getting results ab initio. The ability of each of your team members to execute specific assignments must be considered when assigning tasks to them. Doing otherwise is very illogical.
“Leaders must note that there are certain personalities that are fit for certain roles, and for optimal performance, bias must be avoided in placing them in the appropriate roles.”
When Alan Mulally took over as CEO of Ford Motor Company in 2006, he inherited a struggling organisation with a staggering $12.7 billion loss in 2006 alone, the worst in the company’s 103-year history. The company was owing, credit rating downgraded, and declining market shares.
However, these were not without talented individuals, but many of them were misplaced in roles that didn’t match their strengths. Apart from financial restructuring, he had to put the right people in the right positions. First, he conducted a thorough talent assessment of top executives and reassigned them to areas matching their individual skills and strengths. In addition to this, he established cross-functional teams to tackle key business challenges. This was to foster collaboration and innovation across different departments and functions. With these actions, Mulally was able to prevent Ford from bankruptcy. He also returned the business to profitability while the company regained its position as one of the leading automobile companies in the world.
Many leaders fail, not because they don’t have the right resources but because they have deployed them to areas where they won’t function properly.
Everyone has an area where he is naturally talented. The role of a leader is to identify areas where your team members are naturally gifted. Steve Jobs was a visionary communicator who handled product vision and marketing, while Steve Wozniak, Job’s co-founder and the technical genius at Apple, focused on engineering. If they had switched roles, Apple might never have become the titan it is today. They complemented each other, and the synergy between them helped Apple revolutionise the computer industry and establish Apple as a leader in innovation and design. This is the way leaders should make members of their teams complement one another for optimal performance.
Misalignment in teams can have a huge negative impact on the output of the department, organisation, or agency. Microsoft learnt this lesson the hard way when they initially placed Steve Sinofsky, a brilliant technical mind, in charge of consumer products. Despite his excellence in other areas, his engineering-focused approach didn’t align well with consumer needs, leading to products like Windows 8 that, while technically sophisticated, missed the mark on user experience. No doubt, Sinofsky had a deep understanding of Windows and its underlying technology, but he was not strong on consumer focus and experience. He also had poor communication skills, and all these were enough for the leadership not to have considered him for a consumer-focused product like Windows 8. Unfortunately, this misalignment and the bad user experience led to Sinofsky’s departure from Microsoft in 2012.
Leaders must note that there are certain personalities that are fit for certain roles, and for optimal performance, bias must be avoided in placing them in the appropriate roles.
One of the ways leaders can tap into the personalities for role alignment is to recognise archetypes. Archetype is a concept designed by Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, and it is a universal, innate pattern of thought, experience, and behavior. Examples of these are strategists, doers, communicators, technical specialists, collaborators, entrepreneurs, and coaches. Time and space will not allow me to speak in detail about the above personalities, but a few examples will be given below.
The strategists develop and implement long-term plans and visions. They are analytical thinkers, innovative, with sound decision-making skills, forward-thinking, and good at solving complex problems. At Netflix, Reed Hastings recognised that their Chief Content Officer, Ted Sarandos, had an exceptional strategic mind. Instead of bogging him down with day-to-day operations, Hastings positioned him to focus on content strategy, leading to Netflix’s transformation from a DVD rental service to a streaming powerhouse.
The doers are good at the execution of tasks and projects. Just like the word doer implies, they are operational experts. They are sound with project management and are very good time managers. They are action-oriented and results-driven. Amazon’s operations team remains deliberately staffed with execution-focused individuals. Jeff Bezos understood that fulfilment centres needed people who excelled at implementing and optimising processes, not theorising about them.
The Communicators are relationship builders. They are good at influencing others. They have sound verbal and written communication skills. They are charismatic and articulate. When Satya Nadella became Microsoft’s CEO, he recognised that the Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Mark Russinovich, had an extraordinary ability to explain complex technical concepts. Instead of keeping him purely in development, Nadella positioned him as a key technical evangelist, significantly improving Microsoft’s developer relations.
The most successful teams aren’t those where everyone can do everything; they’re those where everyone excels at what they do best. Your role as a leader isn’t to make everyone good at everything. It’s to create an environment where strengths are valued and celebrated, weaknesses are supported and not used to vilify, complementary skills are used to create team success, and individual growth aligns with natural talents.
When you do the above, you bring the best out of your team, and you will come out with the best of results. Don’t give the job of a doer to a thinker. Don’t give the job of a communicator to a strategist. The abilities of your team members must be used to allocate tasks, or else your team may end up performing suboptimally.
Oluwole Dada is the General Manager at SecureID Limited, Africa’s largest smart card manufacturing plant in Lagos, Nigeria.
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