7 tips for building an amazing team!

7 tips for building an amazing team!

As a small business owner, you understand how important it is to have the best people around you. And when they’re in, then making sure they are all pulling in the same direction in your growing business. Once you have the right people in the right places, that have the trust and support they need, you will see massive increases in morale, productivity and therefore results: increased profits! Here are my 7 tips for building an amazing team!

1. Clear responsibilities

Firstly, get off to a flying start by being clear – and I mean really clear- on what is the work to be done, how will the work be measured, and how are these activities best grouped together into role or jobs. Make sure there is ‘clear space’ between the accountabilities of each different role in the team – so the job holders don’t ‘trip over’ one another.

2. Hire on attitude

Next, define the skills and experiences that are absolutely necessary to do the job – keep them to the minimum you can get away with. Be as broad as you can in terms of the type of product experience, the years experiences already gained, the qualifications needed – the broader the range of transferable skills the better for attracting more applicants. This allows you to attract as many diverse people as possible, from a broad range of backgrounds, industries etc. THEN you get the opportunity to narrow down your applicant pool based on attitude! Remember it’s much easier to train skills than change attitudes… So hire on attitude! This gives you a real head start on creating an amazing team.

3. Nurture

My third tip is to nurture your team members – especially your new hires through their onboarding time. You’ve spent all this time and effort on hiring them, so why wouldn’t you invest a little more time to make sure they land smoothly in your team? It beggars belief when a manager hires their dream candidate and then can’t manage to actually be in the office with them on their first day?!

4. Give them space

So now you’ve got a got great people in place in well-designed roles – next, you need to keep them and build them into a team. Your role is to give them overall direction, and structure and then let them get on with it!  You’ve hired the best, so show your trust in them. And provide ‘leadership cover’ if things go a little awry – that supports them and take the flack yourself, not scapegoating.

5. Be accessible

Give your team first priority on your time. They’ll deal with everything for you – as long as they know that when do actually need you, you are accessible and responsive. Look after the team, and the team will look after the work, and the clients.

6. Reward your team’s success

Give credit where credit’s due publicly recognise and celebrate the team’s achievements and successes – encompassing the whole team effort – not just the visible team members ‘fronting’ the effort – they’re always supported by their colleagues in the background doing most of the work!

7. Be a risk taker

My final top tip is to take risks on talented people! Keep everyone stretched and challenged. Support them to grow into their role, rather than hiring ‘ready-made’ – who’ll be bored before you’ve finished their induction…

When teams have ‘space’ to operate and have the trust and support from their leader, they have a happy habit of getting on with working together, delivering amazing results and supporting each other –and you just got yourself a dream team!

I run regular workshops on ‘How to crack the code: Employee Engagement, and you can see when the next one is on the link below.