The other day I was browsing my Feedly, and there was an article that mentioned the so
call T-shaped team and the T-shaped skill caught my attention.
So what is a T-shaped team or T-shaped skills?
Let’s find out with People Also Ask.
Hi, I am Shao Chieh Lo, welcome to what people also ask, where I search for something seemingly
obvious and share with you some of its PAA, aka People Also Ask, which is a feature telling
you what other people are searching on Google that relates to your query.
Today's keyword is T-shaped, we'll discuss what T-shaped abilities and T-shaped teams
are, as well as why T-shaped teams may become more relevant in the future for a business.
So let’s start with our first PAA: What does it mean to be T shaped?
Google’s auto-generated answer is extracted from an article titled “T-Shaped Skills
- Overview, History, Other Skill Types” published by Corporate Finance Institute,
which is a financial analyst certification organization that provides online training
and education for finance and investment professionals.
According to this article, a T-shaped individual has outstanding knowledge and abilities in
specialized areas and is skilled at working collaboratively with others.
In the 1980s the term "T-shaped man" aka “T-shaped person” was used internally by McKinsey & Company
for recruiting and developing consultants and partners.
Here are some advantages of Hiring T-Shaped individuals according to this article:
1.Good at collaboration: T-shaped people are able to engage with others and understanding their
overall goals because of their capacity to discuss concerns across the workplace.
2.Flexibility: While T-shaped person may have a major area of competence, they can
nevertheless contribute their skills to other high-priority areas that demand their help.
3.Having both hard skills and soft skills: T-shaped employees, in addition to hard abilities like design or programming,
also have soft skills like networking and critical thinking,, A T-shape employee sounds useful, but you
know what is even more useful?A T-shaped team!
So What are T shaped teams?
Google’s auto-generated answer is linked to an article titled “Here's the Thing About
"T-shaped" People” published by Adventures with Agile, which is a global training and
coaching provider specializing in enterprise-wide agility.
This article argues that a common misunderstanding inside many organizations is that a single
individual must hold all skills.
In reality, building a T-shaped team is more feasible and important than expecting everyone
in a team to be a T-shaped person.
A T-shaped team does not require each member to have every talent; rather, the entire team
must be T-shaped.
According to this article, the benefits of a T-shaped team includes: Reduce team dependencies,
which means fewer issues with coordination and competing priorities.
Reduce information loss and reducing the number of handoffs between knowledge silos.
Broaden and deepen individual team members' talents over time through collaborative teamwork.
However, according to this article, trying to T-shape everything is not always achievable.
For example, if the skill set is extremely specialized, expensive, or regulated, you
will most likely have to live with this dependency.
I am unable to cover all of the essential information and details in this post with
this short video, therefore I strongly advise you to read the entire article.
I will put the link in the description.
Today we learned what is the difference between a T-shaped person and a T-shaped team, and
why should a company focus on the latter, as well as some of the limitations of the
T-Shaped concept.
If you made it to the end of the video, chances are that you enjoy learning what people also
ask on Google.
But let's face it, reading PAA yourself will be a pain.
So here's the deal, I will do the reading for you and upload a video compiling some
fun PAAs once a week, all you have to do is to hit the subscribe button and the bell icon
so you won't miss any PAA report that I compile.
So just do it right now.
Bye!