Is Being a Team Player Important?

We often use the term "team player" to describe an employee who gets along with others, works well on team projects, and/or is willing to contribute discretionary effort toward the organization's goals. It's important for every organization to recognize the true importance of team skills as a success factor and a selection criteria for job candidates. Here's two examples to demonstrate the subtle difference:

Jane is a commissioned outside sales rep with a defined territory. She's a hunter and spends most of her time seeking out new sales opportunities as opposed to taking orders from existing clients. She has the technical knowledge to make the sale on her own without the assistance of technical support staff and she's not dependent on marketing or back office people to prepare proposal documents or support the sales process. When she makes the sale, she turns the order over to operations personnel and moves on to the next prospect.

Sally is a sales/marketing rep and earns a straight salary. Her primary job is to get appointments with decision makers in order to bring in a technical expert to wow the client with the company's capabilities. After the sale is made, Sally works with a team of people to pull together the solution for the prospect and she remains the primary point of contact for both implementation and customer questions or concerns going forward. She is also responsible for identifying potential future sales with that same client.

If either Jane or Sally should leave their respective organizations, which company should be more concerned with whether or not potential replacements are "team players." Obviously Sally's role requires much more interaction with co-workers and the successful candidate to replace her needs to be someone who plays well in the sandbox with others. In reality, Jane could be perceived as difficult to work with and uncooperative from the perspective of her co-workers and still be a rock-star when it comes to her core job duties - making rain! Over-weighting team skills during the selection process for Jane's replacement could result in overlooking the candidate who might have delivered the strongest results.

You can apply the same logic to multiple roles in your organization - how important is it that this individual be able to work well with other people? If the role is really designed for an individual contributor, someone who sits in a back office and cranks out work without need to interact with others, the organization should look for someone who scores high for traits such as Commanding, Resourceful and Intentional. If the role is really designed for someone whose work frequently interacts with other team members, the organization should look for someone who scores high for traits like Collaborative, Selfless and Harmonious.

How do you identify those traits during the selection process? A) You ask behavioral interview questions targeted at those motivators and B) you give them a pre-employment assessment that measures those internal motivators. Don't currently use a motivators assessment? Contact me and I'll show you a great one that will help your organization make better hiring decisions.