Teamwork has changed significantly in recent years, as many of us have transitioned to hybrid or remote working models. But teams haven’t disappeared; they just operate differently now. Modern team development is the key to building high-performing teams in this new landscape of work.

Recently on The Science of Personality, cohosts Ryne Sherman, PhD, and Blake Loepp spoke with Kyle Cermak, director of business development at Hogan Assessments, to talk about team development in the modern age.

“I’ve spent about half my career leading high-performing sales teams,” Kyle said. “Team development is something I care deeply about.”

Keep reading to learn the definition of a team, key areas for team development, and strategies for organisations to build high-performing teams.

What Is a Team?

In Hogan terms, a team is a collection of people with cross-functional expertise who are working toward a shared purpose. “Generally, you have three or more people who share a common goal and common leadership and who see themselves as belonging to a team. That mental model of belonging frames how each person looks at their contributions to their team’s work,” Kyle explained.

Team members are intrinsically dependent upon each other and their leader for success. Teams within organisations are also interdependent. Although each team might have its own specialty (e.g., finance, human resources, or operations), every action they take affects other aspects of the business. Everyone needs to carry their individual responsibilities in a way that contributes to the greater good. Leaders are responsible for promoting a culture of shared purpose.

Kyle’s expertise in team development began when he was promoted to management in his late 20s. He described his first leadership role as an unmitigated disaster. He had not yet developed the leadership capabilities to help him build and maintain a high-performing team. “How do you speak into what’s important to each member of the team and help them optimise what they’re capable of?” he said. “My responsibility as a leader is to ensure the team is doing the absolute best they can and to help build leaders for tomorrow.”

Key Areas for Team Development

Like talent management strategy, team development is always evolving. Companies are experiencing a huge amount of pressure to ramp up team performance while confronting high turnover. “It’s a huge competitive advantage to have good talent acquisition practices and good talent development practices that encourage people to collaborate, to communicate well, and to keep moving the business forward,” Kyle said.

He named three key areas for team development: (1) team balance, (2) team derailers, and (3) team leadership.

Team Balance

First, team balance refers to the right mix of skills, experience, and personality to create a high-performing team and a satisfied workforce. For example, if a basketball team consisted of only centres, its performance would likely be weaker than a team with all five positions assigned. Diversity of skill set helps with balance, Kyle explained. “We need balance between high-performing individuals and people in support roles. We don’t want people who all function the same way.”

Team Derailers

How do team members tend to respond under stress, and how will that impact team engagement? Hogan calls these stress-driven behaviours derailers because they can hold people back from success. Derailers can be categorised in three groups: moving away from others, moving against others, and moving toward others. Colloquially, these responses to conflict are called flight, fight, and the need to be right. Kyle gave an example of what could happen to a team in derailment: “If you’ve got a team where people tend to move away from each other when there’s trouble—everyone scatters into their offices—that’s not going to move the conflict forward. That’s not going to help facilitate effective communication.”

Team members should recognise how each other contributes to success and what potentially could happen when things go wrong. In other words, they should understand their own and their teammates’ derailers. They should be mutually invested in a team culture that allows them to optimise their capabilities and respond productively during times of challenge.

Team Leadership

The last key area for team development is having effective leadership. Team leaders must be responsible for the balance of their teams. They must also understand how their team members are likely to react when faced with challenges and conflict. Finally, leaders must facilitate team cohesion and culture. This means leaders help team members understand how their teammates operate and what values underlie the team’s culture.

Lacking a common purpose or goals will hurt team performance. That’s why alignment on objectives is an incredibly important consideration for leaders. “This is who we are. This is what we’re working towards. This is how we’re going to do it,” Kyle said, modelling what an effective leader might say to a team. “I can’t think of a bigger concern for a leader to be mindful of.”

Modern Team Development Strategies

Investing in people is worthwhile and lucrative. Organisations see a better return on investment when they develop established talent than starting over with new talent. Often, the right talent is already in the right places, but the dynamics of the group might not be driving effective team performance. Team development helps team members learn to work together in a positive, productive way according to their personalities.

“The starting point for understanding personality characteristics is personality assessment,” Kyle said. Personality assessment that predicts workplace performance can provide insightful data about everyday personality characteristics, potential challenges to performance, and the values that motivate professional and personal lives. Teams with values alignment—with both team leadership and organisational leadership—tend to find greater job satisfaction in their work.

“Building high-performing teams has ancillary benefits for organisations,” Kyle said. High-performing teams typically have high engagement. “The more that someone’s invested and engaged in their work, the higher the chances are that they’re going to be a high performer,” he added. Higher engagement also improves retention, raises morale, and increases productivity. Additional downstream effects are increased revenue, customer satisfaction, psychological safety, and more.

Team Development Sessions

At Hogan, we use our scientifically validated, reliable personality assessments to understand how teams are likely to function, including the team leader. Hogan-certified practitioners then provide individual personality feedback, enabling people to develop the strategic self-awareness that they need to be successful in their teams and careers. Modern team development sessions cover team identity, team strengths, coping with challenges, and data-based personality insights to improve team functioning. Moreover, team leaders gain a better understanding of how to lead their unique teams.

Kyle emphasised the importance of development at the individual, team, and leadership levels. “The only real measurement of leadership efficacy is team performance. There is no better opportunity to improve the performance of organisations than investing in the performance of teams,” he said.

Listen to this conversation in full on episode 109 of The Science of Personality.

*This article originally appeared on Hogan Assessments.