Team building is a prevailing topic in current leadership literature for good reason. Attracting the right balance of talent to your team is a tall order for many modern managers grappling with the challenge of the “do more with less” culture that prevails in today’s economized workforce. When your options are limited it’s important that you consider the character of the individual that you recruit to your team, in addition to his or her sheer talent. As service is the essence of an authentic team in a service-minded organization, so should service to others be prevalent in the profile of the people that comprise it. In building your team, how do you go about identifying these stars that focus on service to others?
Service-minded people reveal themselves in many ways. There are the obvious acts of volunteerism and charitable works. Then there are the more subtle individual traits such as empathy, awareness and active listening. While it’s easy to assess the volunteerism of a candidate based on their list of causes, charitable actions and involvement with philanthropic organizations, it may be more difficult to gauge the more subtle structures of their personality associated with ethical and caring behavior. What you are looking for is not someone who does right just because they are following the rules, but someone who more spontaneously performs the right action because it’s a function of who they are as a person.