Is your Team mostly “Mini-Me’s”?

Is your Team mostly “Mini-Me’s”? This is a common mistake of many young managers. Because they were successful, they would tend to surround themselves with people just like them. The strongest Teams are diverse in skills and experience. You want people who can bring to the table a variety of ideas and experiences to help develop the best solutions. As a young field engineer, I quickly learned that if one of my experienced operators said; “Are you sure you want to do that?”, that I needed to stop and bring my Team together to make sure “We” made the best decision.

A good diverse Team is greater than the sum of the individuals. They build and compliment each other because they respect what each person brings to the Team and each has the ability to shine if their own areas of expertise. In sports you often find that the best teams are not the ones with the greatest number of great players, but the Teams whose players compliment the skills the Team players have and work together as one.