Dream Team: Reality or Harmful Myth?

Managers and leaders dream about building something special. A company, a department, a business plan… a team. A dream team, to be exact. That special group of people who can finish each other’s sentences, be perfect brainstorming partners, and live by the same values and goals. 

But is it at all achievable or is it just another box we get ourselves into? Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? 

Why do we love the idea of a dream team? 

People are prone to dreaming about all-things-perfection. We want to live our best lives, have the best jobs, and succeed in everything we do on the first try. While dreaming is necessary for moving forward and developing, refusing to acknowledge our dreams’ shortcomings can lead to frustration, depression, and giving up. After all, why try anything if perfection is unachievable? 

This logic just goes out the window when it comes to managers, leaders, and their desire to build a team that will fulfill their dreams. We want to make sure we have teammates who will support us in our ideas, help us grow, push us to become better, and will eventually become our workplace buddies. We strive for increased productivity, synergy, and fresh ideas. Essentially, we want to live in a workplace comedy.

But reality will most likely be far away from our imagination. 

Reality check

When I first started out, I thought I had the recipe for building a dream team — becoming everyone’s friend. I figured, casual communication and relaxed office behavior will shape us into the best startup squad the world has ever seen. I’ll jump right to the end of the story, where I had to let everyone go because no one took me and my experience seriously. My comments were left unnoticed, and my suggestions were not taken into consideration. So I decided to start from scratch. 

After that experience and through the years, I tried several approaches to management. I studied, read, and practiced. And I learned several things: 

1. A dream team vision is not the same for every manager. Each leader has their own concept and there is no point in looking for answers in books or business lectures — they will only lead a leader astray. 

2. Being too attached to the idea of a dream team is harmful and restricting. Any business-related vision needs to be flexible and adaptable and having a set-in-stone vision and ideas are not going to help with the flexibility. 

3. Whatever concept of a dream team a leader has at the very beginning of their career, it will change and evolve as business goals and market realities metamorphize. 

In reality, only adding the oh-my-God-this-is-a-perfect-candidate-I-dreamt-up people, who can end up being a bad fit, to a team can result in decreased morale and low productivity. In the worst scenarios, it may even lead to conflicts, missed deadlines, and poor performance. One bad decision and a team’s ability to achieve results is ruined. 

Yes, it’s much better to stay away from the image of perfection. 

Where do leaders go from here? 

Just because something is unattainable doesn’t mean there is no point in striving to get closer to it. Yes, a dream team may be a myth that can only harm leaders and managers. But it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t do their best to expand their teams with the best of the best. 

For example, at SupportYourApp, our Talent Recruitment department goes through a precise and tailored process of searching and screening candidates for open positions. Each selected candidate goes through several rounds of interviews to make sure they will be a good fit not only for a particular department, but for our entire company too. They need to match our values and share our mission and vision. They need to be motivated and skillful. And they need to believe in what we do and in the impact they can provide for SupportYourApp. 

Is that a way to build a dream squad? Well, if there was one, that would be it, for sure. 

So, the key to building a team of any leader’s dreams is not to expand it with the people who will make fantasy come to life. It’s to expand it with the most fitting, skilled, motivated, and driven people and adjust the team’s processes accordingly. That is the surest way to turn dreams into reality.