Page 93 - HBR Leader's Handbook: Make an Impact, Inspire Your Organization, and Get to the Next Level

Getting Great People on Board 83

must mix and match talents, backgrounds, and tendencies (including your
own) in a way that will allow your team to succeed collectively. So as you
build your team, assess current strengths and backgrounds. Are there any
that are missing? Who in your organization might have those qualities?
Also look at personality types to make sure you have a mix of people who
are different enough to spark creative thought, but still able to collaborate.
Venture investor Bob Proctor compares this process to constructing a
dynamic jigsaw puzzle. He spends much of his time making sure that the
startup companies in his portfolio have leadership teams with the right
mix of skills and thought processes, and that the companies’ leadership
recognizes who’s good at what and builds roles around them and what they
excel in. You can do this formally as you build or develop your team by
using one of the personality-style assessment tools available in the market.
Although none of them is perfect, they provide interesting insights into
different ways that people approach problems, communicate, and think.
You also can get the measure of current and potential team members by
giving them problems to solve, asking them to make a presentation, con-
ducting role-plays, or finding ways to have them interact with other mem-
bers of your team. All these methods will give you more insight than just
checking résumés and conducting one-on-one interviews.
As you focus on other members of your team, also pay particular at-
tention to your own gaps. Anne Mulcahy, the former turnaround CEO of
Xerox whom we met in chapters 1 and 2, for example, did not consider her-
self to be a very strong strategist. Most of her career had been in sales and
operations, so her strengths were in people and communications. When
she became CEO, she realized that strategic capability would be critical, so
she made sure that at least two other senior executives had those skills
when putting together her leadership team.

Make the tough decisions
Identifying the right people for your leadership team also goes hand in
hand with identifying those team members who should no longer remain.
Jack Welch, the legendary former CEO of GE, used to say that leaders need
to be “hard-headed and soft-hearted.” As a leader, you need to be totally