When people talk of the American Dream, they get a picture of the rugged individual, fighting all odds to get to the top. Pictures appear of the days when “The West Was Won,” when people battled the unknown and opened up the west, conquering their fears and an uncertain climate, building new lives for themselves.

While rugged individualism may have been the picture in the past, today’s world is about partnership with others, and building things together. One of the clearest manifestations of this is teamwork.

It has been said that when two or more people of like minds get together, you don’t get the power of two, but of eleven. The synergy of two ones can be quite powerful indeed. A colleague in Denver once explained to me the Power of Four.

The Power of Four

The power of four is one of those natural dynamics of synergies in teams that has a powerful affect on their effectiveness. In brainstorming and strategizing, it’s harder when one person tries to do it alone. With two people, you develop velocity in the communication. The addition of a third person adds mass. With a fourth person, you add volume.

The ideal size for brainstorming is a group of four people. If you add a fifth person things start to spin out. I have clients with 5-person ownership teams, and I find that when they are effective, one of the people sits back and watches the dialog. It is a different person each time, situational to the discussion at hand, but that intuitive action by the participants has a direct impact on the effectiveness of the discussions.

Then, when strategizing and brainstorming are done, the most effective action seems to occur when people work alone or in pairs. This allows the dynamic of individual accountability to play its role.

Teamwork in Business

One misguided notion that I have seen people follow when putting teams of people together is to always put people of the same type together with others of the same or similar skills, or tendencies. An alternative approach might be to put people of complementary skill-sets together. This may have much richer results. While people may not agree as much, synergistic results often occur.

Regardless of how you develop the teams, you will encounter different perspectives, and often much higher leverage in your results by tapping the power of people working together. Where are you tapping the power of teams in your business?