By Daman Jeet Singh, its co-founder FunnelKita suite of sales tools helping 18,000+ businesses improve their checkout process.
Building a team from scratch is not easy at all. Most business owners want a strong team that works efficiently and can help the company grow, but actually forming your ideal team can seem almost impossible.
I’m here to tell you it’s not. You can put in the work and create a system that fosters positivity and productivity, which I believe are the foundation for creating a high performing team. I have implemented a few strategies across all of my company’s brands and have seen tremendous success in building the right team. Here are five important things to remember on your team building journey.
1. Hire passionate, qualified people.
Building a strong team starts with hiring the right people. While this may seem like an obvious first step, it’s important to consider what goes into hiring the right people for your company.
In my experience, one of the most important things a potential hire can have is passion for the industry. Passionate people are more likely to innovate, ask questions and push us to do better, which makes them an asset.
But passion is not everything. It is also important to test candidates so that you can assess their skills and knowledge. Review their application, follow their references and ask targeted questions during the interview to ensure they are a good fit for your company.
2. Develop an effective onboarding process.
Now, it’s time to talk about how onboarding can have a huge impact on the success of your individuals and team as a whole. You probably know that onboarding involves getting new employees comfortable with the company and their role, but there’s more to it than that.
Onboarding is also a critical part of building a strong employee-employer relationship. It’s hard for someone to give it their all if they don’t understand what’s expected of them or don’t have the resources to figure it out independently. I suggest collecting resources such as standard operating manuals, training documents, and online courses in one easy-to-navigate folder. In this material, I like to include a checklist for new hires to follow during the first two weeks so they get off on the right foot.
If you can do this and be there to answer questions as they arise, there’s a good chance your employees will have all the tools they need to perform well in their roles.
3. Establish clear goals and expectations.
Now that you’ve hired and onboarded your team leader, it’s time to talk about establishing clear goals and expectations. This step is essential for a high performing team. When everyone knows what they are working towards and what you and other team members expect of them, they are more likely to do their best.
Here are some quick tips to remember when creating and tracking goals and expectations:
• Set KPIs for your team and people.
• Create a KPI spreadsheet where employees can log their progress each week.
• Track their metrics and create a new page every quarter so you can better understand how everyone is doing and where to improve.
• If you make a promise, keep it. This is part of managing expectations and building trust with your team.
4. Make team building part of your culture.
Team building exercises turn employees into high performers. When people feel comfortable and connected, they are more likely to collaborate, think and work effectively towards common goals.
There are many ways you can help your team build relationships. I suggest that there are many projects where teams are in a position where they need to work together. For example, content marketers and social media marketers often work together so they can keep their tone and messaging consistent.
You can also help team members get to know each other in other ways. One thing we like to do is encourage our employees to interact with each other in our family chat channel. People share their interests, hobbies and even just funny memes. There are also clubs on our family channel. We’ve seen a lot of group bonding in gym and reading group.
All of this leads to a strong culture where people feel connected, which is vital to building a strong team.
5. Don’t overlook the importance of feedback.
Finally, we need to talk about how feedback is vital to the growth and development of your team. When you want to improve things for your customers, you probably start by asking for feedback. The same rules apply to your team members.
To create an environment that encourages team members to do their best, you need to give them opportunities to provide feedback while giving your own suggestions for their performance. There are many things you can do to make feedback a regular part of the culture. I like to do quarterly reviews with my team where we discuss what they have accomplished, where they can improve and what I would like to see next quarter.
I make sure to ask them to share their views on my leadership and our workflows. I want to do my best and expect the same from them. Setting high standards for myself and opening the door to criticism is vital to establishing mutual respect.
You should also send out annual surveys so you can see how people who work for your company feel. Use their answers to shape your business and create an integrated experience for everyone.
As you can see, there’s a lot you can do when building a high-performing team. The tips I’ve outlined today will help you create a framework you can use to take your business and your team to the next level.
