Building Your Best Team By Leveraging Mental Toughness

Assembling teams is a challenging task by any standard, but understanding how to effectively build a high-functioning, high-performing team that can work together to push through difficult obstacles and stressful situations is a unique skill all on its own. Teams require leadership, strong relationships, collaborative workflow, and well-defined expectations and responsibilities — not to mention the right personalities to fill critical roles.

What’s the difference between assembling a group of individuals who have the right skills and assembling a group of individuals who can also work well together while leveraging each other’s strengths? Highly engaged and productive teams earn companies double the revenue than teams with low engagement.

Teams who work in simpatico while being able to overcome stress are ones built around key members who have mental toughness. But how do you find team members who are mentally tough and can also fill the specific roles you need?

The Caliper Profile is a useful tool which can uncover attitude and personality traits that are indicators of core competencies and driving personality traits. Using the Team Roles Report and the Caliper 4-Box, managers can assemble well-rounded teams that fulfill the key roles needed for an effective team: The Champion, The Implementor, The Creator, and the Facilitator.

Bonus Content: Download the Build Your All-Star Sales Team Guide!

The Champion

Every team needs someone to promote ideas, energize and motivate the group, and drive change as tasks meet new challenges. The Champion tends to focus on big-picture goals. Without a Champion there is no one to steer the group in the right direction to reach their vision.

The Champion sets events into motion, makes sure people are enthused about the project, and motivates them to take action. Where others may fear change, a Champion is the person who aims to shake things up and help their teammates get excited about making the change, too.

A Champion with mental toughness is a critical component to successful teams. A mentally tough Champion has the resiliency and ego-strength to keep pushing the team to stay optimistic and perform their tasks to their best abilities, even when the outlook may appear bleak. They know how and when to motivate and rally the team during stressful times in order to maintain the energy and positivity needed to work well together.

While your Champion is happy to facilitate change and get others on board, they are not, however, the one who is going to develop step-by-step systems, meticulous plans, or comb projects for the smallest details. You need someone else to help with that.

You need an Implementer.

The Implementer

When it comes to daily work, administration duties, and assigning proper task work, The Implementer is the team member focused on follow-through. These individuals have a strong sense of discipline, which is imperative to achieving team objectives. Implementers will roll up their sleeves and do whatever is needed in order to bring project plans to fruition. They have a close attention to detail, patience, and remain focused on the task at hand.

An Implementer with mental toughness has the thoroughness and self-structure to power through the grunt work with attention to detail and little need for oversight in order to accomplish the mundane tasks that help them reach the end goal. They are highly efficient, meticulously organized, and take pride in addressing even the smallest detail.

Implementers are not typically innovative thinkers or agents of change. They operate with practicality and procedure, and they follow the rules. In order to build a team that breaks barriers, sparks innovation, and blows expectations out of the water, managers have to find a Creator.

The Creator

Creators generate ideas, design solutions, and thrive on creative challenges. They are action-oriented, motivated to innovate, and like to think in big-picture terms. They are problem solvers. Creators work closely with Champions, attaching their plan to the motivation and moving the project to the next phase.

Where The Champion is people-oriented, The Creator tends to put more focus on the task. Once the team is energized, Creators like to lead the discussion on next steps, create an action plan, and push through production.

A Creator with mental toughness has the persistence to push things forward and push their teammates through the project step-by-step in pursuit of the end goal. Their energy to drive the work and challenge the status quo garners enthusiasm from their teammates and encourages others to get excited about pushing boundaries and forging ahead.

But pushing boundaries can sometimes lead to conflicts among teams — particularly with Implementers who like to play by the rules. So who will play the role of mediator? Managers need to look for someone who can communicate well and mitigate conflict.

Every team needs a Facilitator.

The Facilitator

The best teams bring together a diverse group of people who have different mindsets and approaches — and sometimes diversity of thought can lead to conference. Facilitators are the glue that holds the group together. They communicate well, manage relationships, and provide support amongst the team. When teammates run into obstacles of any kind, the Facilitator is there to offer help and provide a tactical solution.

The Facilitator aims to achieve a cohesive group that can work harmoniously toward a common goal. A Facilitator with mental toughness is important to maintaining the group dynamic. These individuals have the level-headedness and stress tolerance to remain calm and keep the peace when the group feels overwhelmed or tempers run high. They help keep the group grounded, and are able to keep work moving forward even in times of stress by easing the tension between teammates.

While teams are often made up of more than four people, the key to success is ensuring that the 4-Box is complete no matter how big the team or how complex the project. Reach out to our experts to learn more about mental toughness and how the Caliper Profile can help identify individuals who are best suited to building your all-star sales team.