I listened to a great podcast recently; it’s the Organized & Productive podcast by Dean Palibroda, but featuring special guest Maneesh Sethi. I want to discuss some of the ideas that resonated with me.

Success is often portrayed as about an individual’s drive to succeed, but that isn’t often the case. One person can’t do everything, as it takes a movement of many individuals. It takes a team.

Within a team, everyone has to have their own roles and make sure those roles complement each other. Although that sounds obvious, it’s something people disregard too often. For example, someone who is a more conceptual thinker may beat themselves up for not doing well in executing the details of their plans. That person may need someone who likes to get into the nitty-gritty of the details and get things done. It takes compatible personality types.

In the podcast, Maneesh mentioned the Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator. There are four separations, for a total of 16 possibilities, and each type has its recommended careers and working strengths. Someone who is an ENFP will do better with a partner whose first letter is “I” and last letter is a “J.” That complimentary person can do more of the behind the scenes details work while the extrovert socializes to learn new ideas. To extend this analogy to basketball, you don’t improve your team by asking your 6’1” point guard to grab more rebounds and your 7’1” center to dribble around the 3-point line.  People have certain strengths that can be leveraged without forcing them to do things that don’t suit them.

Specialization and competitive advantage are keys to economic growth, and this can be applied to team building as well. And having these individuals also increases accountability, everyone keeping the team in check to continue in the right direction. So instead of doing it alone, finding the right group of people is needed to reach success.