6 Steps to Building a Team

Does your staff pull together to deliver an amazing service to your clients and run your business so you can work on it rather than in it?

So the first change to make is the language you use, Staff turn up at 9.00 and work to 5.00 and do as little as they can in between, and the boss (you) often ends up doing their work for them.

So the first thing to change is your language, refer to the staff as a team.

Teams play together to win, the results of a team working together disproportionately exceed the sum of the number of individuals on the team!

Just like the sports team, the individual players have their skills that compliment each other, striker, goaly, defence etc and they have a manager who is rarely on the pitch – where does the manager sit? Yes back from the pitch observing the field of play so he or she can see what is happening and coach the team to improve performance.

And is the Coach better than the players, rarely, Rory McIlroy’s coach would be playing against him for the fame and fortune, so he or she stands on the outside and looks in, giving guidance and support.

Step 1: Strong Leadership

Teams are a mirror of the management, they will mirror your behaviours over time, so if you want true change, begin at home by a process of self examination!

The first step in Building your team is Strong Leadership, and we have discussed this in great detail over the months so please refer back to previous articles for more detail.

Emotional Capital is what we work through; assess how you see yourself on ten competencies of Leadership Behaviour, and how the rest of your world see you.

We set action plans for developing the areas of most potential. Coaching becomes a key skill. Coaching is a form of communication that assumes that each individual has all they need to succeed and all we as leaders need to do is to deliver a supportive, nurturing relationship to allow that individual to maximise their performance.

Step 2: Big Hairy Audacious Goal

Identify your Big Hairy Audacious Goal – or as we commonly call it, your Vision!

This is the glue that holds your team together, the subconscious abdication that the team make to the leaders, ensuring their safety, career and future, and is partly achieved through having an exciting view of the future that they believe in.

One of the best examples is from the business Icon Henry Ford –

“I will build a motor car for the great multitude. It will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God’s great open spaces. When I am through, everybody will be able to afford one, and everyone will have one. The horse will have disappeared from our highways, the automobile will be taken for granted, (and we will) give a large number of men employment at good wages.” 

Step 3: Building the Team and Setting the Culture in your Organisation.

Getting the culture right should be the number one priority for business owners. The rest will follow.

“Hire more slowly and fire those who are harming the culture more quickly”.

Building the culture of a company is vital for ensuring you have a strong foundation from which to build your business.

Business is like the game of sport, it should be fun and competitive, we should keep the score, have our goals, select the best players and have a stringent set of rules to dictate the acceptable behaviours. These rules set the scene for the game while allowing relative freedom for the players to move within the bounds of the out lines.

The manager should ideally look on from the side-lines, taking an overview of the field of play, helping and encouraging the team to win and making the decisions to remove players who aren’t playing on form.

So a company’s culture is about the way we do things, it’s about sharing similar attitudes, goals, values, practices and processes and working towards them as a company.

And if we can agree the rules of the game, Values, Culture, (whatever term you prefer) then this de-personalises the challenge when a team member breaks our rules.

For example if one of our values is that we will only communicate with others as we would wish to be communicated ourselves and that we will never raise our voices or loose our temper with another team member, then if occasion happens that individual is breaking their own rules.

During recruitment we should share our values with potential new team members and ask them to read and understand them and so confirm they will live by them before accepting a position with your business.

This will not only improve individual performance and a company’s collective success but also attracts like-minded people towards your organisation.

Creating leaders, rewarding success and performance and constantly focusing on and improving customer service.

Aim to be a place where those who work here want to be here and want to contribute to our success, and we want to attract the best people to join us.

If you get the culture right, then building a great brand and outstanding customer service will follow.

Having negative people around who undermine the company’s values and approach can drag down those around them very quickly and be extremely detrimental.

Example of our Values:

Leadership

We are leaders and we teach leaders and will continually show leadership in our business and our personal lives, to our clients, our families and our friends.

Excellence   

We will ensure that our team and our products and service are fit for purpose, simple but effective through innovation and introduce systems to constantly measure and ensure this effectiveness and success.

Personal Development

We will continually drive and take responsibility for our own personal development and growth ensuring we deliver nothing but the best to our clients.

We will ensure that we at all times work and encourage our clients to take responsibility for their own personal development and we will share our knowledge freely with any person within the businesses with whom we work who demonstrates they have a willingness to learn and develop.

Fun

Business should be fun, and we will create a fun, fulfilling and rewarding environment in our own business as we do for our clients.

Time

As our most valuable asset we will be effective in managing what we do with our time and that of our clients, encouraging effective work and recognising the absolute need for quality time outside the business for ourselves, families, friends, as we do the same for our clients and their teams.