It might feel like it’s too late.
You’ve run the business a certain way for a long time, and it feels like maybe your employees are stuck in a rut.
Now, even when you try to do something different, your long-time employees just role their eyes. “Just wait, it will go back to the way it was”, you hear them say.
Building your team is critical to building a business you can sell.
It can be work to overcome that history, but trying something different might be the key. Here’s some options to consider from and article at Xero.com called “How to Build a Great Small Business Team”
Explain your business vision
- Talk about the culture you want to build
- Describe your future plans
- Explain the environment of customers, prospects and partners
- Use ‘we’ instead of ‘I’ when talking about your business
Get your employees involved
- Give them tasks right away
- Challenge them
- Acknowledge their successes
- Mentor your new hires
Consider team-building exercises
- Budget carefully
- Examine all the options
- Don’t forget the simple things
Extend your team beyond your business
- Ask guest speakers to meet with your team
- Share development ideas with customers and key business partners
- Invite customers and key partners to staff meetings
- Have a team coach
Let your team know that you value them
- Show them you care
- Focus on personal growth
- Invest in your employees
- Celebrate the little victories!
- Be positive and stay positive
Understand negative team dynamics
- Unwillingness to change
- Inability to work together
- Too many individual projects
- Too much individual recognition
- Competing agendas
- Top-down talk and micro-management
