The best bit about being in business is
that sometimes you get to be part of a outstanding, stable and
perfectly-balanced team. If you’re really lucky, you get to help make the team even
better!
Team is everything and team always comes
before client. It’s not that we don’t value our clients immensely - of course
we do - but without a great team in place to make clients feel good and deliver
great results, there is no business.
That’s something that features strongly in
a brilliant book I’ve just read by Danny Meyer called ‘Setting the Table’.
As Danny points out, the starting point of
a great team is a group of people who choose to work for a business because of
what it stands for as much as, or even more than what salary and benefits it
offers. The thing to do, he says, is view all employees as volunteers and
recognise that anyone who is qualified for a job in our company is also
qualified for similar roles in other agencies. It’s up to us to provide solid
reasons for our employees to want to work for us over and above their pay.
It’s normal human behaviour for people to
take precisely as much interest in you as they believe you’re taking in them.
There is no stronger way of building relationships than by taking a genuine
interest in other human beings and allowing them to share their stories and
feelings.
When the team is having fun, when it’s
focused, feeling engaged and valued, the chances are the team will win,
provided of course that we’re all very clear about what we’re selling and to
whom. The key here is to be the best that you can be within a reasonably tight
product focus.
Danny Meyer is spot on when he asserts that
the only way a company can grow, stay true to its soul and remain consistently
successful is if it can attract, hire and keep great people. It’s that simple,
and that difficult.
We all need people with an innate emotional
skill – people who can’t help themselves wanting to make people to feel good
and who radiate warmth, kindness and positivity. Only then do you start looking
for the potential for creativity, technical excellence etc. How they relate to
other is as important as how they perform technically.
There is no thing as the perfect candidate
profile but in my view Danny’s take on this comes close:
1.
genuine kindness, thoughtfulness
and an innate optimism.
2.
curiosity, a desire to ask
questions and the passion to learn for its own sake.
3.
work ethic and the desire to do something as
well as it could possible be done.
4.
Empathy. a connection to how
others feel and an understanding of how their actions can affect how others
feel, plus an inability to stop wanting to make other happy.
5.
Self-awareness and integrity –
a natural inclination to be accountable, together with great judgment.
That’s all the stuff you just can’t teach.
There are plenty of other things I look for
at interview: I want people who are driven by the personal pursuit of being the
best they can be in their chosen field. people who have the capacity to be one
of our top three performers in their function and people who have the ability
to drive enjoyment from the pursuit of excellence.
I want to be part of a business in which respect
and trust are mutual between management and the team, where people can enjoy
working alongside each other, where they can learn from excellent colleagues
and where they know that their contribution will make every day matter.
I agree with Danny’s view of the three
hallmarks of effective leadership: providing a clear vision for your business
so that your employees know where you’re taking them; holding people accountable
for consistent standards of excellence. and communicating a well-defined set of
cultural priorities and non-negotiable values.
It’s for us to demonstrate on a consistent
basis was excellence looks like to us and to hold ourselves accountable for
conducting business in the same way as we've asked our teams to perform.
As employers we should acknowledge that our
employees can all be doing what they do anywhere they choose but they chose to
be with us and we owe them more than a salary in return.
We owe them respect, training, empowerment,
clarity, coaching, correction with dignity and the emotional and practical
encouragement to be the best that they can be.
We also need to ensure that we communicate
effectively. Communication is at the root of all business strengths and
weaknesses. Every team thirsts for someone with authority to tell them
consistently where they’re going and how they’re going to get there, as well as
how they're doing and how they could do even better. How many of us can claim
to do that effectively?
People who are not alerted in advance about
a decision that affects them may become angry and hurt. Change can only work
when people believe it's happening for them, not to them. It’s always more
important for people to feel listened to and heard than to be agreed with.
Managers have a vital role. The day-to-day
performance of a business is no more than a reflection of how motivated or
unmotivated managers make their people feel - they need developing, coaching
and educating. It’s a fact that the biggest reason from people leaving agencies
is their unhappiness with their line manager. How many good people have we all
lost needlessly?
The next time you’re hiring a manager, ask
yourself: does this person have the type of attitude and values that I want to spread
around the team? Ask them: Why us, why
here and why now?
Lots to think about in Setting the Table. A
team and customer service classic, in my view.
