Meet our Team personas

One of the biggest challenges for new adopters of Microsoft Teams is to rapidly show results. We also know from our extensive research on digital ‘teams’ that the average size of a digital team is almost 300 members, a group too big to be called a team. Therefore, many teams are teams in name only.  

These team personas will immediately give you feedback on how your team is operating at a quick glance. When you use these personas with SWOOP’s team network map, you will be best placed to identify how to maximise team productivity by leveraging or adjusting your team’s persona. 

Based on decades of research into physical and digital teams, we have categorised four team personas:

• Self-Directed
  Self-Directed teams have many connections between the members and nearly everyone participates.
  
  
• Single-Leader
  Single-Leader teams rely on a single person to connect the team members, but nearly everyone participates.
  
  
• Community of Practice
  Communities have a small group of connected members that all interact with each other, and then a larger set of people who are passive.
  
  
• Forums
  Forums have a lot of people following what is happening (reading), but only a minority are actively contributing. Those who are contributing are not tightly connected to each other.

The first two team personas reflect 'real' teams. A Community of Practice team and Forum could be better suited to an Enterprise Social Network, like Viva Engage, rather than Microsoft Teams, though ultimately the technology platform choice is a group decision.