Business Keys To Success-Building A Team

Building a team is one of the quickest paths to business success.  Whether you are running a small business, starting your own business or in a corporate environment the value of having a good team is critical to any success.

Yet, very often in my business coaching practice, whether it be with self-employed business owners, entrepreneurs, solo professionals or corporate executives I have observed that their ability to move forward is dependent on the team and type of team they have put in place.

A Good Team Starts With Trust

Interestingly, almost any one can put a team together.  Whether you are running a small business, starting your own business or employed in the corporate environment having or being part of a good team is a positive game changer.

But to put a team together where the members trust each other is critical to moving forward.  If you can’t trust your team or teammates to get something done then everything bogs down.

A team in a way is like a convoy in time of war.  It only moves as fast as it’s slowest link.  Having trust allows us to get the heart of challenges quickly, resolve them and move on.

A Good Team Will Disagree 

Once there is trust then there can be disagreement.  When everyone is in agreement and supporting the mission then the tactics to accomplish the mission can be discussed openly.  Also, the overall strategy in which the tactics are employed can be discussed and altered.

It is important for the team leader to allow this disagreement.  When team members feel that they have truly been heard, then when the decision is made they are much more likely to support it.  Disagreement is a means of giving your team ownership in the process.

 A Good Team Will Have Commitment and Accountability 

As team members take ownership they will have a greater commitment and a desire to be held accountable for results.  Without commitment and accountability it is hard to have the good morale and positive momentum that teams need to move forward.

Team members who are truly committed also are willing to be held accountable.  They want credit for helping the team achieve its goal.

A Good Team Will Pay Attention To Results

You may say that this would go without saying.  Unfortunately if you don’t have trust, the ability to openly disagree, commitment and accountability then most teams don’t want to look at the results.  And the reason is obvious.  The results are not good.

Paying attention to results ties everyone on the team together.  But without trust, the ability to voice opinions, commitment and accountability there is no sense of unity and no desire to focus on results.

Build your team to position yourself for the success you desire.  When you move from “I” to “Let’s” you are building a team and opening up the possibility for great things to happen.

From The Business Coaching Chronicles-A Little Extra Change

Most people are resistant to change.  They desire improvement but they resist changing their everyday routine.  That’s a problem because, as leadership expert Max DePree says, “We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are.”  To sharpen your talent through practice, you need to do more than just be open to change.  You need to pursue change—and you need to do it a little bit more than other achievers.

Change-Understand Why You Are Changing

In my personal business coaching practice I had a client, for a very short period of time,  who was in the financial services business.  He had just purchased another very successful practice.  He brought me on to collaborate with him and to build the future he envisioned when he purchased the business.

Every person or entity that purchases a business does not purchase it for what it is doing today.  What it is doing today dictates in large part the terms of purchase.  Businesses are purchased because of the better future the buyer or buyers feel that it will bring.  And, once purchased they want to make changes to start molding the business into helping them have the future they desire.

Unfortunately, many times in their eagerness to put their immediate imprint on a business they make changes that are not good.  This is what happened to my client.

Change For The Worse–Process 

In a period of a year, he managed to take a very profitable business and turn it around to where it was very unprofitable.  How did he do it?  Running a small business is a lot of work but when you can’t get out of your own way it becomes overwhelming.

The first thing he changed were some of the core processes without consulting the client base.  Why?  He wanted to make it more convenient for him.  He started with a strong client base of 40 clients.  A year after his changes he had 10 clients.

Change for the Worse—People 

He also managed to alienate every employee.  How did he do this?  As a self-employed business owner coming from the corporate world he believed that the business was all about him.  For years he had to adhere to what’s right instead of who’s right.  But now that he was a business owner it was all about who’s right.

Employee turnover was great and attitudes fell and in the process so did customer satisfaction.

Change for the Worse—Brand

Now that the process and people were headed in a negative direction the company brand which had been extremely positive in the area now became a negative.  The leads for new clients that used to roll in completely dried up.

The business is now gone.  It was sad to watch something that was so good and vibrant die.  And it all happened because of a little bit of change in many areas.  And a little bit of change without understanding why make the change, brought one large failure.

From The Business Coaching Chronicles Confrontation Is A Good Thing

One of the things most self-employed businessowners, entrepreneurs and solo professionals dislike is confrontation.  What I have seen time and again in my personal business coaching practice is that avoiding confrontation very often causes problems to fester, grow bigger and explode.

Confrontation The Wrong Way

I had a client with seven employees.  One employee was the manager over the others.  She was confrontational with everyone, including the owners who were in a partnership.  But, no one confronted her.  When confrontation is one way it really is a form of bullying.

This business, which had been thriving before her arrival, started to slowly head in the wrong direction.  Employee morale was bad.  The owners saw what was happening but refused to stand up to her.  Her bullying and confrontational tactics were about her power, not an effort to improve the business.

Confrontation The Right Way

Confrontation, when used to advance ideas or improvements is good.  In fact, you cannot have improvement without questions that confront the status quo.  But, when confrontation is purely about personal control it is bad for all concerned, including the person who initiates it.

Small business success, let alone personal success cannot be achieved without others.  Confrontation the right way is about “What’s right” not “Who’s Right.”  When it is about “Who’s right” it is impossible to build a team and to accomplish goals over the long-term.

No matter how much online training, corporate training, business training, business courses or business skills training you have had confrontation of the wrong type is a difficult challenge.

Confrontation-The Solution

Too often, people let other people run over them because they do not want confrontation.  All this does is encourage the person who is doing the confronting or bullying to do it more.  Starting your own business or running a small business has enough challenges but I can assure you as a personal business coach you must have the right mindset about confrontation.

It is hard to accept but confrontation can be a good thing.  Confrontation is about clarity.  If you think about it, clarity is hard to come by without opposing points of view on complicated and sometimes even simple matters.

Once the business owners I was collaborating with understood that they needed clarity and that confrontation was the means to achieve it they took action.  The bullying employee was given a performance review with specific times and incidents where her behavior was not appropriate.

Interestingly, her behavior got worse after the review.  Then we knew it was not about her doing a good job but about her having power.  But there was a dividend from the confrontation between the owners and the employee.

The other employees saw that the owners were willing to stand up to her.  As a result, they started coming forward one by one and telling the owners what was really going on with the business and how she was not doing her job.  What they related happened to be true.

The employees confronted the owners and this started the process of bringing clarity.  Things became very clear to the point where the owners fired the employee.  With this one employee gone turnover decreased over the next year by 70%.  Customer satisfaction surveys were increasingly positive.  And the best part, the business was a happy place and more profitable.

The next time you are thinking of avoiding confrontation remember this.  Confrontation, more often than not is your pathway to clarity and a better future.

Author bio: More detailed information can be found at www.thehoustonbusinesscoach.com Created by Scott Steve. The definitive guide to a better business and a better you for entrepreneurs, solo professionals and self-employed individuals striving to reach the top and who are serious about their success. 

The Business Coaching Chronicles Who Is Running Your Business

Who is running your business?  For this one particular client, a self-employed business owner, the answer or the truth was a revelation.  As a personal business coach I have collaborated with and supported business owners, executives and managers in various stages of business and personal growth.

The business in this story was entering its third year.  It had grown steadily and developed a good reputation in the design and construction areas.  The business owner had added employees and believed he was on his way to future small business growth and success.

When I entered the picture I could see the positives.  But there were some major concerns.  Running your business is similar to painting a picture.  As the picture changes you are going to have to use different brush strokes, colors, shading, etc.

Running Your Business—Keep The Brush In Your Hand!

My self-employed business owner client had hired the best people.  He was proud of that and rightfully so.  But in running your business, as the business owner, entrepreneur or solo professional, you must keep the paint brush in your hand.

He was making a critical mistake that many business owners make.  He had become busy to the point where he trusted that things were getting done.  He trusted his employees but he increasingly found that things were falling through the cracks.

And, they were starting to design a business around their wants and needs and not his.  They had the brush in their hand and he didn’t like what he was seeing.

Running Your Business—Take The Brush Back!

He wanted to take the brush back but he didn’t know where to start.  Running your business is supposed to mean that you have control.  But without good systems, that are written, it is hard to hold people accountable.  If you can’t hold your employees accountable through systems and processes then ultimately they will run the business and you, the self-employed business owner.

Our first step to taking the brush back was to create job descriptions.  With the descriptions came processes and accountability.  The next part was the most difficult.  The business owner had to retrain himself in how he did business.  He had to monitor the process and hold his employees accountable.

When you are used to winging it this is a huge challenge.  Also, his employees didn’t like the fact that the business was now being run first and foremost for the clients, not them.  A couple of them quit.

Running Your Business—You Paint The Picture

Now my client took the brush back.  He had systems in place.  He started to understand that running your business is based on process.  And that process determines outcome.  His business started to improve and experience new growth.  And here’s the key point.  It was experiencing growth that it could handle.

Whether it is online training, business training, business courses or business skills training there is no substitute for the actual experience of running your business.  I strongly encourage my clients to be involved in the forms of education listed above plus anything else that can accelerate the process of their successful performance.

Why?  Education and training gives you perspective and awareness of the pitfalls you may encounter in running your business.  Running your business is a continuing self development course.

Focus on process.  Keep the brush in your hand and your will enjoy running your business.

From The Business Coaching Chronicles: The Power Of Momentum

The momentum was gone and so was the fun for one of my personal business coaching clients.  As he looked up from his desk he sighed and said, “This is no fun any more.”

I have encountered this scenario numerous times in my business coaching practice and it even happened to me in the businesses I owned.  For the self-employed business owner, entrepreneur or solo professional one of the worst feelings is a loss of momentum.  Why?

Momentum Determines Perspective 

When things are going well your steps are lighter, the day is brighter and the problems you have a challenges that can be overcome.  You have positive, forward momentum.  Obviously, there can be negative momentum but the focus in this article is on the positive.

When your momentum is positive your perspective of the present and the future is good.  You believe that things will continue to get better over time.  As a self-employed business owner running a small business you feel you are on a good track.

When you feel you are on a good track you have positive momentum.  You have a healthy perspective that sees “what can be” and the means to make it happen.  When our momentum ceases to be forward and positive we start to feel stuck or overwhelmed.

When we are in this position, very often our activity diminishes.  When our activity diminishes, so do our results.  And when our results diminish our self-esteem and our can do attitude erodes.

Regaining Momentum 

As was the case with my client, his activity had diminished and so had his results.  The employee morale in his 5 person company was not good.  People did their jobs…..kind of.  There was little enthusiasm.

This loss of enthusiasm was felt by his customers.  Some of his long time customers would remark to him that he didn’t seem happy.  This bothered him greatly.

He had been in business 20 years and built a good business but the joy and enthusiasm was gone.  He saw all his business days looking the same.  Today was going to be like yesterday.  Tomorrow was going to be like today.  He knew he had to regain his momentum but how to do it?

                   Your Vision Of The Future Creates Your Momentum 

If you think about it, everything must be finished before it can be started.  Without an exciting vision of the future the present becomes a tedious slog through the mud.  When you get to the end of the day you say, “Whew, I made it through another day.”  Then your energy is zapped even further when you realize that tomorrow is going to be the same.

For my client we collaborated to create a vision of the future that was exciting to him.  Once we created the future, which included upgrading parts of the business and positioning it to be sold, then the present became meaningful.

Every day was now a step forward to attaining the future he desired.  This took several months.  But the excitement and the momentum returned.  His business became better externally and internally.

Positive momentum was carrying him forward.  If you feel your momentum is lost and the present is a slog through the mud, go to work on your vision of the future.  Go to work on yourself.  After all, your world will get no bigger than your thinking.

And, when the future is finished in your mind, then what you need to do in the present becomes absolutely clear.  When things are clear you have cleared the pathway for momentum to carry you to the business and life you desire.  Things become fun again.

Capture the future in your mind and you will build momentum.