There are some people who value success but don’t care whether they receive praise. They work fine on a team led by a very ambitious extrovert. But multiple ambitious extroverts will clash and compete with one another.
Then there are introverts who are not likely to raise an alarm or draw attention to their concerns easily. That is not a fatal flaw, but you have to be careful not to have too many people like that on a team that has to move quickly.
You don’t balance a team with “strong” and “weak” players; you insist on overall high competence, then look for complementary strengths of personality, strategic thinking, diverse backgrounds, attention to detail, and other more subjective but important qualities. Beyond intelligence, education, diversity and training, what makes a good employee in a setting that requires teamwork is how that person’s personality tends to mesh with the personalities of others on the team.
- Do your teams balance a range of personal attributes?
- How can you bring better balance to the teams within your organization?