Organizations are facing many challenges nowadays.

Mostly, they are struggling because their teams aren’t performing enough.

Simply put, organizations nowadays aren’t getting desirable performance from their teams because team chemistry gets frowned upon in the age of individualization.

However, we have survived as a species by moving in groups and the modern world of business and leadership is no different than the jungle we had to face at the dawn of our time.

It’s still all about teamwork and mutual work when it comes to reaching essential goals.

Organizations want achievers. However, the simple idea of putting people together and expecting high results without hard work might very well be downright crazy.

The truth is that the fault doesn’t lie with the team members only, but it rests with leaders, as well.

Leaders can also fail, regardless of their experience.

Moreover, leaders can fail to understand and instill the diversity among the team members.

It happens even at the senior levels of management. Furthermore, leaders tend to neglect team chemistry.

IMPORTANCE OF TEAMWORK

Simply put, team chemistry leads to make it or break it moments in your business.

Moreover, team chemistry is the very first thing that everyone uses as an excuse when it comes to team underperforming. Coincidence?

The lack of team chemistry is something that puts even the world’s best recruiters back to the drawing board because they don’t know what they missed.

Scouting the best leading talent and recruiting the best is not the success formula.

So, what went wrong, and what needs to change? The answer is simple – team chemistry.

To help world leaders achieve their goals faster and with great results, team chemistry was re-invented and now comes as the new science teamwork, known as the Business Chemistry.

Business Chemistry has a mission to tap diverse work styles and explain different personality types. First, let’s tackle the world of fantastic team chemistry and learn how it works.

WHAT IS TEAM CHEMISTRY

A business is only as good as the performance of its workers.

Every serious business owner or an experienced employee understands how important it is to have good employees and how important it is to build them as a team.

Moreover, managers and experienced owners must know how to employ each worker, who to put them up with or against and which employee combinations work best. For a great team, the sky is the limit.

In business terms, a great team can achieve organizational goals with high performance and amazing results. Simply said, team chemistry is a vague concept, though you often know it when you see it.

Teams with good chemistry know each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and they are loyal and have a mutual vision and work hard toward the shared goal.

Moreover, teams with tremendous and firm team chemistry know how to maximize their strengths and surprisingly, minimize their weaknesses. This is how the perfect team should work.

So, team chemistry is, in a way, the best understanding of team members’ characteristics. Then, what how is the new science of team chemistry different from this?

THE “NEW” SCIENCE OF TEAM CHEMISTRY

One organization can’t survive without people. Moreover, for an organization to be successful and to survive every obstacle, leadership must be present next to great business products or services.

Since leadership is all about teamwork and how teamwork can help businesses, it comes as no surprise that organizations can’t go far without their teams.

However, it turns out that numerous organizations are not getting the desired performance from their teams. Leaders within an organization are dealing with multiple tasks and rather complex challenges that can easily range from management to strategic planning.

The fault for something can easily be to teams (no)work, individual underperformance, or lack of proper leadership style, a.k.a. poor management.

It turns out that leaders often fail to adequately tap diverse work perspectives and different work styles – even at the senior-most levels. Furthermore, it turns out that mot of the managers do not recognize how vast the differences between the employees are.

Besides, some managers simply fail to manage the gaps and discrepancies or even understand what may be the outcomes of not dealing with conflicts, specific situations, and so on.

Sadly, as a result, numerous ideas go unrealized, unheard, and in return, performance suffers.

BUSINESS CHEMISTRY

So, in order to help leaders achieve value and cut on human mistakes and value lost, Deloitte designed a unique system called Business Chemistry. 

As you can see, following the link above, Business Chemistry recognizes 4 different and primary work styles. Moreover, Business Chemistry defined related strategies next to primary work styles, and all that to reach shared goals.

According to Deloitte, existing personality tests just didn’t do the job.

Why?

Famous and globally spread personality tests weren’t tailored for a dynamic work environment but a more particular understanding of personal characteristics.

However, the business environment demands from people specific skills, accountability, and less of personal introspection, and more of empathy and willingness to dive into the team surrounding.

Suzanne M. Johnson Vickberg and Kim Christfort decided to learn what are the business personalities, and how people address different challenges in the business environment.

That is why they sought the counsel of the biological anthropologist Helen Fisher of Rutgers University, who worked on brain chemistry in romantic relationships.

Helen’s research provided some valuable insights on people’s styles that Suzanne and Kim used to develop a list of business-oriented traits and preferences that can easily be inferred or observed from behavior at work.

Naturally, they tested their claims by using a survey among 1,000 professionals. Moreover, they even collaborated with molecular biologist Lee Silver of Princeton. Thanks to the involvement of Silver, they have managed to adapt the statistical models used for genetic population analysis to search for patterns.

All together, thanks to different inputs and professional skills, they managed analyze data and come up with 4 work styles. These four work styles are the ‘new’ in team chemistry.

Deloitte’s Kim Christfort, together with Kim, organized assessment among nearly 200,000 people, where they wanted to determine how each work style responds to different challenges, including how they react to stress.

What they discovered inspired leaders to re-think their approach to different team-related situations. This is what they discovered.

NEW TEAM STYLES

Business chemistry, in a nutshell, is a personality typology in which there are four main personality roles:

  • Integrators
  • Drivers
  • Pioneers
  • Guardians

The fundamental note here is that no one is strictly one type.

Everyone is a mix of these types, because most people’s behavior, thinking, and actions are tightly aligned with one or two.

Moreover, every style brings in useful perspective and different ways for your team to resolve issues, be productive and creative, etc. Simply said, most people have two dominant types.

HOW DOES NEW BUSINESS CHEMISTRY ENHANCE THE SCIENCE OF TEAM CHEMISTRY

Pioneers love possibilities. This group value possibility, and they tend to spark imagination and energy on their teams. Pioneers are known as being those who can inspire action. They strongly believe in taking risks.

Moreover, they tend to use their intuition when it comes to problem-solving. They always think about big-picture.

Also, they find personal satisfaction in bold new ideas and creative approaches that others tend to avoid.

Guardians love stability. They find satisfaction in order and accuracy. Guardians are pragmatic, and they are not keen on risk.

They prefer to deal with data and facts. Moreover, they favor taking actions that are strictly based on data and facts. For them, details matter, and they love learning, especially from the past.

Drivers love momentum, and they adore being challenged — bigger the obstacle, strong the drive for them to cross over it. Drivers love results, and for them, nothing matters as winning does.

For them, everything is black-and-white, and they love to face problems, to tackle them at the right time, with the best strategy on. Interestingly, for someone who loves fast results, they tend to create a plan that’s firmly based on data and logic.

Integrators can make the team working. They value connection, and they can naturally draw teams together. For them, responsibility and relationships come first.

Moreover, integrators believe that most things are relative. In a nutshell, integrators are diplomatic. They are also always focused on gaining agreement.

Each style is welcoming in business surroundings, and four methods give teams a robust common language for a better understanding of how people actually work. When one side has these styles together, they should enjoy only the benefits. Those benefits would be best seen in cognitive diversity.

These teams are willing to try, explore, learn, check facts, and improve all the time. For them, decision making is an enjoyable process. From time to time, it happens that even the best teams fail.

Every team can be easily disturbed if there is a conflict and not enough leadership to deal with conflict situations. A weight of conflict can destroy the most straightforward projects.

Therefore, leaders must always understand with whom they are working. So, identifying the work style within one’s team should be a crucial and first step.

For Example:

Guardians will always want to go through every single detail to make sure that everything will be O.K. Next, this type can feel treated by Pioneers, who always want to skip steps or test a completely different idea. This Pioneer’s urge can create a mess to firmly organized Guardian.

Besides, this situation can frustrate Drivers who just want a decision and a clear goal and direction. Naturally, Integrators would be so bothered with such behavior that they would sit on the side and watch the entire situation by eye-rolling.

To lead so different, but yet similar team members, you must actively manage them. So, how do you manage such different work styles?

Managing the Styles

Once you know what the different work styles of your team members are, you must know how to manage them in order to get the best from them. This can be done in three different ways.

Working on Opposites

In general, the most problematic pain points in the work environment are seen in the class on different sides. So, when contrasting styles collide, things can easily exclude. Therefore, finding a mutual ground is a must.

For Example: both Guardians and Drivers are different, but they love being focused. It may be challenging to find common ground between Guardians and Pioneers, and Integrators and Drivers, as they are exact opposites.

Still, regardless of these substantial differences, things can be balanced, with hard work and effort. Pulling opposites together is mandatory.

Elevate Among Team Members

Many probably want to know what one should do if a team of 50 people comes with 40 Guardians and 10 Drivers.

What to do in that situation?

What leadership style to demonstrate and adopt? Although this may sound tricky, the answer is simple.

A true leader will always adapt and provide different groups with different approaches.

Of course, the most natural step would be to work adapt leadership style to numerous Guardian, but that’s not something that a true leader would do. There should never be a loop in different approaches. That being said, put an extra look on introverts.

Care About Sensitive Introverts

If your team members are highly sensitive or highly introverted, that’s something that you should address as well. It turns out that most evidence of sensitivity and introversion is seen among Guardians.

When it comes to working with introverts, one rule matters – leaders must approach them.

With so many different work styles and vivid personalities, it can be difficult for team leaders and managers to deal with people.

Therefore, team chemistry may suffer. So, it’s essential to know how to build team chemistry.

BUILDING TEAM CHEMISTRY

Team chemistry is never something that should be taken easy.

It’s generally difficult or impossible to build up team chemistry overnight and that’s why it’s important to invest time and effort into it.

To witness team chemistry, many factors must align, and people must be open for mutual work and improvement.

Therefore, both owners and managers ought to realize that they should learn every day when it comes to team building. That being said, a 360-degree perspective must be well implemented and present.

Being a good team player is far from having talent and experience. That’s not enough to keep the team running.

Team chemistry is built by:

  • Willingness to learn
  • Strong team interaction
  • Proper communication
  • Active listening
  • Setting mutual professional goals

It’s essential for team members to put their personal goals on the side when at work and to focus on professional and team growth.

Team chemistry is complicated, but yet so necessary for an organization to reach its goals. The success of an organization depends on the success of the team and the chemistry.

Effective teams have good chemistry, and they are united toward mutual professional goals. These teams also understand that every team member is talented in its own way, and they know how to use their strengths and minimize weaknesses.

Effective teams know how to address specific situations and how to deal with challenges. Overall, effective teams know how to:

  • Appreciate diversity
  • Support role taking
  • Build constructive norms
  • Love leadership
  • Have cohesiveness
  • Share common vision

Having strong team chemistry demands for constant improvement and maintaining the right sides. So, once the team is set up and good to go, it still takes a lot of effort and focus to maintain that subtle chemistry.

The team leaders should push their team to work harder together, to challenge them, to show them just how amazing they are when they work together on something. It’s also important to know when a break is needed.

Don’t forget – Communication is vital. Trust and chemistry can only be built when people can communicate with each other honestly without holding back.

At the same time, watching for any sign of trouble is mandatory. People can quickly feel safe and place themselves in a comfort zone when they have the right people and a thriving business. In reality, the fastest falls happen overnight.

Team chemistry can have flowed, and if the switch is not pressed on the other side on time, chemistry can easily collapse. So, always be ahead of the game and things about possible problems, and be aware of signs that can bring discord.

5 SIGNS THAT YOUR TEAM CHEMISTRY IS COLLAPSING

Do you really know how healthy your team is? It may seem that everything is at its best order, while in reality, your team is falling apart, and the end line has never been closer.

Luckily, there are common signs that your team is falling apart that you can spot early and save your team. There are the most common signs that chemistry is gone or reaching its end.

1. Communication is Poor

 Everything is about communication. When there is nothing to talk about, silence prevails.

The same goes for business – when there isn’t anything to talk about, the spark is gone. It means that there is no mutual spark or interest. There is no shared goal.

The team cannot function without communication. So, in order to work well within an organization, proper communication is the key. Otherwise, a strong mistrust can be created.

Open the door to:

  1. round table talk
  2. have regular staff meetings
  3. talk about criticism
  4. provide space for 360-degree feedback
  5. have regular check-ins

2. You Have a Destructive Team Member

Some teams just click immediately, while others struggle. In most cases, the breakdown catalyst is a destructive team member. Some would say that it’s a ‘bad apple,’ while in reality HR side needs to do a better job.

The truth is that one individual can disrupt the entire team. Therefore HR and management are responsible for team development. They have to implement specific actions that will keep the group together, such as:

  1. interviewing team members separately
  2. evaluating monthly goals
  3. identifying bad seed

Removing the bad seed is usually the first step toward having healthy team chemistry.

3. You Complain More Than You Celebrate

Teams love to celebrate every victory. Some even have special rituals, or they get bonuses or have a drink after the excellent work.

The fact is that people love to celebrate when they are happy about something.

However, if the team complains more than marks, it’s a clear sign that something’s wrong. In a way, the celebration is mandatory to work ethic, just like happiness.

However, when a team loves complaining and focuses on all-day-long complain, it means that the team is crumbling.

4. No Clear Leadership

Leadership matters. Having A-list players won’t mean a lot to the business if there is no good fit to lead them. Every team needs a good team leader.

Moreover, having a good leadership body means that the entire team is on the same page.

They will have mutual rules, norms, obligations, and they will be ready to take upon any challenge, and they will deliver the right amount of productivity and high-performance.

However, when there is no right fit, team members may quickly lose interest in their work, mutual bond, or any leadership line. Moreover, they won’t know where they are heading or why. Eventually, this will lead to falling apart.

5. The Wrong Team Fit

Some teams never click, because leaders don’t know how to manage them. When HR and management come together to form a team, they have to have clear guidelines that will follow to bring the cooperative members in one place.

The truth is that every team is different, so different components will appear, and it’s up to leaders to navigate through them. Bringing people together is not an easy task, especially when you have to deal with vivid and different personalities.

So, it makes sense to think about each team member as a piece of the puzzle and to give the very best to complete the problem in the best way possible.

Effective teams have good team chemistry. When that energy is lacking for some reason, it becomes imperative to bring people together.

Having talented people in your organization is not enough for success, especially if they are all different a prefer different work ethic.

Therefore, leaders must work hard to bring people together, to work on chemistry, and inspire them to work toward the mutual goal.

The New Science of Team Chemistry

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