What Superpowers play out in your Team Dynamics?

Working out what makes you stand out, what makes your product or service different from the competition is a timeless problem and one which all companies face. From skincare products to food brands to accountancy firms, being able to differentiate your offer is critical.

The same applies to your team. What makes your team stand out compared to the same team at your competitor? Thinking about it in a more granular way, what makes each of your team members unique and what do they bring to the overall Team Dynamic?

Every individual is unique, everyone has their own superpower and the most effective and high performing teams are those which both recognise and leverage these superpowers to achieve the team’s overall objectives.

Whilst having a team of clones might sound like a great idea, in practice what it means is that you have no diversity of style, no challenge and no “outside the box” thinking.

As a manager, with your own set of superpowers, it can sometimes be challenging to value people with different strengths to you. If you’re naturally direct and authoritative, valuing the contribution of someone who is quiet, calming and encourages contributions from everyone before making a decision can be hard but this is what  smart managers will do. Likewise, if you’re naturally detailed, analytical and precise, you might not instinctively value the “big picture thinking” which comes from someone in your team. However, the combination of your superpower & theirs is where the magic happens.

How do I know what their superpowers are?

That’s a great question! Using a psychometric tool can really help you here. Team Dynamics always starts with self awareness as to understand others always begins with understanding yourself. There are a huge number of tools out there but I like the colour-based simplicity of tools like Insights, Lumina Spark and Clarity 4D.

All these tools produce an individual in-depth report which first analyses your behaviours and style. It then gives you insights into how you typically might behave in certain situations and it groups the behaviours into colours. The introductory workshop brings this all to life through a series of fun, interactive games where you start to associate yourself & your team with the different colours and start to become aware of who you are, how you show up and what your personality type might be. You learn that everyone is a blend of each colour but in different orders and in different quantities which means some characteristics are more dominant than others. You also learn that people are different and that a great team celebrates those differences, the strengths and uses them to the best effect. But this is, in practice, much easier said than done.

A person’s Superpower lies in their Strengths and more dominant traits and this can be subjective. As a manager, you might value highly a particular strength in someone but they might not see it as such a strength.

Superpowers in Teams

Once you understand the Superpowers you have in your team, you need to know what to do with them. Here are 5 tips:

• Encourage a team conversation about what you value in each other, understanding what others feel an individual brings to the team can be a powerful affirmation
• Look at the projects you’re delivering as a team and match them to the superpowers you have available to you
• Build goals & objectives around recognition of the individual superpowers & strengths
• Reward & recognise when people use their strengths with a positive result
• When having career conversations with your team, think about how to harness their superpower in terms of their next step

Superpowers are the magic ingredient in a team. They bring diversity, challenge, different ways of thinking, different ideas and different perspectives to the table. If you’d like to know what superpowers you have in your team, then please contact us on lindsay@linkengagement.com for a free consultation to see how we can help you unlock your magic ingredients.