Team Building & Managing a team: Some Thoughts!

As an organisation you will grow only if you are ready to build a team properly. This is a time taking activity because you can’t build a strong and excellent team overnight. It can take up to 3 years to develop such a team. And once you reach that goal, you need to ensure that it continues to grow in the same manner.

There will be a lot of short-term pains which you need to overcome in the process but what you need to see is that are you progressing in the right direction. As the CEO of the company, you need to focus on the results and you should compare how things are progressing on a quarter-to-quarter basis.

To ensure that your vision is aligned with your employees it’s important to build a good team. But if you are for example a company with 200 employees then your vision might not get properly transmuted right down the ladder. Hence you must build teams within your organisation.

Now how do we go about building our teams?

Here are a few points which I suggest on this topic of Team Building.

1. Team of 10

I have seen multiple times that organisations create a Team Leader or a Manager and put 20-25 or more people under one person. This is a catastrophe. A person can’t manage more than 10 people at a time. And to be honest even 10 could be exasperating at times if you do not have a proper culture ingrained in your system. And this 10 member team includes the manager too because finally, the manager works for the team, not the other way round. So for starters have a manager against 9 team members. Anything more than 9 and your manager will be completely stressed and you will find the overall team performance to fall too. So get the basics right, do not have more than 9 members under one manager.

Remember, managing a team is very stressful because you not only have to look at the client deadlines or sales/revenue targets but also team dynamics which includes great camaraderie among teammates and a culture of doing and getting better each day. All these activities need time and as a manager, you need to spend time with your individual teammates too because when your team members are happy, their output will be good.

2. Gender Equality

I know it’s difficult to have a 50-50 situation but you gotta try and get it as close as possible. As said above you need to have no more than 10 members in a team inclusive of the manager. Now see to it if you can have 4-5 ladies in a particular team. If the manager is a lady then try to get 3 team members who are females. This is very vital. Teams perform better which has an equal distribution of males and females. Having one or 2 female members in a 10 member team is not good because then biases come in and we in India are yet to get over certain biases. But to make it a great performing team you should look at this diversification because there are many things like compassion, empathy, patience which are much stronger in ladies than in gents. So get this right and you will see better results.

3. 20% Juniors in each team

So now that you have a 10 member team (9 members and 1 manager), see to it that out of this group of 10 people, 2 are juniors. Now, these 2 members can be freshers straight out of college or maybe having 1 year of experience in the industry. Hiring juniors is very important for any organisation to grow in the long term. Short-term thinkers do the mistake of not hiring freshers but that’s a very wrong strategy. When you hire freshers or employees with 1 year of experience it helps the team to be more energetic. Young people have more energy and their perspective on life is a lot different than someone who has been in the industry for 7-8 years or more. When you have energy and enthusiasm, you attract positivity and when you attract positivity, positive results follow. These youngsters though may take time as far as learning new skills is concerned but if the attitude is right, he or she will learn them pretty fast.

Of course, the hiring strategy should be right. Too much time is spent in understanding how good these people are in core skills and how much they score in aptitude tests but ideally do psychometric tests and understand how good are they in their attitude. Are they energetic? Are they willing to learn new things? What is their ambition? Have there been any goals which this candidate had as a teenager and how far has he or she gone to achieve that? How is their communication skill? Do they smile and throw positive vibes during the interview?

These are the things that you need to look at while hiring freshers and when you get the right candidate with the right attitude hire them and induct them into your team. Remember skills can be taught, attitude can’t. Having a good diversification of junior team members will change your team’s dynamics, they will get more energetic because energy will transmute from these youngsters to the senior people and together they will make a lovely team and together they will work towards the team goal.

4. Leadership from anywhere

This is where your role as a CEO becomes very vital. You need to build a culture of transparency. Just having an open-door policy might not help if you do not listen to what’s being said and if you do not take action based on feedback received. I have seen in my experience that many junior employees have great leadership skills right from the initial days. These are the future stars of your team and you should have a healthy work culture so that anyone, be it of which designation can come forward and give their idea for the betterment of the company.

These people should be lauded because then they will get the required confidence to come forward more often with better ideas which would, in turn, help the team.

Just because I am not a designated leader so I will keep quiet – this attitude destroys the company’s culture because it means that the person’s heart is not in the job. If I am working in a company I should always care about the company and I should be openly suggesting what is good for the team. The designation should not stop me from giving my point of view.

When you implement such a culture in your organisation then any person within a particular team won’t be bogged down from taking any decision which he or she thinks is for the betterment of the company or the client. Finally, the heart should be in the right place and the team members should think only about client satisfaction which in turn would improve the company’s brand equity. Leadership should never be based on the designation. Spread this noise across the company that anyone is a leader as long as he or she takes care of the company’s goals. A team member should not be selfish looking only at his or her personal goals – when that happens the team will fail and subsequently the company will fail.

5. Captain and Vice-captain

In my first point, I discussed having one manager for every 10 member team. I also discussed why more than 10 would disturb the equilibrium. Here I am adding another point and that is having an Assistant Manager within the team. This person will not only be the supervisor on days the manager is off but will also help the junior team members. As you remember we discussed having at least 2 junior members in each team and these junior members would need good handholding and training in the initial days. The manager is already busy with a lot of other activities with the rest of the team so here the Assistant Manager works as a guide to these new team members. The Assistant Manager whom I have christened as the vice-captain not only works as part of the team just like a senior member of the team but this additional responsibility of helping the juniors works as an internship for his or her future roles when he or she get promoted to being a full-fledged manager. So you can say it will work as testing waters for future managers.

6. Knowledge & Mistakes

As a team one should build a culture of sharing knowledge. This is very vital for a company to grow. When a team member gains some new knowledge that helps in solving a critical problem, it’s very important that the knowledge is shared so that in the future if someone else faces a similar problem he or she will know what has to be done. This also makes the team member happy because he or she gets the required accolades in front of colleagues which works as a boost for them and they will be further motivated to do better.

Mistakes happen. We are humans and mistakes can happen but one should build a culture of learning from mistakes. When you do not show anger when a mistake happens but in that place you sit with that person and make her understand the mistake and try to understand why the mistake was triggered, then your team member will feel far better and will try and see to it that such future mistakes don’t happen. Secondly, owning up to mistakes starts right from the top. If you do a mistake, it’s best that as a manager you own it up in front of your team. This will ensure that your team members will give more respect to you and they will be able to overcome their fear of hiding or being defensive when doing any mistakes. Accepting mistakes is very tough to do but when you do that, you will realise that it’s a great relief pill. Never be defensive when you are pointed to a mistake. Never give excuses. Own up because then only you will learn and get better.

7. Guidelines

Each company has its own processes based on which the company runs. But what’s very vital is to let your team members know that any process is a guideline and team members can customise based on the situation. We are humans, not horses so adapt to situations and take decisions based on what is best for the organisation. Do not treat processes like “Laxman Rekha” that can’t be breached – rather make it like ‘Traffic Yellow Lines” which can be breached once in a while if the situation demands so but only if it makes a difference to the client satisfaction. Client satisfaction improves brand equity so this is something all team members should be made aware of.

Too many times I have seen that people follow processes without thinking that it might harm a client’s goal. Sit back and think if that’s the case and make changes based on the situation. As said earlier this depends a lot on company transparency. If you allow a culture where if a process is breached she will get negative points then that person will not think about the client and will rather think about the process. In the meanwhile, because of this, the client will suffer and your company’s brand image will suffer. So be very careful when you roll out any process because what you say when you roll out the process is how your process will be perceived by the team members. Keep an open frame of mind and always inform the teams that the processes are being rolled out to help us work in a more cohesive manner which in turn would help our clients to be served better. Customer satisfaction is what we are all aiming for so when you clear the air that it’s an important goal to achieve the team members will understand and when you walk the talk people will realise that they can follow the guidelines without being too frightened about it.

8. Targets

We are in business and business means selling something for a profit. When there is no profit then there is no business because after a while the business will close down because there won’t be any money to run the show. Hence, it’s very important to have short-term and long-term targets. Quite clearly in my experience, I have found that other than the managers most do not feel comfortable working on targets. This amazes me a bit because finally each one of us has some targets (goals) in our lives and we all are walking towards them. So when you are working in a business why will you shy away from it?

I understand it’s because of communication. Company management does not transparently share all the company data with their employees. This culture of hiding things then gets seeped into the team and after a few years, small matters also start to get hidden. I think management should be open and they should openly discuss their financials with the team members. This procedure helps the team members feel good because then they feel cared for. Just like money management should be taught at home from a young age, similarly, a company’s finances should be discussed openly with your teammates. This makes the employees feel more important and then you do not need to give them the target for the next quarter or the next year – you will find your team members coming back to you with the numbers themselves.

Of course, production people might not give you the sales targets but they can always inform you that they will finish this project within this time and get it delivered and that’s more than enough because when the product gets delivered, the customer is happy and the company gets paid. This is the positive effect of being transparent is. Rather than hiding stuff, open up, and then you do not need to give the targets, the team members themselves will create their own targets which when added together will help the company reach its goals.

9. Celebrate wins

Generally, all companies celebrate once or twice a year on some grand occasions. But, here I want the teams to celebrate small wins. Supposedly a team has completed a project much ahead of the deadline, allow the manager to have a budget every quarter which he or she can use to celebrate the occasion. Here the manager’s reporting head should also join the celebrations. We are all humans and we are social animals. When we see the boss’s boss celebrating with you, you feel elated and you get super motivated the next day. When you celebrate do not talk about business, talk more about family, friendships, and joyfulness. That’s what will motivate the team further. People forget to celebrate small wins thinking that too many celebrations are bad for health. Actually, it’s not. When you celebrate, you enjoy, you laugh, you improve camaraderie and that helps in attaining your future goals. Your employees’ should believe that you care, your team members should believe that their manager cares and when you celebrate small wins and do that consistently, they know that you are loved and respected in this place and their loyalty improves. When they treat the company as their own company, you need not push for results because the team members will push each other to get the results.

Finally, the company will win.

So these are my points which I think helps in building a great team. Do you think I have missed any? Do you think it’s something very radical – any of the points? Do you think it’s already happening in every company?

Do share your thoughts and views because when all companies start following this, the world will be a better place to work at. Let’s remove toxic culture from the companies. Let everyone thrive. Let all companies thrive. Let India thrive and Let the world thrive.

Till we meet again, Au Revoir!

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