Hello Steemians! Welcome to yet another article in Effective Leadership series. In the previous article, we saw information on the Recruitment process. In this article, we will check out how team formation can be done and important aspects of the right team. In order to form a team, the leader should first be clear on the requirement. Leaders should have a proper justification and details on the skill set required for the new recruit. After leader and management are clear on the requirement part, finding candidates can be started. In the previous article, we saw how we can take steps to find right candidates. We also saw why it is important to promote insiders if there is a new requirement in the team.

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Inside promotion is more rewarding

Though we saw about this in the previous article, I would like to insist more on the importance of having inside promotions. Rewarding a team member inside the team with a promotion to a new role is really motivating. This is not a motivation for just the team member but also for others. The leader should be able to explain that company will definitely recognize people who are making good efforts. Promoting an internal staff is a kind of recognition the company is making to acknowledge that they have been consistently providing good contribution to the company's growth. If a manager and leader take into account the feelings of staff members when promoted internally, they will be able to easily nurture and get the best output from the staff.

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Balancing Skills

Not all the team members are multi-skilled people. The skill set of the team members is usually diversified. For the effective functioning of the team, the following skills should be in balance:

• Technical skills
• problem-solving skills
• Decision-making skills
• Interpersonal skills

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The team should be highly creative and disciplined. They should be good in planning and keep up deadlines in the project. Finding a solution to difficulties is an important aspect of team building. The members of the team should be able to support each other on their tasks. Organizing tasks are very important for the success. Team members should be well organized to plan a task and complete it within the deadlines. With all these ideologies a good team can be formed and it makes it highly comfortable to lead the team without anything to worry about.

Conducting Interviews

If a leader is now having approvals to recruit new resource for the team, interviews can be conducted and candidates can be recruited as a staff member. During the interview, it is ideal to spend about 45 minutes with one candidate. Your conversations with the candidate should be kept the minimum. The candidate should be given enough time to talk and most of the talking should be done only by the candidate. Some things that can be asked of the candidates are:

• Their thoughts about this company.
• Why have they been looking for a change.
• Their performance in past job.
• Their understanding of the job and company
• Their strengths and weakness.
• Their long-term goal.

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The answers from them to the above questions will clearly provide an idea about the person. You have to observe them carefully checking their art of expression and body language. Their ability to communicate things well is a very important skill to be observed. The inquisitive nature of the candidate should be checked and enthusiastic candidates can be shortlisted by checking their other required skills.

Judging Suitability

For any type of recruit, either it is an internal recruit or external recruit, judging suitability is an important criterion. In olden days during recruitment, psychometric tests and handwriting tests were used to evaluate candidates. These were initially used to judge a person's suitability for the job. These ideologies and methods have changed over the past decades based on the new technological advancements and requirements. Nowadays during interviews candidates with good positive thinking gets good recognition. The candidate recruited should be able to gel well with the team members in their day to day work. A candidate displaying a degree of personal assertiveness is usually avoided to maintain good team spirit.

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Learning from Recruits

Interviewing new candidates is not just a necessity for the team but it can also be very helpful for leaders to gain lots of knowledge about different organizations and their methods or ideas in doing something. The new recruits will have a third eye knowledge in everything being a part of a different organization earlier. With that outsider look, they will be able to do things better than the existing process. Leaders can also have conversations with the recruits to get their impressions on new ideas and new approaches the team is taking. If a leader acts on the suggestion provided, it will give a great confidence for the new recruit. This conversation need not necessarily be with the leaders alone, the other team members can also interact frequently with the new recruit to get ideas and share knowledge.

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Handling misfits

Recruitment process may not always be a successful one. There can be recruitment failures. In worst case situations the leaders will not have any option than dismissing someone. But before or after doing it, the leaders should be doing a self-evaluation asking the below questions to themselves:

• What did I do wrong - did I recruit poorly?
• Did the person lack the necessary support?
• Have circumstances changed so that the person no longer fits the original job?
• Is there any other role in which they could succeed?

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These questions can usually be asked of themselves before dismissing the recruit. This is a self-evaluation to understand where it went wrong. The learning from such events can be really helpful in making wise decisions in the future. Before you dismiss someone, explain the reasons clearly to them and be as generous as possible. If you think they will do better in a different role, try to offer them a different role and observe. Co-workers should also be fully updated on the situation. There should not be any wrong conception inside the team. Co-workers can be explained in detail on what happened and why something like that happened.

Hope you had an interesting read. Share your views on this topic in the comments section. Meet you again in another article.

My previous articles in this series:

Effective Leadership #1 - An Introduction
Effective Leadership #2 - Focusing on Quality
Effective Leadership #3 - Learning From Others
Effective Leadership #4 - Gaining Experience
Effective Leadership #5 - Comparing Leaders and Managers
Effective Leadership #6 - Developing Strengths in General
Effective Leadership #7 - Building Personal Strengths
Effective Leadership #8 - Mastering Roles
Effective Leadership #9 - Evaluating Key Leadership Roles
Effective Leadership #10 - Preparing to Lead
Effective Leadership #11 - Staff member recruitment