Are you a small business owner with a growing business?
As your business grows, so does your need for responsible, trustworthy, and hardworking employees. As your team begins to grow, it is critical that your new employees will work well together and be productive.
Rick Gibbs, a performance specialist for Insperity.com, tells us his three secrets to building your dream team.
Goal #1: Set Goals for Each Job and the Team
“Be clear from the start what each person’s job entails. Job descriptions, as well as performance expectations, should be shared with each employee and the team.
As the leader, you will establish clarity of purpose and goals: Determine why the team exists and what its objectives are. These objectives should be tied to the business’s objectives, values and mission.
Although your team members perform different tasks, they’re all working toward a common outcome. Explain how each contributes to the overall plan to get their buy-in and give them a sense of purpose.”
Goal #2: Build on the Strengths of Individuals
“You can make things work if you take the time to learn about your employees: What motivates them, how do they communicate and what are they passionate about?
Not everyone’s work style is going to be the same. How someone prefers to work is often a result of their personality or character strengths. You can determine this through an assessment tool such as DISC, Strengths Finder or Myers-Briggs. The main objective is to highlight their strengths, not root out their weaknesses.”
Not all of your employees are going to become best friends. Each employee has the obligation to maintain civility and friendliness to conduct business.
Goal #3: Give Them Autonomy
When you hire people, you hire them to be in charge of different aspects of your business. It may be difficult to let go, but you must let them do their jobs.
“It begins with trust – and you should go first. Humility distinguishes a great leader. When you acknowledge that you may not be the smartest person in the room, you open the door to collaboration and problem-solving within the team.
As a mentor of mine once said, set the banks of the river and let your people flow within them. What that means is establish guidelines, then step back and let them succeed.
Giving your people autonomy not only gives them room to succeed, but it’s a factor in whether your employees are engaged in their job and your company. Employee engagement is a good measure of whether employees are productive and if they’ll stay in the job.”
As you grow your business, you must learn how to set your team up for success. “You establish the guidelines for how your team works together, performance expectations and goals. Then, give them the latitude to get it done.”
