Build the Best Team Ever with These Simple Steps

The goal of every leader should be to build a self-sufficient team that can excel without your direct supervision. You want to be a meta-director, a visionary and leave the tasks to the people you hired to complete them.

That’s the goal. It’s not easy, and it can be time-consuming, but if you put in the time and effort, it will yield incredible results. One of the best to consider - scale. Your business cannot grow healthily if you can’t properly scale. This requires technicians that can become leaders and leaders that can become teachers. Not every employee can or will make that transition. But NONE of them will if you don’t get out of their way.

So, how do you hire people who best reflect your vision and values as they do their jobs? How can you be reasonably certain they demonstrate the skill, service and ethic you expect if you are not there watching over them like a whip master hovering over galley slaves? Simple—hire for culture, not skillset.

Notice I didn’t suggest hiring people without the right skillsets. That would be terrible advice. Instead, this is about priorities. You need to hire people who have the skills as well as the personality, priorities, and perspective that best fits your business culture.

Sometimes that’s called having the right people on the bus (in the right seats), but you don’t need any seminar-ready clichés. You just need to hire the people who promote your business culture while making your business run. If they can’t do both, find someone who can – sooner, rather than later. Let’s talk about that for a minute. Look, I realize it’s tough to fire someone who’s legitimately trying to get it done. But, I’ll be blunt. The sooner you part ways with someone who doesn’t fit, the better it will be for both of you, really. They can move on to something that works better for them, ending daily frustration, and you can find someone you don’t have to baby, coddle or follow around cleaning up their messes.

Get inside your team’s individual and collective head. Sometimes, the sum of the parts isn’t working, even when all the parts are in the right place. In that situation, do your best to assess the dynamic that’s not working and adjust as needed. Sometimes you just need to shuffle some things. Sometimes you need to squash some internal friction. Sometimes you just need donut Mondays and casual Fridays. Figure it out, whatever it is, and put it to rest.

Finally, you need people on your team who are motivated for the right reasons. They don’t all have to be the same reason, but you need to understand – a person’s motivations define them, sooner rather than later. Don’t let that catch you by surprise.

Gennady Barsky is a real estate mogul from NYC.