I’ve created an amazing team creation checklist over the years of working as a business coach with leaders, entrepreneurs, business owners, and teams. It has six points. When you implement these six points in order, you’ll have a team that’s empowered, is aligned, has accountability, and will represent your company with class and confidence. They’ll be retained for the long term. And that’s exactly what we want.
However, it’s up to you as a leader to put this all in place. Last week, I talked about some key management and leadership skills we need to develop, and that’s the first step to get to this. Step one, I talked about last week, is using behavioral assessments so everybody knows their behavior and the behavior of others around them, so they and you know how to shift in certain situations when they’re communicating with others. That’s step one. The first thing I always do in an organization is make sure everybody understands their behavior.
Number two, the leader or the manager needs to have weekly meetings. I find this a lot in all-size type organizations that don’t have consistency in having weekly meetings the same day and time every week. Especially smaller business owners who let time get in the way. This is a must. In addition, I have rules for having very efficient, effective weekly meetings. They shouldn’t last two, three, or four hours. They should last a half hour. Quick and precise, give you the key points and get everybody on their way to have a productive, profitable week.
Number three, one of the things we create with my clients is a vision, a mission, and a culture. The vision is the big picture of where the company’s going. The mission is how to get there, and the culture is the rules of the game with your team that keeps everybody aligned with the culture and/or core values of the organization. I work with the owners, leaders, and the entire team to create this. Don’t you create it alone as the owner and then deliver it. Have everybody work together in creating it. This way, by the time it’s fully done, everybody owns it and are aligned with it.
Once we have your Vision, Mission, and Culture in place, you create your organizational charts of exactly what it looks like today and another of exactly what you would like it to look like. This gives you that destination mastery of where you are, where you’re going, and what positions need to be filled for your organization to get you to the next step. Once we have that, we work on position agreements with everybody, where we define roles and responsibilities. Everyone now has a document listing everything they’re supposed to do and how they’re supposed to show up. You now have something to grade them on how they’re showing up each day, week, and month. This provides the information for either 90 or semi-annual reviews. You review their position agreements, their KPIs (key performance indicators), how they’re showing up, how they’re aligned with the culture of the company, what they see the vision is, and how they’re helping accomplish this vision of the company. They and you rate them, how they’ve performed in the last 90 days? We also cover what we would like to work on in the next 90 days and how we can help them get better.
The last thing is having those key performance indicators of exactly how they’re going to be tested and measured on their roles and responsibilities. Many people want a raise. If they’re not being tested and measured on certain key performance indicators on which to grade them, what’s the merit of giving them a raise?
Here are six points that I work with my client from beginning to end to get all in place, to create the structure, the scalability, and the alignment of the entire team. With this all in place, your company could have a team working for the organization and giving you more time and freedom to create the big picture, which hopefully part of that is taking bigger, longer, and further away vacations with your spouse and your family.
Six points. Number one, make sure you’re using behavioral assessments. Number two, weekly meetings. Number three: vision, mission, culture. Make sure that’s set. Four, organizational chart. Number five, position agreements and review process. Number six, have those KPIs in place.
When you get those six points solid, you create a team that’s working for you and you not working for the company.
COACH MICHAEL DILL is an Award-Winning Certified Business Coach, global speaker, and published author. He is a proud Action Coach Franchise partner as well as the President of Power & Ice Wealth Creation a strategic leadership company that works with business owners, leaders, teams, and entrepreneurs to both develop a systematized and structured organization while accelerating their mindset, efficiencies, and effectiveness to grow both personally and professionally to achieve extraordinary results. He brings more than 40 years of business and entrepreneurial experience in his leadership, team training, and mentoring practice. Businesscoachmichaeldill.com