First of all, I don't think a group of like-minded individuals is what you are looking for in a team. The whole point of a team is that each individual brings in something different. However two of the key qualities you might look for are ambition and ability to pull their weight. In a team, you're very much going to experience conflict due to personality types. As a leader you need to work on yourself to better equip yourself with the skills to handle conflict. Remember also you do not always need to handle every situation, it takes a great talent to be able to allow team members to come to a resolve on their own.

Emotional intelligence is a lifelong process, therefore as leader you might not always know what to do. When such situations arise, ask for help. It takes a lot of strength to ask for help and not all leaders have it. This skill requires practice and never gets easier, you just need to understand it's a part of growth not only for yourself but for the business as well.

In regards to starting a business, you need to make sure that your goals are aligned with whoever you choose to go into business with. The best you can do in this instance is look out for people that have a similar outlook in terms of business as yourself. You could pitch parts of your idea, give them a sense of where you want to go with the idea. What you are looking for here is an individual that will show interest and maybe add some of their ideas into your project. It is important to keep an open mind when it comes to business because you do not want to find yourself closed off from a market you could have easily penetrated.

With that in mind, over time try and diversify your business, look at the market, consult with experts in the field, or even your customers. The important thing here is to not ostracize your business. In order for your business to stay afloat it needs a great marketing team, nowadays a marketing team could be a 12 year old tweeting about your brand. So diversity is not only expressed personality types, ethnicity or religious views. There are a number of ways in which we differ and all of them serve their purpose, and in terms of sustaining a business they make all the difference.

The takeaway from this is keep an open mind, you don't have to everything about yourself or your business, you just need to expand your reach.

One of the key ingredients for a successful project is a good team. However finding a group of individuals that can work in synchronicity can be a challenge. It is one thing to have a list of characteristics to look for in a group as well as individual members of the group, it is another to experience these qualities being applied. For such situations a little creativity needs to be brought into play. Traditional methods of sifting through candidates may not work.

Personally I would suggest a series of activities that require the candidates to work in teams as well as individually. It is easy to write 'I work well in team' on your CV, it is another to actually demonstrate these qualities.

Candidates should be told that the assessment would begin from the moment they enter into the premises until the right candidates has been chosen. Below is a criteria the project manager may use to sift through the candidates.

1) Passion - First and foremost you need to find individuals that are passionate about the project. What ever the project may be, a great foundation for its success is a group of people who individually believe in it. You want to have individuals that are able to see how their individual contributions make a difference within the team rather than see their contributions as an end in itself.

2) Resilience - Another key factor to consider is the team's resilience. You're also looking for individuals that can recover from minor setbacks. You would need to observe how each individual performs when experiencing a crisis. This includes observing individuals that would rather focus on assigning then move past the incident, and those that can bring the group back into focus.

3) Adaptability - In putting together the team you want to look for individuals that are adaptable. At any point in time, you are highly unlikely to find a group of people that agree on everything all the time. With this in mind as a leader, you would need to find individuals who can still pull their weight even if the project is not going the direction of their personal preference. This is important because people who are more adaptable have been shown to be able to perform in unfavorable conditions.

There are a number of other qualities and soft skills to look for when putting together a great team. The ones I mentioned above, I feel, are a great foundation to build on. They cement a great foundation for good communication.

In your process of creating a great team the interviews should be at the end of the selection process, where the interviewers have gotten to know some of the candidates and can determine whether they are in deed a great fit. This is also an opportunity for the candidates to clarify on any misunderstandings that might have occurred during the selection process. This is a great way to see which individuals make excuses and which hold themselves accountable.

I understand that parts of the method solely rely on subjective information, however I do not perceive this as a negative but rather a positive. The workplace is somewhat of a subjective environment. The work being performed and tasks completed may be objective, but the people performing those tasks are subjective which is not always a bad thing.