Article: Get to know each person and their background, experience, and abilities. Try to evaluate their temperament so that you have a full picture of who they are. Many times, people's skills are different than what's on paper, so doing a trial run with them may be effective. To do this, have a prospective team member work on a project or do a routine that's closely related to what they would be doing if they joined the team.  You should be able to see their abilities and get a good sense of their experience without referring to their references. To learn more about interviewing skills, go to Interview Someone. Team members should be able to get along and build bonds. Selecting a team with chemistry involves choosing people that can compliment each other. Don't pick team members who have the same strengths and weaknesses. Before selecting anyone, think of how you're going to use your team member's talents to achieve your end goal. To make sure that people get along, select people who have similar values and goals.  For example, if you're developing an app, your programmers and designers will need to work together so that the app's design can also serve functional purposes. Be wary of choosing talent over personality. A toxic personality can impede progress. In some cases, it's better to stick with someone who's easy to work with. Team members should encourage each other to be successful and build on one another's successes. Building a diverse team allows more perspectives and introduces new and unique ideas. Make sure that you choose people from varying backgrounds, ethnicities, and perspectives. This will help your team approach problems from different viewpoints and can contribute to driving success and innovation on your team.  Having a diverse team enhances creativity and group problem solving.  Conflict can help improve unity by making the team members challenge one another. It may help remove apathy, get people invested, and lead to making better decision making. When building a team, you must ensure that your members have the right skills and experience to be successful and complete the end goal. This means selecting team members who can fulfill their responsibilities. Require team members to get references and talk to past coaches or supervisors. Get a full evaluation of a person's ability before making them a part of your team. If key team members don't have the appropriate skills or experience, it could hinder a portion of your project, thus delaying progress. While having a diverse team with different perspectives can drive success, it's important that all your team members can agree on your team's goals and values. When team members join, make it a point to establish the goals and values. Let team members know what their work is going towards, what the results should be, and how the team should work to achieve those goals.  A team without an identifiable goal can work against each other and delay progress. Examples of team goals can include being more productive this quarter than the last quarter, winning a championship, or being victorious in an important match. Some examples of good team values include reliability, positivity, transparency, collaboration, and tolerance. Each member should continually strive to accomplish the team's overall goal, but should also be concentrated on a specific part of the project. While designated positions should be specific, it's also important to allow members to grow within their respective roles. Sometimes duties and responsibilities can be merged or transferred to another person more capable on the team. This requires close attention to the development and growth of individual team member skills.  On a sports team, this could mean designating who is on offense or defense and which role each member has on the team. You may need to change roles or help support one role on the team. When transferring someone from one role to another, say something like, "You're doing a good job, but I think you'd be better at coding than design. I'm moving you over to Eric's team because I think you'd do well there. What do you think?"

What is a summary?
Interview team members. Choose members who have chemistry. Choose a diverse team. Choose team members who can get the job done. Establish cohesive goals and values. Designate roles and expectations.