Building Team Chemistry

By Todd Dewett, Andersen Alumnus, author and speaker

Team chemistry is a type of synergy. It’s the ability to work together so well that the team delivers more than just the sum of its parts. Chemistry is about leveraging non-task skills to improve task performance and the work experience. Success becomes as much about being a great teammate as a great subject matter expert. In fact, chemistry can be so potent that teams with lesser talent often outperform teams with better talent.

So, how do you enhance or improve team chemistry? There are many foundational ingredients worth considering, and a few you understandably hear about all the time (e.g., building trust and communication skills), however, I’d like to suggest a slightly different perspective. Let’s talk about empathy, authenticity, and purpose. Think about how you hire talent and how you develop and promote people. When making personnel decisions, especially when you feel the person might be management material, remember to think about empathy, authenticity, and purpose.

Empathy over ambition. There is nothing wrong with individual ambition. In fact, if everyone lacked ambition the talent pool would be a case study in unrealized potential. Ambition, like many other issues in life, is important – within limits. It’s vital but must be checked by something more powerful. Empathy is that force. None of us are perfect or totally self-less, and we don’t have to be, but our average amount of empathy must trump our ambitions. When you’re in tune with others and feel a little of what they feel, you’ll help them, you’ll show support for them, you’ll value their abilities, and you’ll advocate for them. Ambition pushes you forward, and empathy makes you pause and remember that listening to and helping others ultimately make the team better.

Authenticity over acting. Teams with good chemistry don’t waste a lot of time acting at work. Call it what you’d like: acting, managing impressions, acting like you think you’re supposed to. Bottom line – you weren’t trained to be an actor, and people can tell when you’re posturing and acting. In contrast, chemistry requires trust and vulnerability. To be real is to take a risk by exposing more of your unfiltered self. When others sense you’re being honest with them and representing yourself accurately (in terms of what you say, how you behave, and how you look), they feel inclined to reciprocate authentically. Teams with excellent chemistry aren’t comprised of members who are all best friends. However, they are definitely more than just professionals. Teammates get to know each other as people.

Purpose over paycheck. When work is simply transactional, people don’t seek to invest anything more than the minimum in relationship-building. They agree to give a certain effort. They agree about compensation and work conditions. They deliver the work and walk away. This is not an environment hospitable to chemistry. In contrast, when team members experience purpose and meaning, they always give the extra effort and pay more attention to team dynamics – because they care! Leaders can nurture a sense of purpose in at least three ways. First, simply by reminding everyone why their work matters. Don’t assume they know – tell them. Next, build purpose by connecting them to the valued outcomes they support (e.g., showing mortgage professionals pictures or videos of new homeowners they have supported). Third, just the act of building positive employee-supervisor relationships is a huge contributor to a feeling of purpose. Why? Because people really enjoy being part of positive productive relationships.

One of life’s predictable challenges is that you’ll never have all the resources you’d ideally like to have to tackle any given problem. The team you lead is no different. At some level, the talent you have is the talent you have. However, what you get out of them might vary widely depending on how you manage them and the quality of the average relationship on the team. Chemistry is simultaneously the glue that binds the team together and the lubricant that keeps all the parts moving at optimum speed. So beyond great talent, start by looking for and rewarding empathy and authenticity – and work on building a genuine sense of purpose. That’s when talent + chemistry = success.

About Dr. Todd Dewett: Dr. Todd Dewett is one of the world’s most watched leadership personalities: a thought leader, an authenticity expert, best-selling author, top global instructor at LinkedIn Learning, a TEDx speaker, and an Inc. Magazine Top 100 leadership speaker. He has been quoted in the New York Times, TIME, Businessweek, Forbes, and many other outlets. After beginning his career with Andersen Consulting and Ernst & Young he completed his PhD in Organizational Behavior at Texas A&M University and enjoyed a career as an award-winning professor. Todd has delivered over 1,000 speeches to audiences at Microsoft, ExxonMobil, Pepsi, Boeing, General Electric, IBM, Kraft Heinz, Caterpillar, and hundreds more. His educational library at LinkedIn Learning has been enjoyed by over 30,000,000 professionals in more than one hundred countries in eight languages. Visit his home online at www.drdewett.com or connect with Todd on LinkedIn. He can be reached at todd@drdewett.com