Strategic filters can help you prioritize your efforts based on the objectives of your organization.

Once you’ve created a list of initiates that you’re going to pursue to help you achieve your vision, you need to evaluate those initiatives according to objective criteria for comparing them to one another. Because ultimately you need to prioritize those initiatives. The ones you’re going to pursue are the ones that meet the majority of your objective functions.

I like to use a tool that I call strategic filters for doing this evaluation. These strategic filters are going to be based upon the objective functions of your organization and the goals that you find to be important. Once you’ve constructed your strategic filters, you’re going to assess every single initiative relative to that set of filters.

Let’s say our company is growing and we’re also trying to expand internationally and we really want to launch some new products. So we’re going to create two types of filters. The first filter set is going to be qualitative, the second filter set is going to be quantitative. So I may construct evaluation filters that look at things like, “Is the product new? Is it going to leverage our existing brand? Is it white label and non-branded? Is it going to help us be global or does it focus on domestic markets? And lastly, is the product simple or is it going to be complex to launch?”

Those qualitative filters will help me assess those products and those initiatives based upon my goal of taking my brands global. Once I’ve decided if they’re a fit with the qualitative filters, I also need to look at the numbers. I may have three sets of numbers that I consider as my financial filters. I may look at the net present value of the initiative. I might consider the internal rate of return of that initiative. So if I invest money, what’s the return I’m going to get on it? And lastly, I might look at the impact of that initiative on my total growth rate for the organization. Having this complete set of filters will enable me to evaluate initiatives and identify the ones that are going to drive the most objectives as well as rule out or deprioritize the ones that don’t help me achieve my goals.

So your set of strategic filters should be based upon the objectives of your organization. As you evaluate your initiatives against them, you’re going to decide whether it passes a filter or fails. You can use a high, medium, low as you evaluate each initiative against those filters. Having done this evaluation, you’ll be prepared to move into a prioritization process.

Want to learn more about building high-performing teams? How about taking an entire course on it? Check out the video below to learn more about the course and get started. Or you can go directly to the course and start learning how to build high-performing teams. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

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Chemistry and trust are what differentiates an average team from a high-performing team.

It’s great to have a clear vision and mission and a nice set of prioritized initiatives, and you’ve got all the right people. But what starts differentiating a team from a high-performing team is chemistry and trust between the members of that team. These intangibles are some of the most critical elements of building that team, but they’re also some of the most elusive ones to build and to capture.

You need to understand it’s about personalities and shared beliefs. Make sure everyone on your team is involved in the interview process because candidates will show different sides of themselves to different people. And sometimes, those sides can be unattractive detractors from what you’re trying to build.

When I was a consultant, we were bringing in another consultant onto the team, and that person interviewed very well with the other members of the consulting staff. At the end of the interview process, we all got together in the team room, and we talked about this candidate. And all of us were very excited about hiring him. And then we stopped and we asked our front desk receptionist what she thought of him. She said, “He was incredibly rude. He spoke down to me. He acted like I didn’t matter.” That individual did not get an offer of employment from us. And he’s probably still wondering why.

To assess what people are like, you can use some standard tools out there like The Myers-Brigg Type Indicator, Personalysis, and other standard evaluation tools to help people understand each others’ personalities and their styles and their preferences. Don’t just do it for candidates. Sit down and do it with the entire team. It’s not critical for people to have the same personalities; actually, it’s quite detrimental. What matters here is you have to help the members of your team understand and respect the other person’s personality and how they like to work with others. Some people may have shared experiences, or they may have a shared ethnicity or geography that they’re from. Help them find some point of commonality that they can build from.

Once you’ve figured out the chemistry of the team and you have people with the right fit, you need to start building trust between the members of that team. Trust is about shared experiences and predictability. Shared experiences show people how others perform and react during stressful situations. You may look at putting them on a big project together, where people can share in experiences and build stories together and feel like they accomplish something with one another. The impact is people start feeling like they can rely upon one another to achieve the goal. They start feeling responsible for each others’ well being and looking out for each other.

Now, the second element of trust is that predictability. I want to know how my colleague is going to react in a certain situation, because then, when they tell me they’re going to do something, and I’ve seen them behave in a manner that’s consistent with that in the past, I am much more likely to trust what they’re telling me they’re going to do. And if I understand that person’s values on top of having that predictability, well, that’s a really strong bond between me and that other member of the team, because then I really start believing what they tell me they’re going to do because it’s consistent with their beliefs and their past performance.

So, if, as a leader, you’re able to step back and look at the team and assess who’s going to be a good fit, how to get the right chemistry between the members of the team, and then get them trusting one another because they have shared experiences, and they’re predictable to one another, that team is going to gel very quickly and start functioning as a team instead of as a group of individuals.

Want to learn more about building high-performing teams? How about taking an entire course on it? Check out the video below to learn more about the course and get started. Or you can go directly to the course and start learning how to build high-performing teams. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

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One of the most exciting aspects of building a high-performing team is recruiting people to be members of that team. Follow these three tips to improve your recruiting process.

One of the most exciting aspects of building a high-performing team is recruiting people to be members of that team. There’s nothing better than finding that really talented person who wants to come work with you.

As you think about doing this recruiting and finding the right people, you need to understand how to create role descriptions based on the team’s skill needs. Experience-based role descriptions might sound like, well, “The individual must have five years of experience on a small business credit union underwriting team working at a small mid-Atlantic community bank with multiple branches.” That’s a really specific description and there are very few people who probably meet those requirements. So you’ve shrunk the recruiting base that you can find somebody in. Instead, write skill-based job descriptions. Think about the initiatives you’re pursuing and the skills this person has to have. For example, “The individual must have the ability to perform complex financial analysis and combine those results with judgment to make effective decisions.” Those skill-based job descriptions open the applicant pool. It’ll enable you to get those new people in faster.

Next, in terms of hiring, once you have that skill-based job description, think differently in terms of where you go to find people because different perspectives and different experiences are going to bring new ideas into your organization. Additionally, by looking at nontraditional sources, you’ll probably have less competition for that great talent. So instead of recruiting from Harvard Business School where every organization in America is trying to hire those graduates, perhaps you look at different schools where you have less competition. Maybe try and pick off the top two people at the Ohio State University’s Business School.

Last, when you hire this person, don’t just hire for the role that you want them to do. You have to give them head room to grow into. People want to be excited and challenged. They want the opportunity to build their skills, which builds their personal marketability. When you hire them, make sure they can do 70% of the role you’re hiring them for, and they’re going to need to learn 30%. Because when you hire somebody who has 100% of the skills required for the role you’re bringing them into, that’s a very safe bet for you as a recruiter and as a leader, but think about it from that individual’s perspective. If they can come in and do all elements of that job on day one, it’s going to get pretty boring, pretty quickly. After about six months, they’re going to become disenfranchised and frustrated, and start looking for more challenging opportunities. Most people, especially ones that are going to gravitate toward the high-performing team you’re trying to build, are looking at that career path and thinking about how they can grow because that’s a very strong source of personal motivation for them.

So again, as you’re writing these job descriptions and going out and recruiting that talent, think about skill-based versus experience-based role descriptions. Look in nontraditional places for the people who have those skills. And when you hire them, think about their growth path ahead. Make sure they’ve got room to grow and develop as individuals.

Want to learn more about building high-performing teams? How about taking an entire course on it? Check out the video below to learn more about the course and get started. Or you can go directly to the course and start learning how to build high-performing teams. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

Did you enjoy this post? If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog. It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!). SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!