Last week @Marcus_Andrews asked me to be a guest on his weekly live podcast at Cone. Here, we talk about SocialSmack, the new Twitter layout and Foursquare’s entry into the university space.

My #FollowFriday list for March 5th, 2010: These are the people I’ve had some great interactions with over the last week on Twitter and in real life (in many cases both).

Ellen Rossano – @EllenRossano
Ellen was an amazing speaker at last night’s PRSSA meeting. I met her back in January at MassInnovation Night 10 (#MIN10), and she was more than happy to offer advice to our group. She owns and runs Crisis Media Consultants, and crisis communication was a perfect topic for the BU students who are having a midterm exam storm this week. It was refreshing to hear her speak to us; not at us. Last night’s conversation was one of the best PRSSA meetings this year.

Todd Defren – @TDefren
Todd is the genius behind SHIFT Communications and PR-Squared.com. He spoke to Professor Steve Quigley’s New Media and PR class this morning. During our Q&A I asked Todd about how the transition from tactical skills to management skills in the PR industry works. I thought he pointed out an interesting fact about the PR industry: If you stick with the grunt work, you can reach management positions fairly quickly. Some industries take 15 years of grinding away before a promotion, but in PR, you can be a VP by age 26! That’s what Todd says, and it’s pretty upbeat response, so I’m going to go with it.

Lisa Braithwaite – @LisaBraithwaite
I’ve been doing research and development for my speech consulting side job, and I stumbled across Lisa. She’s got an amazingly transparent and honest presence online. From the looks of her website, she’s been really innovative in developing the services she offers. I’m learning a lot reading her blog!

Jason Davis – @Jason_J_Davis
Jason has been a Twitter friend of the TalentCulture interns for a while now. Jason is going on vacation in a couple of weeks and asked me to guest blog in his absence. Watch for my post on HRThinkTank March 17th. He’s also looking into getting together an unconference, which I can’t wait to be a part of.

Mary Ann Halford – @MaryAnnHalford
I finally tweeted through an entire #pr20chat on Tuesday night. I’m glad I did because I got to meet Mary Ann! Mary Ann works for a very cool company called Bizworks360 that specializes in social media content strategy. Too bad the company’s in New York because I’d really like to apply to a place like that!

Meg Blauvet – @MegBlauvet
I was surprised to learn that Meg is changing her intended major from journalism to PR. Whatever she ends up doing, she’s coming from a really good place: Inside Boston, the student-run news magazine show I’ve been involved with for the past three years. The show’s in good hands regardless of whether or not Meg sticks around, but I hope she does. She’s new to Twitter so give her a warm welcome!

The TalentCulture Crowd

Marguerite Granat – @MGRecruiter
I must be making an impression on at least some of these HR folks I’ve been meeting through TalentCulture because Marguerite made me her #1 #followfriday this week! Marguerite is a strategic level-contract recruiter based out of Colorado. She writes PeakHistory.com and more of her articles will be rolling onto the TalentCulture blog very soon.

Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter – @ValueIntoWords
Jacqui is one of our contributors on the new TalentCulture blog. She’s the top resume writer in the country, and I can’t thank her enough for taking time out of her day to help me. She’ll be sharing some brilliant insight on the TC blog coming up, and I encourage everyone to read her articles.

Meghan M. Biro – @MeghanMBiro
I don’t want it to look like I’m sucking up to my boss here, so I’ll keep this short and sweet. Meghan and I have been collaborating behind the scenes as the puppet masters of the TalentCulture blog. It launched this week, and we are thrilled with the response so far. Congratulations to Meghan, my fellow interns @KLTaggart and @CaraKenefick and the TC contributors! More exciting things are on the way from TalentCulture.

The PRSSA Stars

Rachel Sprung – @RSprung
Rachel did an incredible job co-coordinating the #PRAdvanced: Brand Yourself conference with @ChelseaAlexan. The event was amazing! Read my recap of it. Rachel is a guinea pig for my speech consulting business; I’m looking forward to her feedback and hopefully a testimonial!

Ginny Soskey – @GSosk
Ginny is a PRSSA freshman who caught the personal branding bug at #PRAdvanced last weekend. She’s helping me plan the BU Social Media Competition and BU PRSSA Tweet-Up, and she’s been so patient and so helpful. Read her new blog. Keep her on your radar.

Maurice Rahmey – @MRahmey
Last week, Mo was a Twitter non-believer. Then he went to #PRAdvanced and started tearing through Gary Vaynerchuk’s Crush It. Now, he is tweeting up a storm about everything from viral videos to buying the NY Yankees. He’s scheming up a blog, and I have a feeling he’ll be “crushing it” very soon.

Laura Flanagan – @lauramflanagan
Laura is the ballsiest BU freshman I’ve ever encountered. She shook up the MS&L reps at #PRAdvanced last weekend by calling them out on their juniors-and-seniors-only internship policy. I wouldn’t be surprised if they considered changing it. She’s blogging now, tossing up some pretty creative posts about branding. I enjoyed reading her instructions on “How to Look Good Naked.”

The Missing Tower Media Team

Amanda Grinavich – @AGrinavich
On top of the fact that she was pretty much offered a job at SHIFT yesterday and the fact that she’s my leading source of hockey news, Amanda is part of a newly-formed kick-butt new media education team with me. We think we’re calling it Missing Tower Media. More details to come on that later.

Lauren Brown – @laurlita
You have to give Lauren credit for working full-time and blogging and taking Media Relations with me. She’s on the Missing Tower team too, and I think all of our members are looking forward to her insights from her internship at HubSpot. She’s going to be on the PR trip to NYC next week with me as well.

DJ Capobianco – @DJCap
“Hi my name is DJ, and I have an opinion on everything.” I don’t really need to say much more except I’m really looking forward to having DJ on the Missing Tower team.

Mark Nolan – @mahhkk
Mark is the analytics specialist on the Missing Tower team. We were tweeting each other at the #PRAdvanced conference last weekend, and I was glad to finally meet him in person today.

Mariam Shahab – @MShahab
I’ve been in on a few group projects in my Media Relations class with Mariam. She’s one of the most down-to-earth people I’ve ever met–very in touch with what’s going on in the PR world too. I can’t wait to work with her on the Missing Tower team.

The 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team

The only class I’m taking this semester that really engages my interests is my Organizational Behavior course. We’re assigned to student teams for a semester-long project to study a local company or organization and how it functions.

A team, according to our course definition is “a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, set of performance goals and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.”

We just read a white paper by Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith, authors of The Wisdom of Teams. In it, they argue that teams should be selected on skill and skill potential and not on personality. I pride myself on being a Myers-Briggs personality type ISTJ because I like making decisions based on hard facts and objective viewpoints. But I disagree with Katzenbach and Smith. I think personality plays a huge role in how well a team functions an performs.

High-performing teams focus on personality. Individual personalities on a team have to fit delicately together like a jigsaw puzzle. Herb Brooks had the right idea when he coached the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team to a miracle gold medal. The winter Olympics are this week so I think the time is right to take a look at his team.

Brooks (played here by Kurt Russell in Disney’s 2004 film Miracle) made his players take personality tests before assigning them positions in his lineup. He defied the failed pattern of Olympic embarrassment by proclaiming that all-star teams fail because they rely solely on the skill of the individual. He wasn’t looking for the best players; he was looking for the right ones. Sure, he saw the “complementary skills” and “skill potential” Katzenbach and Smith mention, but he cared way more about individual personal dynamics than the two authors recommend.

Who’s right? Herb Brooks’ team won a gold medal. Just saying.