Your Team’s Got Talent — But Who’s Your ‘Simon Cowell’ Character?
Your greatest strength may tell you something about what your team needs next.
Every team has talent.
The more interesting question is:
What kind of talent does it have — and what’s missing?
Several years ago, I was invited to work with a mastermind group of twelve business leaders.
They were running different organisations, but they shared a common ambition.
Growth.
Each wanted to build a business — and a team — capable of reaching the next level.
And one of them gave us a particularly memorable way of exploring the problem.
She was our “Simon Cowell” character.
TWELVE LEADERS. TWELVE DIFFERENT TEAMS.
The mastermind brought together leaders from growing businesses to share ideas, learn from outside experts and develop their organisations.
I was introduced by the group’s chair, with whom I’d worked previously when he was CEO of a large marketing group.
He’d experienced Perfect Teams® first-hand and subsequently introduced us to several other organisations.
This time, the question was about team dynamics.
How could these leaders understand the people around them better?
What strengths did their teams possess?
And what might they need as their organisations grew?
We began where Perfect Teams® always begins.
With the leader.
PERFECT TEAMS START WITH YOU
Before analysing everybody else, understand yourself.
How do you naturally process information?
What do you notice first?
What motivates you?
How do you communicate?
How do you make decisions?
And perhaps most importantly:
What don’t you naturally see?
Perfect Teams® identifies three primary ways in which people tend to process information.
Green — Go
Direct. Opportunity-focused. Action-orientated.
Blue — Think
Analytical. Detailed. Logical.
Red — Feel
Relationship-focused. People-aware. Emotionally attuned.
We all have access to all three.
But we tend to have preferences.
And those preferences influence the way we lead.
ENTER SIMON COWELL
During the session, one CEO emerged as a particularly strong Green.
Direct.
Fast-moving.
Promotional.
Focused on opportunities.
Ready to act.
To make the idea memorable, we described her as a “Simon Cowell” character.
Not because she was Simon Cowell.
And certainly not because a public figure can be reduced to a psychological label.
It was simply a useful cultural shorthand for the direct, decisive quality we were discussing.
And it created an immediate breakthrough.
Because once the leader could recognise what she naturally brought to the team, another question became possible:
What might she not naturally bring?
EVERY STRENGTH CREATES A SHADOW
Her Green qualities were valuable.
They helped drive the organisation forward.
But strength doesn’t eliminate the need for other capabilities.
Who was asking the detailed questions?
Who was testing assumptions?
Who was thinking through implementation?
Who was noticing the effect decisions were having on people?
Who was building relationships?
Who was seeing the risks that an opportunity-focused leader might naturally overlook?
She didn’t need to become all of those people herself.
She needed access to those capabilities within the team.
That’s interdependence.
BALANCE ISN’T THE OBJECTIVE
In 2022, we described this as building a balanced team.
Today I’d express it differently.
Balance isn’t the objective. Capability for purpose is.
A team doesn’t need equal numbers of every character.
It needs the capabilities required to achieve what the organisation is trying to achieve.
A start-up pursuing opportunities may require something very different from a mature organisation managing complex operations.
A creative agency may need a different configuration from an engineering consultancy.
The question isn’t:
Is this team balanced?
It’s:
Is this team capable of doing what we’re asking it to do?
YOUR GREATEST STRENGTH CAN CREATE YOUR BLIND SPOT
This is where understanding character becomes particularly valuable for leaders.
We naturally notice the things we’re good at noticing.
We value the things we naturally value.
And we can unconsciously surround ourselves with people who think similarly.
That’s comfortable.
But it can also be dangerous.
Because:
A team that sees the world in the same way can miss the world in the same way.
The stronger the leader’s natural preference, the more important it may become to have people around them who see something different.
Not people who obstruct them.
People who complete the picture.
“WHAT ARE YOU SEEING THAT I’M NOT?”
That’s one of the most useful questions a leader can ask.
The Green leader can ask Blue:
What am I overlooking?
Blue can ask Green:
What opportunity am I analysing to death?
Both can ask Red:
What effect is this having on the people involved?
And Red can ask the others:
What decision needs to be made?
Nobody has to surrender their character.
They contribute it.
That’s the difference between a collection of talented individuals and an interdependent team.
TWELVE BREAKTHROUGHS
The “Simon Cowell” example wasn’t really valuable because of one CEO.
It became an anchor for everybody else in the room.
Each leader could begin asking the same questions.
What’s my natural contribution?
What’s my dominant way of seeing the world?
Where might that create a blind spot?
What characters surround me?
What capabilities do they bring?
And:
What’s missing?
That’s when a profile stops being about personal curiosity and starts becoming a tool for building organisational capability.
TALENT ISN’T ENOUGH
The original title of this article deliberately borrowed from Britain’s Got Talent.
And the metaphor still works.
Your team almost certainly has talent.
Most organisations do.
But individual talent isn’t the same thing as collective capability.
You can have exceptionally talented people and still have something vital missing.
That’s why Perfect Teams® maps the team as well as profiling the individual.
The individual asks:
Who am I?
The team asks:
Who are we?
The leader asks:
What do we need next?
And the organisation ultimately asks:
Are we capable of where we’re trying to go?
WHAT’S MISSING IN YOUR TEAM?
That is the question sitting underneath this story.
The “Simon Cowell” CEO didn’t need to become less direct, less ambitious or less opportunity-focused.
Those were valuable qualities.
She needed to understand their limits.
And she needed people around her capable of contributing what she didn’t naturally bring.
That’s how difference becomes complementary strength.
That’s how independence becomes interdependence.
And that’s how talent becomes collective capability.
Nobody is perfect. But your team can be.
Personality Divides. Character Unites.
You can’t download capability.™
What does your team need next?
Perfect Teams® helps leaders understand their own character, map the capabilities within their teams and identify what’s missing.
Originally published 5 July 2022. Updated August 2026.
Article by: