I tried hiring on these traits in the past, one challenge there is that almost everyone self-identifies as this kind of person (and it’s probably even true, to an extent.) It’s hard in the end to evaluate effectiveness of T-shaped people across a wide spectrum of potential tasks, but I am curious if others have figured it out.
We need people motivated by helping the team achieve success, not only looking good on their individual metrics and deliverables. Everyone adaptively focused on the collective goal can be so much more easily and efficiently aligned with team success.
If someone seems to think like a team member, and apparently can pick up multiple things, at that point, I might just ask them what they think about the role I'm starting to imagine for them.
(I'm thinking like an ideal-ish startup here, because other kinds of organizations in general usually seem too inefficient to bother worrying about whether some person can pick up new things as they're needed.)