The one graph that will unlock elite-level hiring and team collaboration

Strong teams have a broad spectrum of superpowers and work in a way that everyone benefits from each other’s skills/experience.

Strong leaders understand and map those skills to make sure their teams are healthy, constantly growing, and meeting the needs of the business. If they do this, they can apply that kind of thinking to hiring, career growth, team improvements and more.

It all starts with having clear (and ambitious!) expectations of ‘what good looks like’ for each role and level.

Once you have that, map it out. A spider diagram like the one below is my map of choice — each skill area is a point, each step reflects mastery of the skill, each line is a person in the team. Something like this shows clearly where your team’s superpowers and growth opportunities are.

How to use it:

• Know who to connect people with for collaboration, feedback, and coaching when they’re working on something and building a skill at the same time.

• Shape your team collaboration time (if you don’t have this, you’re missing out) so that peers are sharing with each other, cross-polinating ideas, and building a habit of helping one another (ie. growth is a team effort.. leader-as-teacher sucks for everyone).

• When you’re hiring, understand what skills/superpowers are missing in your team and make that part of your hiring plan. We want a good spread of superpowers.

Pro tip: do the same with communication styles/preferences, look at it alongside this, and level up even further (particularly when it comes to hiring and deciding on a candidate profile).