The building of a Team

It’s my belief that you can only be truly successful if you have the right people around you. At some point in every leaders’ career, we have to make a choice on what ‘successful’ means and what a great team looks like.

Having just completed the building of the People Team at Missguided I thought I would share my thoughts and reflections on what I believe it takes to build a winning formula.

My first step was to look at the skills already in the team and to scope what successful looked like, this included; How we wanted to be positioned in the business? How did we wish to be perceived? What behaviours did we want to be known for? What was our purpose? Who was our customer and how were we going to measure successes?

Whilst I wasn’t particular precious about what we were called HR or People Team; I'll save that for a different blog; I was very precious about our ways of working: Consultative, Strategic, Commercial and Holistic. I wanted a team with a shared desire to do things differently, had solid skills, a great attitude, wanted to share their knowledge openly, had a thirst for learning and developing themselves and bring their best selves to work every day. I wanted them to feel that they had contributed to our success (or failure), are proud to be part of the team, would make decisions AND be accountable for the decisions they make.

However, in order to deliver a ‘dream’ team, I had to start by looking at myself, my leadership, my skills, my experience. I needed to recruit people better than I. This coupled with a world where candidates have a choice and the war for talent is great, I think it is a great time to reflect on the process and the steps we took to get this far.

1.    Take a look in the mirror

What did I bring to the team? What was my leadership like? What needed to change or be developed? What were my skills, expertise? And where are my development gaps in leadership, knowledge or skills? Once I had done my own self-assessment, I was much clearer on the skills and knowledge I required in my team, and the leadership growth required to enable us to be successful. I then looked at my existing team and looked at their skills and knowledge to understand if the skills I needed were already in front of me.

2.    Always recruit better than yourself

Once I understood what I was looking for, I made it my mission to ensure that every individual I brought into my team was an expert in their field. For example, I can recruit and have been successful at it for many years, but I wanted someone who could do this far better than me, they were a specialist. I wanted someone who could challenge my thought process, bring new interventions to the table and be a ‘guru’ in their own right.

3.    Understanding the skills and behaviours required

What was going to make our team successful? What skills did I require? What behaviours were essential and what if anything was I going to compromise on? It is unlikely that a candidate will tick every box 100%. It's thus important to investigate the real person behind the ‘candidate’. What are there likes, dislikes, dreams and ambitions? What do they love about the work that they do? What setbacks have they had and how did they overcome them? How does doing a good job make them feel? What, if anything will you compromise on your list of desirables? Be very clear with yourself on what you will or won’t compromise. However, be prepared that if you will compromise nothing, it may take you a very, very long time to find the perfect candidate, in fact, it’s probably a unicorn you’re looking for.

4.    Attitude v’s Skill

Clearly someone needs to have some form of skill/expertise to do the technical roles, however, for me, the right attitude is super crucial. Being able to communicate, have authenticity and an attitude to be the best version of themselves, goes a long way. As the saying goes, in some roles, “hire the attitude and train the skill”.

It was also important to me that they were self-aware, understanding their impact on others and how they would collaborate with the rest of the team and wider business. How were they going to extract the experience and knowledge from the existing team and how were they going to work with them to take them on a journey?

Are they a team player and understand that we all contribute to the success? Individual egos that are self-centred have no place in a collaborative team.

5.    Broad experience – do what you have always done, you get what you have always got!

Having a diverse and broad experienced team for me is really important. A broad experience of industries, companies and teams enables us to have a wider perspective on what we are delivering. If I had a team of fashionistas, it is likely they would all share similar experiences. Having a broad team enables us to open our minds to different ways of doing things. Not one size fits all, creating debate and opportunities to embrace differences, enables success.

6.    A shared vision

Being able to clearly articulate your vision is crucially important. How can you expect a team to get behind you if a) it’s all in your head and b) you don’t share it coherently? I initially ‘tested’ it on the existing team, to check that it was easily understood and more importantly would ‘fit’ the business. I also wanted the existing team to have ownership of creating a super team. I took their ideas, thoughts, aspirations and desires and we moulded my initial vision into what became our vision. The vision could be shared easily with both internal and external stakeholders, and importantly ‘people team ‘candidates. 

When we discussed our vision in an interview you could see the excitement, passion and sometimes apprehension in the candidate. They would either come to life and the interview would just roll or you could see the fear of change, pace and some I think thought we had lost the plot!!

7.    Feeling the fizz in your belly

Trusting your ‘gut feeling’ is often the best strategy and in most cases may serve you well. However, recruitment is a two-way decision, the candidate will share an impression and have a gut feeling as to whether the company is right for them and whether they actually liked the person they are about to work for or with.

We know that people don’t leave companies they leave bosses. So maybe choosing their boss is as crucially as important to them as the company they are about to join.

If in doubt take your time with your decision.

When you are recruiting for a team of people it’s imperative to think about the personality fit in your team. Whilst it’s great to have the odd ‘Diva’ having a team of them can be exhausting! I personally, like to have a breadth of personalities this leads to more sensible debates that explores both the logical and emotional side of decisions or challenges.

8.    Honesty and Transparency

For me, this is where the relationship of your future employee begins. To set up for success you need to be honest about the business, culture, role, leadership and the team they are joining in order to have complete clarity on what they are joining, how they can contribute and challenges they may face in their particular role. It enables them to prepare for their own journey.

9.    Get peers and stakeholders involved

It’s good to not only get a different perspective but by getting others involved they feel responsible for the success of the individual. When we were recruiting for our Partners, I invited other senior execs to see them at the second stage. Due to them having a different perspective and sometimes a different agenda they asked a variety of different questions. From my perspective, it was quite interesting to see what the executive wanted from the candidate, helping us to understand how we service our business even better.

Where possible we also used other members of the People Team including those that would report directly to the Partner. They effectively assisted with choosing their own boss! This brought responsibility, with the team member championing the success of the individual.

10.  Celebrating the arrival of each person to the team

I personally offered every team member the role, congratulating them on their achievement. I wanted to understand if they had any initial fears or apprehensions. I invited them in prior to their start date to meet the rest of the team, together we agreed their onboarding plan, where they were going to sit and what equipment they required to do their job. We sent them a card sharing our excitement to have them as part of the team. We then followed this up with regular communication; newsletters, briefs and team updates.

The talent in Manchester is overwhelming with so many great HR, Talent & Learning professionals, all bringing with them their unique personality. Forty-eight interviews later and I’m pretty pleased with the team we’ve put together. For now, our team is complete and ready to build foundations. My role is to now allow them to shine; encouraging, empowering and directing them, to achieve both theirs and the companies’ aspirations. I’m sure we will have trial and tribulations along the way but with a strong, experienced and dynamic team, we should be able to overcome most challenges.

Written by Aly Fadil, People Director.