“Great things in business are never done by one person. They are done by a team of people.” - Steve Jobs
No brand was built by one person working alone 24/7. A brand operates successfully only when we hire people with the right skills assessment and work with each other collectively. When they cooperate, coordinate and collaborate with each other and work for the common goal, i.e., the growth of the company.
This concept is very much clear to Reed Hastings the CEO of Netflix. In the 21st century who isn’t aware of Netflix. Reed doesn’t believe in having employees who aren’t team players. Employees that work only for themselves and want to be the solo drivers for every project aren’t well received.
Hastings said no matter how smart or productive such employees are they can hurt the entire team spirit and culture of the organization. There are no doubt companies that like and tolerate individual players. But, not at Netflix for them, the cost of effective teamwork is too high.
Netflix believes their culture of working collaboratively is way too important. Therefore, they don’t let such employees harm the work culture.
Jim Schleckser, in his book Great CEOs, Are Lazy wrote, such employees, are “cultural terrorists” as they can disrupt and destruct an organization.
However, the very first and wise choice is to coach the employee on their behavior and tell them to be more supportive, and polish their one-man show attitude. You can’t force someone to change their behavior but in some cases, the person might change.
If you are a company that resonates with Netflix’s culture and believes in teamwork, you should take some steps to fix it. You should not wait for any damage to be done!
Therefore, to save yourself from the hassle of letting go of non-team players, it’s better to hire candidates with the right skills assessment who are team players from the start!
An individual learns more in a group rather than alone. When an employee interacts with their team, the probability of learning increases.
There’s a constant flow of creative ideas, which shapes the new recruit’s thinking creatively, i.e, thinking out of the box. It also makes you a more accountable person as he/she will feel responsible for the team while making work deliveries.
Not only being a team player increases the new recruit’s work ethic but also enhances their knowledge about the company’s culture. This will help the recruit to settle better in the organization.
Each and every employee should focus on their individual performances, however, if the team doesn’t succeed, the individual’s hard work goes in vain.
When a candidate knows how to work with a team, they know how to collaborate and calibrate with them. They sync up with the team well and give a helping hand when required. Such candidates often take ownership to complete a task when a colleague of theirs isn’t available.
For example - A new recruit (who’s worked with a team previously) is hired in the digital marketing team of a company. The recruit’s job is to write website content. However, what goes on the website is up to the recruit.
Yet, the keywords for the content are determined by the SEO analyst, the images come via the designer, the social media marketer does the promotion on social media.
No matter how great the article is, there won’t be any response if it isn’t distributed. There’s a team effort that goes into creating a piece of content from scratch till distributing it online and making it successful.
The more people it reaches, the probability of getting more business the company increases.
Not just one company, the matrix of success for any company is the same, i.e., TeamWork.
Also Read: Tips to Organize Virtual Team Building
When you hire people who believe in teamwork, there’s very little chance of miscommunication. The transparency increases and employees trust each other, which is a team is of high importance.
This results in high cooperative sets of employees which faster problem-solving or faster resolutions. When people bond well, they aren’t shy to share their problems or to offer solutions to problems.
This attitude also opens a whole new gateway to creativity as the ideas keep flowing, resulting in improved outcomes.
I know it is hard to tell whether a candidate is a team player or not during the interview. However, a simple question like, do you have any experience of working in a team? And how was it? It can tell a lot about the candidate, especially how they portray their teammates. Also using the right skills assessment platform will help in analyzing the candidates and know whether they are team players or not.