Building Your Team
As CEO or Business Leader you will have started with an idea, developed a vision, through hard graft, some luck, and plenty of mistakes you will have established a successful business. Along the way you will have built a team to support you and your growing business.
A common challenge is whether this team is the right one for now, as well as, is this team the right one to bring the business through its next growth stage.
Some tips to building your best team for now and the future
Know your Team: Be clear on each team member’s strengths and development areas. Always pay more attention to their strengths as increased focus on strengths delivers infinitely more than time spent on development areas. If you’re not clear on their strengths - ask what part of their role they love doing? Can they describe what they were doing when they last lost track of time? What do they think their strengths are? What strengths do their team mates attribute to them?
Next understand the areas each of them struggle with more (Development areas). In some cases, these areas can be supported by coaching and mentoring but often, the improvement needed will be too great and the tasks are best re distributed to a team member who thrives in those areas.
Ideally your best team will all be playing to their strengths in each of their roles.
Team Gaps: Once you have mapped your team’s strengths and development areas, the next step is to consider the gaps across the team by asking the following questions:
Where are you spending a disproportionate part of your time - mentoring, doing, fixing?
What part of the business is frustrating you most and why?
Where is the business not getting traction?
Where do you want the business to go? - Do you have the right skills and experience to deliver your vision?
Recruitment & Change: Now you know your team’s strengths and gaps, then you need to consider the skills, experience and fit you want to recruit for and when you will do that. Some tips to consider when recruiting and supporting your existing team through change:
Time – Recruiting a senior hire can take between 6 and 12 mths. It will also take plenty of your time. The tradeoff is you covering the gap vs investing the time to find the right candidate to join your team
Place – Bringing a new person into your team is change, for the person joining, for you and for the existing team. Communicate that you are recruiting, potentially involve some of your team in the process. Support your successful candidate with a good onboarding process so that they can find their place quickly in your team.
Creating a Cohesive Team: So now you have a well resourced team each playing to their strengths, - right people - right place. Likely you will have a mix of people who know the business and some from other businesses. Next step is to accelerate their move from a group of individuals to a team. The following steps can be helpful, ideally completed face to face through facilitated workshops
Define a vision of success with your team
Discuss team values and align on a set of values you as a team can enjoy
Translate your values to team behaviours which you expect from each other
Set clear objectives and milestones to deliver your agreed vision
Agree regular touchpoints for you as a team to get together to discuss progress, make decisions and address challenges.
Making Mistakes: Everyone makes mistakes and typically we learn much more from our failures than our successes. Of course, you will want your team to win but don’t dismiss or berate the failures rather challenge your team to identify the learning from the experience.
Celebrating Success: Winning is infectious and contagious. Celebrate the good stuff regularly.
Listening: The move to leadership is about taking responsibility for the big calls and decisions, it is being accountable for business success and failure. To be a great leader though, in my humble opinion, it is about active listening.
Active listening is paying close attention, avoiding the urge to interrupt and being patient to learn what the speaker is saying. The goal of active listening is to understand instead of just to listen. For more tips on active listening see my previous blog - Critical listening skills.
Giving and Receiving Feedback Creating a culture of open and direct feedback will not only allow your team to deliver more effectively, it will increase your team’s strength and security in each other and together as a team. As Kim Scott outlines in her best seller Radical Candor - Challenging people is often the best way to show you care. It does not mean that whatever you think is the truth; it means you share your (humble) opinions directly. Radical Candor happens when you put these two things together to give feedback that's kind, clear, specific and sincere.
Final Thoughts: Your team is dynamic and feeds from you, their leader. A great team is clear on the goal, committed to success, comfortable making decisions, ok with making mistakes and always learning. As discussed above, you need to have:
the right people in the right seats - focus on strengths here
agreed plan, targets and behaviours - build together face to face
clear meetings, decision making, supporting failures and celebrating success
good listening and feedback culture - everyone but role modelled by leader
If any of the above resonates for you as a leader or as part of a team reach out to discuss how I can support you to build your best team. Life, work, relationships and results all flow when you have the right team in the right place, working well together.