In my article titled, “Who To Hire For A Winning Business Team”, I handled the different persons that you need in your business team in order to witness tremendous success. In this post, I try to paint the picture of the kind of environment that you need to create around your business that will enable your team, perform at their maximum and bring you the desired results.
Have you ever worked somewhere and every day you wake in the morning, you are excited to be at work and willing to do your best? An environment where you feel more attached to than even to your home. You love it when it is Monday and hate it when the working week comes to an end. I have worked in such a place and the feeling is always enhancing and exciting. What do you think it takes to make your business environment that way? Let’s look at some tips.
1. Focus On The Team As They Focus On The Business
If you are the manager of the business, pay so much attention on the team and their welfare, while you push them to pay much attention on the business. When as the manager you are very keen on the welfare of your team, you will imprint the business on the heart of each team member and they will want to give their best for it to succeed.
Don’t be too busy to the extent that you lose touch on the lives of your business team members. Be very keen to the looks and impressions on the faces of your team members and be able to notice dissatisfaction in them, whenever they are not happy. Prop into their lives always.
Many managers easily get too busy with business that they don’t even notice when the team members are hurting. Get out of your office and meet with the people. Let your presence be well felt each time you are around, and let it bring a sense of security and not fear, around the business place.
2. Cultivate Love And Acceptance In The Environment
In your team, you will have persons who naturally want to stay isolated. Sometimes it is because they feel inferior while other times, it could be the opposite. In some cases still, it is just that the environment is not enabling enough and so some persons don’t feel belonging; or they could be dealing with some difficult moments of their lives. Whatever the case, a way to handle this is to fill the environment with love.
Make everyone feel important. Make the environment, one where everyone is respected and honored. Let no one feel like a stranger. This is most important during meetings where everyone has to share his opinion on things. Let everyone's opinion be heard and respected.
Call every member privately to find out how he finds his work and also to know how he feels in the environment; have times to bring together the team and talk about things that don’t concern the business; talk to them a lot about each person’s importance to the team; and so on. Have a social committee that handles social issues and issues that concern the welfare of the team members.
3. Instill Some Fun In The Environment
Any business place which is always formal will only succeed to create an unfriendly environment where people come to work just to defend their salaries. As such, you can hardly see anyone passionate about the business, or willing to devote more time than required, to see the business grow.
When you instill some amount of fun on the business place, you build an unseen unbreakable bond between the people and the business and this makes them feel so attached to the business such that they tend to own it.
Celebrate every success of the business, together with your team, even if it is just by popping of a bottle of Champagne. Celebrate birthdays and other anniversaries and important events in the lives of your team members; from time to time, take the team out of the environment and distract them with some fun; make surprise awards for the best team members; join your team to talk sports, politics, fashion, family life issues, movie industry happenings, etc.
Look for opportunities to celebrate public holidays and events, together with your team and their families. Share gifts on such days, to your team members and children. However don’t let fun take more time than necessary, out of your business.
4. Build An Environment Of Trust
One big way of getting the best out of people is by showing them how much you trust them. When people feel trusted, they want to keep the trust and never want to lose it. When they feel they are not trusted to do the right thing, they will not mind doing the wrong thing since it will not change the feeling you have about them.
Verbalize your trust to your workers. From time to time, tell individuals, how much you trust them. Entrust little responsibilities into the hands of team members and trust them to meet up with their responsibilities, until they prove otherwise.
Give your workers many opportunities to prove that they don’t have to be trusted, before you withdraw your trust. Trust them when they speak to you about anything. Trust them to do the right thing even when you are absent. All these will make them feel as part of the business and they won’t want to lose this feeling.
5. Settle Disputes Early
No matter the amount of love that exists, there will always be moments when team members will have conflicts. This is normal. However, subtle conflicts could damage the relationship at the business place and this will in turn affect the business.
As the leader of the business team, you need to understand very well, who each member is, and be able to settle disputes early enough. Don’t allow wounds to last too long. Call conflicting members and let them see why it is important to get along again. Teach your team about the importance of relationships in one’s life.
Destroy any poisonous tendencies on the business place such as gossiping, back-stabbing, hatred, fighting, envy, etc. by frowning seriously at them. If necessary, punish defaulters.
6. Destroy The “Owner” Syndrome
The “owner” syndrome is a syndrome that many owners/managers suffer from, whereby they come to the business environment feeling so superior and go about demanding recognition from their workers. They nag about not being given the respect they deserve as the boss and are always on the throats of their team members trying to stuff out respect and honor.
As the owner/manager of the business, the tendency is to want to be imposing on the team members always. You can succeed to get them do things when you do this, but you will also succeed to make them eye-servants and with this, you can’t achieve the kind of passionate commitment you want to get from them.
Successful businesses are not usually built around a personality. Don’t build your business around you. Build it around everyone who has a role to play on the business. Make everyone feel like the owner of the business. What you want is the success of the business and the money that enters your pocket, and not to be noticed by everyone who comes around.
7. Make The Physical Environment Conducive & Attractive
The physical business environment cannot be left out. When the environment is not conducive, the business will be affected because those working there will not be comfortable. We all love good places. When places are looking attractive, they naturally pull people towards them.
Make the physical environment where your business is, look beautiful attractive and modern. Ensure that there is enough work space for the people working on the business; get comfortable seats for those who have to sit down for most of their work time; paint the premises with suitable color paint; use air-conditioners if you can afford them; make sure the business hall is always neat; and so on.
If you have some of your staff who are good at beautifying places, this could be an added responsibility to them and they will be pleased to do it, since they will have an opportunity to make a visible impact on the business.
With these, I am sure that your business environment is set and you can begin to harvest the success that you desire to see. Remember that your goal is to create a winning business team and this is just one of the aspects. I hope you have read my posts titled, “How To Build A Winning Business Team” and “Who To Hire For A Winning Business Team”, in order to get the complete package.
I will be glad to see your comments below.
By Kadzem Claude
Thanks Kadzem. This post is comprehensive enough. I have learned something from it. Keep it up
ReplyDeleteYou are welcomed Ifi. It is always great to know that you are there. Thanks for commenting.
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