To Ensure Your Team Members Are Top Performers, You Have to Do One Thing

The following is adapted from TeamWork.

I started my career when I was 20 years old. I was an economics major at a private college in the Pacific Northwest and had no real interest in starting my career. I was about to start my junior year and was looking forward to spending my summer like I had the years prior: volunteering. The last thing I wanted to do was make money, but my parents had different plans for me.

After a particularly challenging finals week had wrapped up, I was enjoying my first week of summer break when I picked up a call from my mom that changed the trajectory of my life. Like most life-changing moments, I didn’t realize it while it was happening.

It was an average cloudy June day, and she informed me that she had secured an internship for me that started the coming Monday. I put up a fight initially but didn’t have much of a choice. My livelihood, car insurance, meals, and gas money for my ’93 Buick Century depended on it, so “no” was not an answer.

For the next three days, I dreaded the upcoming start date and soaked in my last few hours of freedom before starting work. When Monday rolled around, I was less than enthused and already longed to have my summer back.

The company I was interning at was located in a red brick building that looked corporate and stiff. As soon as I walked in and felt the chill of the over-circulated air, my dread turned to irritation. No one seemed to know where I was going to sit. They hadn’t planned on having an intern, and the building was filled to the brim, so they made a makeshift workstation for me right next to the elevator on the third floor.

What I didn’t realize then was that the third floor was the place to be. The executive wing was on one side of the building with the HR, Accounting, and Finance departments on the other. I didn’t know what any of that meant at the time, but it was certainly foreshadowing where my career was headed.

After the desk debacle was situated, I spent the rest of my first day at my new job watching training videos and started reading the stack of leadership books I had been issued. Spending my afternoon reading was surprisingly delightful, and I began to think this whole internship thing wasn’t going to be so bad.

The second day at my new internship held a surprise. After three hours of reading, I got up from my awkwardly positioned desk to head to the restroom when the president of the company passed me in the hallway. “Hey, Natalie!” he said. “What’s our Mission statement?”

I froze. I didn’t know what the answer was. And I hated how that felt. Today, I pride myself on preparation and learning just about everything I possibly can about a business, but on this particular day eight years ago, I found myself in a situation without the ammunition I needed to properly answer the president’s question.

I responded, “I’m not sure, but I’m very interested to learn about it!” in a high-pitched tone to mask my nervousness and lack of interest. He then said to me words I will never forget: “Nobody is allowed to be a leech in our environment. You are here because you serve a purpose. Random people doing random things who don’t know why they’re here do not belong to this organization.”

Some people might think that was harsh. It was shocking, but at that moment, he was defining and protecting the culture. This is every leader’s job.

As a new team member, I needed to figure out why I was there and what I was going to contribute. This moment shifted my awareness about why team members are actually added: they’re responsible to contribute. But if they don’t know why they’re there, how are they supposed to add value to your clients and team?

I find that most business owners do not set this as a standard in their environment because they assume that everyone knows what they know. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

Without a clear Mission (and a process to ensure everyone on your team knows it), you will build an environment of leeches who randomly do things that don’t contribute to where you want to go. Then you’ll sit back and be victimized by your team and say stupid things like, “I can’t find any great people in my market.”

Don’t be a victim of your lack of discipline in your culture. Start by creating a clearly defined Mission statement, make it part of your culture, then prioritize and protect that culture so everyone knows how they are expected to add value.

For more advice on how to create and prioritize a strong Mission and culture, you can find TeamWork on Amazon.

Natalie Dawson is an expert in developing people and building scalable teams. She has interviewed, hired, trained, and led thousands of employees over the course of her career, most recently as Executive Vice President and Partner of Cardone Ventures, a management consulting, joint ventures, and private equity firm that helps business owners achieve their personal, professional, and financial goals through the growth of their businesses. Her specialty lies in aligning employees with business objectives — for measurable returns on investment. Having attended the London School of Economics, Natalie uses her unique blend of operational and financial skillsets to oversee eight-figure operating budgets by inspiring and aligning the people who drive them.