SWOOP Team Persona: What and How

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’:

Self-Directed
Single Leader
Community
Forum
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:

Core members interacting with each other, and largely two-way (Self-directed)
Core members are largely facilitated by a single leader (Single leader)
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.

Connect and discuss

Want to talk with others about this? Join our User Group on LinkedIn.