One of the most important investments you will make into your business is investing in your team. Effectively team building means more engaged employees, which lifts company culture and boosts the bottom line.
In the latest session of my ‘MASTERMIND. With Sherrie’ Program, I introduced to the attendee's an expert in team-building and leading successful teams to his knowledge and expertise and share how they too can implement it in their own teams.
Rugby superstar and business leader, Nathan Sharpe, has had a diverse and expansive career and a passion for developing high performing teams. Nathan played over 100 matches for the Australian Wallabies, including 20 as the captain. After his sporting career ended, he transitioned into the business world, building a successful business, and selling it to a global company.
Here is some of the advice he shared with us.
Build a strong foundation.
Preparation is key for build strong teams. Map out what you need to fulfil your vision and build up from there. You can observe other teams, the good bad and the ugly, and learn from them. What are they doing well and what do you want to avoid?
It’s important to make sure you are hiring the right people for the right roles. Each person should be an expert in the subject matter that they are hired in. For example, sales recruitment, accounting.
Make sure that each person in your team has absolute clarity on their position in the team, their role and duties, expectations, and the vision of the business. Communicating this information with the team not only provides them with direction on what they need to do every day, but it also brings them along on the journey of the business to your goals and creates unity.
Succeed at building team unity and the strength of the team will enable you to push through in hard times and team members will work as a unit and self-regulate.
Motivation.
Each team member has a different set of motivations. It’s important to discover what drives them to find out how to work best with them and get their best work out of them.
Determine if they work better in a team or individually. Understand their drivers – are they motivated by money or incentives? Do they thrive with accolades or want recognition? Is it about making their families proud?
Set their individual KPI’s based on these drivers to help them achieve them and drive the business forward as a whole.
Invest in your own leadership skills
As the leader of your team, it’s important to determine and know how you impact the business. Be aware of your leadership style and how it complements or are contrasting to team members.
You cannot always assume people will level up. You need to strategise on how you are going to build your business, convey a clear and concise message to your team members. Make sure that you are communicating clearly and motivating your team. This alone will have a significant impact on your business.
It’s important that you install into the business processes that support every single step towards your goals and what you plan on achieving. Every single day these tasks add up taking you one step closer to the result.
Nathan shared with us so many powerful tips in his keynote for us to take away over and above what is outlined here!
The second series of ‘MASTERMIND. With Sherrie’ will be launching very soon! If you are interested in seeing who spoke in this season and want to register your details to be on the intake list for next, you can find out more here: sherriestoror.com/mastermind.