You know how I feel about the cult of personality, that pseudo-scientific urge to label us all by ‘type’ and put us into the appropriate pigeon-hole. By this we ‘understand’ ourselves and can ‘perfect’ our lives. Or so the story goes. It’s like all of those other mildly convincing labels – like Baby Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y, Scorpio, Virgo, and so on. It never tells the whole story, does it. Instead it promotes labelling, something that humans do particulary well.

OK, this rant is about teams and terminology and personality. We like to think we need ‘teamplayers’ in our business, and in our lives in general. They sound like assets, don’t they? People who are cohesive, get along, absorb instructions and lead others in the designated direction. They follow the rules, don’t make trouble and work as one with the group to generate the desired result. All goodness, surely?

Mind you, to most of us our vision of a team is based around sporting analogies, tinged with military terminology like tactics and strategy. So we tend to see our manager as a coach, our team leader as a captain and the team working in different positions on the field but playing to the same rules and game plan. Which is all sweet and lovely within a context of strictly enforced rules, clearly delineated roles and an end result (ie winning games, winning the season finale etc) that’s a self-reinforcing common vision.

If we are to critique this just a little, what exactly do we have in common here with modern work practices? Perhaps it was a stronger analogy in the 20th Century’s time-and-motion-manufacturing and typing-pool-style of regimented labor, but does it hold true in a world of increasing role diversity and the blurring of who-does-what-when. Do you see yourself in such a team? I don’t. I work in a geographically dispersed, virtual team, do everything myself (from typing to reporting to creating graphics; scheduling my time, prioritising as I see fit) as and when needed. I set my own hours around a work and life balance and rarely find myself boxed into anything like regimentation. It’s more fluid, organic and diverse, and very flexible.

Sure, I’m just me, just one example. But the shift in work practices – from full time to more part-time work; from office or factory to home-based work; from clearly delineated single-task-based work to multi-tasking, is as real as the shift to a service-based economy. Not everyone works likes this but a heck of a lot more do today than yesterday.

So what does this mean for teams? To some, nothing at all. They cling to old ideas with new labels. They divide people up by ‘personality type’ and advise that you need one of these and two of those and lots of these worker bees to make it hum. Which is great if you are a bee, and ant or maybe a wasp. But what do insects know about teamwork outside of their genetic endowment? What about insects, sorry people who need to generate new ideas to improve the business and match – or beat – the competition? We don’t want to make the same stuff the same way over and over again, do we? Well not if we are making incandescent bulbs in a world that is switching to energy-saving LEDs and fluoros.

In this new 21st Century world we need flexible, adaptable people who think and act on the run. They are assets to the team as well, in fact they are the new team. And if they uncover problems and devise and implement solutions within the overall team context and direction then they are invaluable. So we don’t want mere followers, we want action-thinkers who network with their peers. We don’t want them to buck the system for no reason, and we need a way to accommodate valid dissent, too. We don’t want managers to have to micro-manage, either. So it’s not just the team player per se but the team organisation that needs to allow free thought, innovation and a way to generate and propagate new ideas, quickly. In fact in a lean organisation, and I mean Lean in a particularly business-oriented way, the team player will contribute incremental improvement to process, procedure and organisational design quite naturally. So they are truly a thinking, doing, trying-out-new-ideas kind of beast. Sure, not all of the team members will shine to the same degree, or generate the same caliber or type of idea; but they will support each other and provide an environment of contribution by which the team overall prospers.

So it’s a cohesive environment of contribution that is important, coupled with flexible, empowered individuals. Perhaps thinking about ‘personality types’ and trying to build teams around a shopping list of personalities is too blinkered in this new world. Maybe we need to expect everyone to do a bit of everything, but in their individual way.