Pivoting Towards Teams

Building an effective and tightly knit team will help businesses navigate this crisis and prepare for future challenges.

By Xische Editorial, April 18, 2020

Source: Byoko Pictures/Envato

Now more than ever, the strength of teams is coming into sharp focus. When it comes to business, team dynamics are key to how companies will weather this economic storm. We have all been called upon to work from home and many of us are ramping up work to ensure the health of our companies. This has forced team members to band together and support each other in new ways. The burning question is how can we prepare ourselves and our companies for this type of black swan event in the future. There’s no easy answer but we can learn from the present moment. 

For the past three weeks, Xische has been sharing tips for remote work drawn from years of experience. With the new focus on teams and working from home, empathy has always been key to our business approach. During this time of isolation, we’ve found that empathy is critical to creating a vibrant “digital” workplace culture that encourages team members to actively support each other. If we understand the pressure individuals are under, then we can react to situations as a team more effectively. Empathy is the glue that keeps teams together. 

As bad as the crisis might seem right now, it will pass, and work culture will slowly return to some form of normalcy. Therefore, it is critical to think deeply about the long-term lessons we can learn from this upheaval right now. While it might sound counterintuitive, this is a great time to refine how you approach building teams. Take time to notice how team members are rising to the challenge of struggling with the uncertainty. The positive traits you notice now will become building blocks in the future. 

We’ve been putting our experience in building teams to the test in the face of the covid-19 crisis. Ahmad Alsultan, the experience design director at SquadX, recently published an article called “What I’ve Learned from Building Teams across Silicon Valley to the Gulf” outlining the critical role that experience plays in the hiring process. While his article is focused on designers, his observations are applicable to just about any business. 

In general, he argues that choosing the right candidate should be based on how they gained their experience and not just their skills. This can prove to be vital insurance for a crisis like this one. The combination of empathy and experience is critical for fluid team dynamics. With the right dynamics, a team can get through any challenge together.

“Designers own the skills that most companies are looking for when expanding their team.” Alsultan writes. “If we concentrated on this solely, all our hires would be the first people who walk through our doors. Our focus while selecting a new hire is assessing their impact on the team. What will they bring to the table? How will their contribution enhance the overall output of the team? Our approach ensures that we get the right fit for our team.”

He goes on to say that resumes are great but they don’t give team leaders enough insight into how potential team members will function in the workplace. “Resumes help shortlist potential hires,” Alsultan argues. “However, once they get to our offices, we make sure that they are not just amazing on paper. We try to find out how they worked at their previous job, the skills they gained, and how those skills would transfer if they become part of our team. We make sure our hiring process is as efficient as it can be. We ask many questions that hopefully encourage storytelling.”

These ideas are revolutionary in their simplicity. With the benefit of hindsight, imagine if you put similar practices in place in hiring your current team. How would that affect how your business is handling the Covid-19 crisis? For most businesses, the answer is probably substantial and that is why the power of teams is so critical for healthy organizations. 

The Covid-19 crisis is going to transform the global economy and how businesses operate going forward, but there are some immovable pillars that won’t change. The power of a good team is one of those pillars. By thinking about the construction of teams right now, businesses can come out of this crisis stronger, more agile, and ultimately better prepared to face the next set of challenges.