Create a Winning Team

Whether you are on an existing team or have the luxury of building one from scratch – a successful team always boils down to the participants. Nikos Mourkogiannis wrote a great piece in Bloomberg Businessweek about the success of a team and how it ultimately depends on finding the right balance.

Nikos says that it’s all about the right mix and describes 4 archetypes of people in organizations: magicians, warriors, sovereigns, and lovers. You may see some similarities with these in the Jungian personality types. See if you can pick out who you are as well as others on your team.

Magicians: Rational yet imaginative souls in your organization. They think a new idea or insight is the only thing that can move the world – they are obsessed by ideas. These people think a mere argument over an idea equals action.

Lovers: Everything comes down to human relations. They are pragmatic but emotional and focus on building the winning coalition. They are obsessed by feelings not ideas and they consider agreement an action.

Sovereigns: Emotional and imaginative types who focus on the big picture and judge everything on whether it leads to where they want to go. They redefine what people consider is possible. Obsessed by beliefs, they consider direction a form of action.

Warriors: Rational and pragmatic, they are focused on the next battle and can only see clearly what is directly in front of them. They hold people accountable to systems and fairness and are obsessed by facts. Action is finding the critical factor to get something immediately accomplished.

The most effective teams maintain a balance by having a healthy variety of these types in key roles, according to Mourkogiannis. When one type dominates, friction, conflict, and the fall-off of creativity can occur. The best leaders surround themselves with types other than their own who complement their strengths and off-set their weaknesses.

Every organization requires a unique recipe for the right team mix. Too many warriors will experience difficulty with change and will consequently miss opportunities competitors may exploit. Too many sovereigns will pull an organization in too many directions at once, or will radically change direction often. Sovereign-dominated teams appear fragmented, with poor communication, and often struggle with strategy and direction.

Too many lovers and you have another set of problems. These employees value consensus to the detriment of results. They hold far too many meetings and do too much talking and not enough acting, lacking both competitiveness and edge. Too many magicians and your team will be pondering opportunities all the time, but will lack decisive action, even though the thinking will be excellent. Magicians are more concerned with having it done “right,” rather than having it done. A group of them in a room will look more like a debating society than a high performance team.

So, get to know the players on your team and adjust for balance to make for a more efficient group. Perhaps discussing the four types will be an empowering exercise to help individuals understand the valuable role they play and the need for the counter balance of other players for a stronger team.