March 10th, 2011
There is a lot of talk about talent. There are books and conferences and blogs that focus solely on talent and I think that most of them miss the mark…by a long way. There is always some interesting conversation around what talent is and like anything that is really important talent is hard to define and quantify. But I think that the vast majority of the talking and writing and thinking about talent is not even pointed in the right direction.
Most conversation about talent frames talent as an individual thing, not a group or team thing. And this is what makes most of that conversation irrelevant.
Very little work is done today by individuals acting alone. Work is done with and by and through teams. Formal teams, informal teams, networks, static teams, dynamic teams, virtual teams, communities of practice, etc., etc.
And one of the things to know about teams is that they are not simply the sum of their parts. More is different. Teams and groups have a whole bunch of social dynamics that do not show up on the individual level. Communication, trust, diversity, inclusion, social pressure are all things that exist socially…between people, in groups and teams.
Rather than working to build talented teams, we toil away trying to hire talented individuals with the assumption that this will lead to talented teams. It often times does not. It does not always lead to outright dysfunction, but it rarely leads to kick-ass teams and we all know this because we know that kick-ass teams are rare.
A team of talented individuals does not equal a talented team. Groups of really smart people can be incredibly stupid. Read the news. Not only can groups of smart people be stupid, Scott Page and others have shown that groups of people with a great deal of diversity of thought can outperform groups of smarter individuals with less diversity of thought.
Are you trying to hire talented people or build talented teams?
Joe,
I couldn’t agree more with you about building talented teams.
I am a huge fan of Gallup and their Strengths-based tools to help build well-rounded teams.
I am wondering what your thoughts are on the StrengthFinder/StrengthsQuest tools when organizations desire to build teams that are both inclusive and diverse (cognitively and strengths wise).
You are not one to beat around the bush. Please, take a whack at it!
Yes! I am glad I found your blog, I dig your style. I completely agree that it’s not enough to focus on individual profiles of talent because we do not work as silo-ed individuals. It is also true that so much about what makes a team successful is the hidden 90 % of the iceberg of consciousness that lies beneath the water of the subconscious. I see Andrew’s post above about team building tools, and I think they do have their place, but what do you think about internal networking capabilities (SaaS) that allow employees to collaborate across silos and suggest who they want to work with to help build their own teams? Do you think this could make collaborative work more productive in an organization? I have been thinking a lot about this and I really think it could.
I’m with you on this Joe.
As I read your post I kept thinking of how football coaches look at talent as something much bigger than individual giftedness. At least the good ones do!
What would be evidence that a business leader was starting to think in terms of creating a talented team? Especially in a larger corporation.
Thanks for stirring things up.
Keep creating, Mike