There’s no great business without a great team. However, too many managers make the mistake of taking their team’s skills for granted. It can be easy to look for example of teams that work successfully and productively together. But the main problem with examples is that they don’t tell you the whole story. Seeing the end result might be inspiring for entrepreneurs, business owners and team leaders, but without the description of how a team got to cultivate its best qualities the inspiration might fall flat. Ultimately, there’s an essential question that animates your team, and it’s not a matter of weather the team is good – or good enough – but how to make sure that you give your business the best chance to develop the available talents you need to succeed.

What’s stopping your team from being great?

There’s no denying it, every team needs the right kind of skills to tackle the market and address the demand for growth. At this stage of the digital revolution, it’s fair to say that if you don’t have any digital transformation skills in your team, you might be missing out on a brilliant opportunity to take the market by surprise. However, for this type of skills it is recommended to work with experts, freelancers or new team members, instead of relying on employee training. As a rule of the thumb, you can’t train your team to the level of experts.

Aside from the competencies, the way you manage a team can affect its performance. For instance, if you choose to reward individual team members instead of considering the collective effort, you might find that people lose their motivation to perform. Similarly, if your management style is very hands on and doesn’t give the team the possibility to make decisions, your employees might struggle with frustration, irritability and stress.

Improve the in-house skill exchange

When it comes to talent, there are two essential strategies that complete each other. Firstly, of course, you need to identify the talent you need in your team and hire it. But you also need to help the experts who work for you to better work together as a unit. Team building exercises are far from a waste of time, and that’s not the Cluego treasure hunts that would tell you otherwise. Ultimately, it’s your responsibility to find the best approach to create a collaborative team spirit. Games and challenges are an effective and risk-free method to help people to engage productively toward one single goal. You’ll find you can achieve better results with a game than you would with an informative workshop.

Find what’s missing

It’s often easier to identify the expertise you need when your team has developed a common culture. When everyone can collaborate and exchange knowledge openly, the only obstacle left is the absence of a specific experience. That’s precisely when you need to ensure that your recruiting strategy shares your team culture. Using social media to introduce your company or making sure that you get to meet recruiters first so that they can gain a better understand of what makes you business unique can make a great deal of difference in finding the right match.

Your dream team is the result of combined hiring and team building efforts. Eventually, the most important skill of all is to embrace the team culture.