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SWOOP Team Persona: What and How

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Emily O'Brien
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What is a SWOOP Team Persona? 

Team personas mimic the personal personas by looking to identify particular characteristics of a team based on its patterns of interactions. Using our benchmarking data from more than 5,300+ teams, we identified five different characteristic patterns we have labelled ‘Team Personas’:

 

  1. Self-Directed

  2. Single Leader

  3. Community

  4. Forum

  5. Disconnected

Screenshot_2023-01-20_at_4.08.10_pm.png

We found for the majority of teams with more than 50 members, there was a small ‘core’ of interacting members, with the rest largely inactive, and we assume simply watching; hence our label of the ‘Gallery’. Along with the nature of the Core and the Size of the Gallery, we also used our Key Player Dependency measure (identifies the degree of reliance on a single leader) and %Two-way connections (identifies the level of team cohesion) to characterise the team personas.

The ‘Core’ of interacting members was characterised as:

  1. Core members interacting with each other, and largely two-way (Self-directed)

  2. Core members are largely facilitated by a single leader (Single leader)

  3. Core are largely disconnected cliques or factions (Disconnected)

We identified teams with a self-directed core and a large gallery as a “Community of Practice”. Teams with a single leader and large gallery we classified as a ‘Forum’.

The following table draws from the research literature to identify which Team Personas best match the differing business contexts teams are regularly faced with.

 

Team Persona

Team Characteristic

Matched Business Context Examples

Self-Directed Team

  • It is clear who is in the team and who is not (well bounded)

  • Leadership moves with changing context

  • Interdependency is critical (high reciprocity)

  • Shared accountability

  • Strategic advice

  • Problem solving

  • Creation/Innovation

  • New products/processes

  • Cross-functional

  • Cross-geography

  • Organisational change

Single Leader Team

  • It is clear who is in the team and who is not (well bounded)

  • Clear leader accountable for team outcomes

  • Individual accountabilities exist

  • Business as usual operations

  • Management

  • Sales

  • Emergency response

  • Project Team (well defined)

  • Contracted-compliance work

Community of Practice

  • Core members known; boundaries unclear or ambiguous

  • Purpose relates to competency building

  • Crosses organisational boundaries

  • Best practice development

  • Learning and human development

  • Lessons learned

  • Experience and information sharing

Forum

  • Clear leader, but team boundaries unclear

  • Mimics the formal structure

  • Broadcasting

  • Large in size (>50

    members)

  • Enterprise news sharing

  • Broad-based Q&A • Announcements

Disconnected

  • Leadership ambiguous

  • Possible presence of

    cliques/factions

  • Low activity

  • Low Reciprocity

• None

 

Have a look at the business contexts identified. Can you see a context that maps to your current team charter? If so, how well does your current Team persona compare with the matched business contexts?

If your team is classified as “Disconnected”, which Team Persona should you be looking to migrate to?

Your Team Persona is the frontline leading indicator of how your team is actually operating. When teamed with the team social graph, team members are best placed to identify productivity opportunities to become the high performing team we all aspire to.

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