Business Development

A definition of a team

A team is a group of people with a full set of complementary skills required to complete a task, job, or project.

Team members:

1. operate with a high degree of interdependence
2. share authority and responsibility for self-management
3. are accountable for the collective performance
4. work towards a common goal and shared rewards

A team becomes much more than just a collection of people when a strong sense of mutual commitment. It creates synergy, thus generating performance greater than the sum of the performance of its individual members.

Effective Team Development and Team Building

To build an effective team there must be a combination of focused goals and outcomes, competent team members, structure, external support and dynamic leadership. The development of a team consists of five different stages; forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning.

Forming is the initial stage when rules and behaviours are formed. At this stage team members are dependent on a leader. This is when objectives and purpose of the team will be determined.

Storming is the difficult stage when members may resist control and conflict can potentially arise. Members will try to establish their individual role within team and factions may form. Compromise is required to progress on from this stage

This improves at the ‘Norming’ when conflicts are resolved. Cooperation and open exchange of ideas also begin take place at the norming stage.

At the fourth stage there is a strong sense of togetherness. Work becomes more effective, idea creation occurs and targets can be reached. This is referred to as ‘performing’ stage. The team leader will oversee with less control as the team will not require instruction.

‘Performing’ indicates the level of freedom between a managers authority and the team’s freedom. It suggests a managers style should evolve as the team matures and becomes more self efficient. This will eventually lead to a successor emerging and managing said team.

Finally ‘Adjourning’ incorporates reflection and disbanding. At this stage the project will have be completed or members will have left.

Various roles played in teams

Dr Meredith Belbin (father of team roles theory) identified a number of different roles played in a team. Nine roles in total ranging from extroverted to introverted consisting of the following;

* Coordinator

* Shaper

* Plant

* Monitor

* Implementer

* Resource investigator

* Team worker

* Completer finisher

* Specialist

The key factor in Belbin’s findings is that no good or bad roles exist. Each successful team must consist of a varied combination of all nine roles. Belbin’s team roles indicate the motivations of the various personality types within a successful team. By following Belbins theory, team leaders will gain a greater understanding of fellow member’s strengths and weaknesses; identifying areas of improvement and key motivations.

Effective team building combined with a diverse mix of personality types within a group will lead to a productive team. With a balance of all key factors, you can create a successful team of people with a full set of complementary skills required to complete a task, job, or project.

This is an extremely big topic to discuss. So we are going to focus on just a couple of areas for right now to give you a good base to go from.

How many employees you will need in your restoration business completely depends on the services that you are going to offer.

If your services are contents and structure cleaning, you will need a crew of 5 to 7 people to clean, inventory and pack a job in a good time frame. You can start out with just 2 or 3 employees of your own and hire temps to fill out your crew at first. Just be sure that your temps are always supervised by a trained certified Team member.

A good labor pool for this kind of sometimes sporadic and temporary work I have found to be college students and stay at home moms. Not only are they usually very hard workers they can be grateful for any down time that you may need to afford them as they aren’t usually needing or wanting fulltime all the time work.

Your Team will need to be much bigger and diverse if you are planning to go further with your restoration services and do reconstruction work. However it doesn’t have to be as you can use sub-contractors for many aspects of the construction process. But just like using temporary labor for cleaning you will need to be sure and keep control of your job so that you can ensure the quality and timelines are kept up with. Having 2 to 5 carpenter/emergency type technicians is average.

It is also very important that especially when you are first hiring your Team and growing your business that you hire Team members that can be versatile and cross trained. For instance you may have an Emergency Specialist that is also a Cleaning Specialist. Or you might have a Carpenter that is also an Emergency Specialist. Just be careful that you don’t frustrate your Team by pulling them back and forth between too many types of jobs so they feel like a yo-yo. That is why you need to think about this aspect when you are interviewing potential new Team members and look at their personalities and what type of environments do they operate well in.

You may be going from a one person show to having a Team. So there will be many things for you to be thinking about and preparing for. So there are several administrative house keeping things that I want you to be thinking about.

For instance the additional accounting needed. There are federal regulation pertaining to employer criteria and there may be some at your state level as well. There are a couple of ways you can go about handling this aspect.

You can hire a CPA or Accounting service to handle all of your payroll setup and required filings or if you are a do it yourself type entrepreneur you can set things up yourself. It really is not difficult just can be take a little time to learn in the beginning and to get things setup initially.

If you are the do it yourself person I highly recommend that you use an accounting software like Quick Books for payroll. Not only is it inexpensive for small employers but it is simple to learn and use. Contact your local state employment agency to find out rules or laws that you may need to adhere to. You should also find out if your state has any small business employment tax workshops you can attend. They are generally free of charge and can be very informative about your state requirements.

On a federal level you will need to set up an Employer Identification Number with the IRS for. Then you need to file an SS4 form setting up your 941 account.

Make sure that you have an employee handbook and mission statement for your team to follow as well. I feel this is really important even if you only have one or two employees. You can write your own employee handbook quite easily in a Word document. It doesn’t have to be a ton of pages just write down some basic guidelines for your team to follow in regards to hygiene, safety sexual harassment and conduct on the clock. It’s important to start off on the right foot by letting your Team know what you expect of them. And this will give you a starting point that you can expand on it as your Team grows.

Having very clear and written down job descriptions is also very important to have from the get go. Again this doesn’t have to be a huge document but you need a starting place for your new Team members to be able to have a clear picture of what they need to be doing in their job performing.

Having these few simple guide lines setup i.e.: employee handbook and job descriptions will help you hire the right people for the job.

Here is an excerpt from my Firehouse Manual that talks about hiring your Team and getting started on the right foot.

• Do Background Checks: If you are on a preferred program list they require that you do these checks on every single employee before hiring them. If a potential employee has any felonies, assaults, thefts or sexual assaults on their record you are not supposed to hire them. If you have someone on your staff with this kind of record you can actually be removed from their program permanently. We follow these rules in our company across the board because it’s just a good practice.

• Hire Only A+ players: We refuse to work with anybody except the best people on the planet. If you keep your expectations high they will apply! Do multiple interviews and always check references. But most importantly ask them about their goals. Do they even have any? What do they enjoy doing for work? Try to connect with them on a level that allows you to see a little of who they really are and you will see very quickly if they are a right fit for your company. Be frank and open about you expectations and requirements of the position they are applying for.

• Have Uniforms: Clean and Professional every single day! Project the image your company wants your client to see.

• Training and Your Dream Team: Creating a dream team is not impossible. In fact many companies have theirs already in place. First you need to decide what you dream team would look like. And you need to be willing to invest in it. The return is far greater than you can imagine.

Weekly and Daily Meetings: Communication is the biggest complaint we hear from staff and the easiest thing to do. It takes consistency and a can do attitude. Meetings where you and your team get together on a regular basis and communicate about the little things can make all of the big things work better.

Dream Manager Program: Do you have a dream? Do the people you work with or your team have dreams? I am sure they do even if they don’t know it. Part of building a great team is connecting with each other and finding out what is most important to them. What are their aspirations? Their Dreams… Tony and Mary Miller created a program called The Dream Manager that can help you help those you work with come to life and really start living full on again. It’s a great program.

I hope you have found this information helpful on getting you on the road to hiring your first employee no matter what type of business you are starting up.

This past week I attended the CAPS (Canadian Association of Professional Speakers) Unconventional Convention in Montreal – and it delivered many ‘unconventional’ ideas and approaches that can be applied to business… and to life.

If you or your business is looking to roar in to the new year with new focus and new strength, Ian Thomas, an animal tracker and business strategist from South Africa, has a great model for you. Thomas talks about “The Power of the Pride” and how businesses can build teams that thrive by observing the most powerful group in the jungle – a pride of lions.

Close up of a lion In the African bush and the business jungle, everyone loves the idea of eating their competitors.

Powerful teams are built by powerful individuals.

Lions choose to hunt together. Prides work because everyone has a “specialty” and knows what they’re superb at. Lionesses do most or all of the hunting because they’re fast, camouflaged and designed to hunt; males must protect the lionesses and hold the territory.

What are you superb at?

Thomas says when he asks business people that question, most of them panic. Very few are prepared to state it on paper. Some just don’t know their strengths, and others are unclear.

Does every team member know and understand the final goal?

If you are hunting big game, you must all focus on the same target.

Lions know what the goal is and focus on one goal. If a lioness is going to take down and 750-kilogram bull buffalo, every lion on the team must be there to support her. If even one or two lions are unclear and uncommitted the result can be failure… death or starvation.

In his work with business teams, Thomas says, on average, 40% of people do not write down the same goal. In other words, out of every 10, four people are doing something else. And in some cases, Thomas has seen whole teams that don’t know what they are trying to do.

In the animal kingdom – and business world – trust is essential.

The only reason a lioness is prepared to attack, and risk injury in hunting a huge target is because she knows the other six are coming in hard and fast to back her up, says Thomas. She has 100% trust her team is coming to help her.

Trust is huge, and if breached can destroy individuals… and the entire pride.

Out in the jungle, you have to trust each other, look after each other, and get over your ego or any self-serving attitude.

Trust is also the least understood. Trust is about knowing that if the team is focused, clear and each superb at her job, the team will ‘make the kill’… everyone will eat, everyone will be healthy, and it will allow everyone to get more of what they want.

As soon as you do not buy into that goal, you become untrustworthy. And if team members don’t even know what the goal is, you’ve got no chance.

In the business jungle trust is equally critical.

You must know who your customers are, know exactly what they want from you, and be able to deliver the goods. And in joint ventures, partners must be confident in the other person’s ability.

Conflict or change can be healthy when it allows you to create powerful individuals who can lead a trustworthy team. Many of us fear the potential in someone else’s abilities. However, if we can learn to work with people’s strengths, and not against them, the results are magnificent.

The more powerful your team, the stronger you are to ensure a great future.

Lionesses know the importance of nurturing, protecting and teaching the cubs. They need these potential sprinters to protect the future strength of the pride.

The male lion king also knows his place on the team. He is a great tactical fighter but without his lionesses hunting for him, he is weak, hungry and, ultimately, dead. He secures the territory for the lionesses to hunt and raise strong cubs. The lion king and lionesses are a team with different skills but they back each other up… 100%.

Imagine if you could create that kind of trust and respect in your business, family or relationships!

To create this kind of power – in business, at home or in life – act like a lion pride:

1) Build strength in the individuals.

2) Focus clearly on what you are trying to do – as an individual, family or team.

3) Look to one another for communication and support.

4) Develop trust by knowing your goal, buying into it and delivering on it. If you are unable or unwilling to deliver, say so.

5) Be competent. Know your strengths.

6) Back one another up!

Here’s to a prosperous new year of building stronger teams and businesses, with worthy targets.

What makes a team effective? What factors dictate its effectiveness? How do you ensure the effectiveness of teams? These are just a few of the questions that this article aims to address. My desire is to see more teams solid and united in their vision and mission. I want to see better team leaders and team players. I want to see more teams intermingling with other teams, accomplishing more for the glory of God.

Before I discuss the factors that make teams effective, it is good to look first at hindrances and oppositions that we are facing in today’s times — issues that destroy teams or make them ineffective.

Our enemy’s tactic is always “to divide…and conquer”. This means that he will seek to divide first, and when the team is divided, then he can attack and defeat them. He knows that there is power in a “team”… that two are better than one… that unity makes a team stronger. So, he attacks the unity of the team first. He sows seeds of envy, competition, and discord. He will form cliques within the team and eventually these cliques will be opposing other cliques until the whole team collapses.

There are several factors that break or divide a team. These are: spirit of envy and jealousy, differences of opinions, self-promotion or pride, lack of respect for leadership, and lack of motivation. There are other factors, but I want to focus on these most pressing ones.

All these factors have to be taken into consideration before a team is even built. If you are thinking of building your team, be sure that all these areas are covered before you even start recruiting members. If you lay the foundation right, chances are you will have a solid team, regardless of what your team goes through. Let us now go back to the abovementioned factors that break a team and let me dissect it further by showing you the root causes of each of these and what you should do to prevent it.

Spirit of Envy and Jealousy

These two spirits are so closely related but distinct from each other. Envy refers to wanting what someone has such as power, achievement, or certain characteristics which that person does not have. Jealousy, according to Wikipedia, is the fear of losing something that one possesses to another person. Additionally, envy normally involves two people while jealousy typically involves three people.

Both envy and jealousy stem from a person’s insecurity and lack of self-esteem. Let me show you a perfect scenario here which is something very familiar to me because I have experienced it so many times…

Maria is the head of a team and Lana is one of her team members. Maria sees so much potential in Lana and so she spends a lot of time motivating her and even giving her tasks that will harness her skills. Lana, on the other hand, feels so motivated. The more Maria pushes her to be better, the more she looks up to Maria and the more she wants to be like her. Lana now starts comparing herself to Maria. She has always wanted to be someone like her but her insecurities and fears have always blocked her. Maria’s constant prodding and encouragement actually highlights Lana’s fears which actually triggers her envy.

In building a team, it is important to know your team members’ fears and insecurities. Do this at the onset, during the recruitment and selection process. Find out what their dreams, goals, and visions are and how far they are in relation to these. Find out what they believe are their hindrances towards the achievement of their visions.

Though it is your primary role as a leader to motivate and encourage your people, don’t overdo it. Don’t let your people look up to you; let them look up to God.

Differences of Opinions

It is good to have differences of opinions for as long as it is not contradictory to the vision, mission, and core values of the group. It is for this reason why any team needs a vision-mission statement, as well as core values. This should serve as the bedrock of the team. Every team member should know about these.

With all these in place, and completely understood, any differences of opinions can be brought back to the main vision-mission of the team and what it believes in and stands for.

Self-Promotion or Pride

Pride is the sin that brought Lucifer’s downfall. This sin is our flesh’s second nature and should be bridled at all times. Every member of the team, including the leader herself, is in that team not for herself but for others in the team. Philippians 2:4 says that each of us should look not only to our own interests, but also of the interests of others.

At the onset of the team formation, the team leader should make this ‘team concept’ clear to everyone. It will also be good to give each one a specific leadership role. When you, as a leader, sense pride in any of your people, expose it right away and cut it off from there.

Lack of Respect for Leadership

During the recruitment and selection phase, it is essential to do a background check in this area. Find out how the person’s relationship was with her former leader(s) and if she left in peace. If there is a pattern of rebellion against the leader, then chances are she will do the same to you.

Make it clear from the beginning that if anyone in the team has some concerns about your leadership, then they should discuss it with you. Explain to them the order that God has set — that you were placed as their leader for that season. Make them understand that you are the main steward of the vision of the team and that it is God and not you who put you there in leadership.

Lack of Motivation

People can get restless when they are de-motivated. And when restlessness sets in, so many other issues attach themselves to it such as gossip, complaining & murmuring, and discontent.

As a team leader, it is your role to always keep your team fresh. Break the monotony of things every now and then. Be ready with surprises.

Remember, you can’t motivate people in the same way because each one has a different drive and passion. Find out what each one’s passion is: what makes her tick… what makes her heart jump… what her interests are… and from here, give her a task and responsibility that is tailor-fit to who she is and her own uniqueness, the way God designed her.

As I’ve mentioned earlier, building effective teams start before the team is even there. From here it will be easier to maintain its effectiveness.
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