Nurture A Good Nature

 

The success of your team – and your company – is much more likely to be enhanced if you recruit enthusiastic staff who have a positive, proactive attitude. As long as they also have a reasonable level of ability, they will usually achieve more than people with higher skill levels but with a negative attitude.

 

To bridge any skills gaps, you can send them on training courses, and encourage ‘on the job’ learning. You’ll soon find that people with an open outlook and attitude will be more flexible and will pick up new skills more easily. A positive attitude also makes a significant difference to someone’s ability to be a ‘team player’ and to relate well to internal and external clients.

 

For a well-rounded team, you need two types of skills:

 

Technical (ideal for an Analyst/Researcher) – This person will tend to be project-focused and driven by techniques. Consequently, they will have a firm knowledge of market research techniques, or good analytical and modelling skills. They will pay particular attention to detail.

 

Insight (ideal for an Insighter/ planner/ account manager) – This person is a business-focused problem solver. Their main characteristics will include commercial expertise, business acumen and people skills, and their key abilities will include influence and persuasion, team work and communication. They will be more concerned with the bigger picture than the minutiae.

 

Most people tend to be stronger in one of these two areas, but you need a mixture within your team. Both skill sets are equally important, and complement each other – you just need to recognise the natural abilities of each individual and build upon them. Maintaining the right balance of skills in your team can be achieved by both careful recruitment and selective training and development.

 

So, look for training and development opportunities in both of these areas. If you’re not sure where to start, why not come along to one of our stimulating and comprehensive insight skills training courses? These focus on topics such as ‘Commercial Thinking’ and ‘Communicating with Impact’. Click here to find out more…

 

So keep a look out for enthusiasm. It’s an infectious quality, so nurture and encourage it whenever you find it!