Last year alone, the UK saw over half a million new businesses start up in 2013, StartUp Britain recorded that an impressive 502,068 businesses were launched over the course of last year. This huge increase has meant that a massive 95% of the business landscape is represented by start-up businesses; this puts a huge strain on emerging companies trying to make some head way in an incredibly competitive market.
Amongst your array of business plans, your marketing strategy and your budgets you’ll also need to put a lot of time and effort into building a strong and reliable team who will support you in creating a robust foundation for your business.
But what key ingredients are needed to create a high performing, strong team needed for a new business? The simple answer – it’s a combination of key practices and firm team building.
Begin with Core Ideas
An essential part of building a strong team and a powerful business is that you and your employees must be 100% clear on what your business is all about. You must clearly define and communicate the core values of your business as well as your company’s vision, in a clean and concise way – you should be able to sum up what your business stands for in one sentence. Clear mission statements and core principles will ensure that all team members are on the same wavelength with the same end goal in mind.
Listen to Feedback and Respond to It
A must have quality for business owners is the ability to monitor the mood of the team, pick up on any unsettled perspectives and act on them. You’ve input the initial ideas and planning but now it’s time to put them to practice – you’ll need feedback on all aspects of your business, negative or positive, it all leads to improvements.
The chances are you have employed a team of professionals, each with their own skill set, handpicked with their experience in mind; therefore they have the expertise to aid you in your success. Listen to any feedback given and respond to it, this will build a degree of loyalty within your team and seeing their changes being implemented will motivate them further.
Empower Your Employees
Lay down the groundwork and place your employer in a position where they could succeed and 90% of the time they will flourish in that role – the same rule applies for entire teams. To be an effective manager you need to support your team members, offering support and giving them clear and attainable goals for them to reach. Reward their achievements and you’ll see trust and loyalty within that team become stronger.
Team Building Exercises
Some of the most successful teams are those whose members have built up strong friendships, have created bonds and generally gel together really well. You should encourage your team to build good relationships with each other from a very early stage – one of the best ways to do this is with team building exercises.
Forget sitting in a circle trying to learn everyone’s names before making them fall into each other’s arms in those cringe-inducing trust exercises. Take them on experience days which everyone can get involved, many event companies offer corporate days, where everything will be taken care of for you allowing you to simply enjoy the day with your team.
Bruntingthorpe Events for example, provide corporate hospitality, choose from track days, archery or Segway driving and get to know each other whilst doing something active and a little bit competitive!
Like with most things, building a powerful team can sometimes take on a trial and error approach, but with the right employees, the correct attitude and a vivid goal, your team will go from strength to strength and so will your start up business.
