Why Building Effective Teams Builds Effective Businesses
Creating a high functioning proactive team that lives and breathes your brand is a dream for many business owners. And it will remain a pipedream for many more businesspeople who are so focused on working ‘in’ their business that they miss the opportunity to build a dream team around them.
A dream team drives business growth and gives you and your customers something that can’t be measured financially – confidence and trust.
Many business owners see the impact employees make on the bottom line – wage and salary costs, for example – but they don’t have the foresight to make the link between great employees and top line revenue.
Your team is a reflection of your business. Look at organisations such as Virgin. Their frontline staff are effectively a fantastic marketing tool for the company. They are the direct conduit to customers and indicative of what is right and what is wrong in any business.
So, how do you build an effective team around you?
- Hire on attitude and build on skills
We’ve all heard that it’s better to “hire for attitude and train for skills” but most of the recruitment processes we come across do the exact opposite – check CV’s and 1:1 interviews (i.e. check skills and do a very poor job of assessing attitude and cultural fit) Accepting only phone applications helps to check attitude and communication skills. Group interviews are a smart way to identify how people interact with others. The entire process should only require a total of 5 hours of your time.
- Create and define a clear culture for your business and brand
Employees can feel lost and unsure about their roles and the business if a company’s culture is ill-defined. Ask yourself these questions – How does your business define who it is? How would your employees describe your business? Do your employees know your vision? Sharing and creating your vision with your team is the fastest way to breathe life and energy into a brand. It gives employees’ purpose, customers’ confidence and you assurance that everyone is on the same page.
- Do your best and delegate the rest
The fastest way an entrepreneur can burnout and self-combust is through micro-management and martyrdom. You can’t do everything. Focus on doing what you do best very well instead of lots of things badly. Hire the right people to plug your skills gaps, empower and engage them with the company culture and vision for the future. Then you can work ON the business, not IN it. And that will lead to more time for strategy and big picture thinking which will have a knock on effect on the bottom line.
Surrounding yourself with the right people can be one of the smartest strategies an entrepreneur can implement. The initial investment in time and money required will pay off ten-fold as your dream team helps you to drive growth.
Building the right team will build the right business.
“Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to.” Richard Branson
Want to know how to quantum leap your team growth in your business? Check out our 6 Steps to Building a Better Business here.
