Put together a team of people to multiply the strength brought to bear on the task outcome at hand. As I’ve discussed earlier, strength is increased in teams through power, speed, breadth, and acceptance.

Find others that have complementary skills, complementary experiences, and complementary perspectives that enable the whole team to get a better outcome as a result of everyone working together. Remember, in this context, “complementary” means that two things can sit side-by-side and look okay, and by implication this means that what you know will be different to what they know. By working together, you get to color in more of the picture upfront, you get better coverage and analysis of the issues and concerns in the planning phases rather than in the post-delivery phases.

Complementary capabilities to multiply strength must be combined with the framework on agreed working practices; everyone involved in the team needs to agree to work in a certain way. If the framework isn’t there, what’s “complementary” can become “different” and “ugly” rapidly as people can’t understand each other and lack a way of getting to agreement.

What Do I Need To Do?

“Complementary” people are those that are trained differently to you and have a different repertoire of skills and experiences … and so they will think differently, see things differently, and be different. If you want to multiply strength, then you need to be willing to engage in conversation, in listening, and in seeking to understand such people.

See A-Z of Virtual Teams: Summary for the complete list.