Build the team that you would love to work for
What do you want to be when you grow up?
I have 3 little girls. We talk a lot about, “What do you want to be when you grow up.” I love how each of their job descriptions reflects the people that are currently in their life. “I want to be a teacher. I want to be an artist. I want to be a gymnast. I want to be a nanny. I want to be a coach.”
I remember when I was a kid I loved to see my mom paint, my dad build, my art teachers create. During college, I was surrounded by artists and musicians always making and learning. After moving to the KC, I found myself surrounded by business owners, makers, and entrepreneurs. Each of these people in my life shaped what I understood could be a the team I would want to be a part of.
The types of people that shaped my view of a job.
The people I worked for or took classes from taught me what I valued in leaders as well as what I wanted to avoid. Each showed me one or more of the following styles of leadership:
- They worked in a way that allowed them to flourish and enjoy their work.
- They just endured and drudged through every day.
- There were those that hated being around people and could not find a positive way to communicate.
- Those that lead by example with humble confidence.
- I worked with people that found that power or force was the only way they could lead.
- I learned from talented practitioners that value sharing the knowledge they had to make everyone around them better.
- I had managers or bosses that trusted their team to get the work done.
- I worked on teams where every task I was to do was delivered, checked on, and reviewed thoroughly at least three times a day.
Each of these things gave light to the environment I wanted to be in and the leadership that I found to be most effective.
Build the culture you want to work for
When you are building your team, you have the opportunity to create a culture. This is a huge responsibility and very exciting opportunity. That culture can be rooted in success, competition, accomplishment, creativity, collaboration, trust, power, etc. This is up to you as the leader of your team to decide. But the main question you should be asking yourself is,
“Would you love to work for this team?”
Would you wake up each day excited to get into the work environment and collaborate with the people around you to build value for your customers, yourself and your peers? Would you be happy with the money that you are making as it provides for yourself and your loved ones? Would you see the impact that you’re making on the team and the company? Would you feel valued, encouraged, and praised for your work? Would you see your opportunity to grow and learn?
Maybe this seems obvious. You’re creating the team. It reflects you. Then look at yourself. How do you work? What do you value? The team will either reflect or react to you.
- Are you a micromanager? Then the team will expect you to manage them or they will fight you as they work under you.
- Are you absent, jaded, or removed? Then your team will either feel the need to make up for it or copy you and ignore getting anything done.
- Are you a workaholic, grinding hours upon hours to achieve more and more? Your team will grind with you until they are exhausted or complain loudly as they struggle through it.
Hire the team that you want to work with.
You, as the leader, have the opportunity to shape the team that you believe is best for the work you do. You can have empathy for those that you recruit, as you see what it might be like to come into your culture and work dynamics.
You have an ability to look carefully at the people you recruit, hire, and train and understand how they fit into the culture. How might they make the culture better? How will they balance the culture? And will they love doing it? All the time, you can be asking yourself,
“Would I want to work here? Would I do good work on this team?”
If you’re building the team that you’d want to work for, likely others will want to work there too. If you’ve created the place you want to be, and your team is flourishing, then your team will tell others. This makes recruiting and retain great people MUCH easier
The company WE wanted to work for
When we started Crema, I’m not sure we actually said it out loud, but Dan and I wanted something very similar. We wanted to build the a place we want to work, and others would want to work with us. Who doesn’t want that!
Every entrepreneurship book, seminar, or video will talk about how starting a business for yourself gives you freedom, control, the ability to say, screw you to “the man”, while you work to become “the man.” But what they often don’t tell you is that to create a great company where the people around you flourish because they are doing great work for a place that they actually WANT to work. We are in the business of people. Don’t forget that.
Over the years at Crema, we’ve had very low churn and little issues recruiting. Through our weekly 15five reports and one on ones, we hear that people love working here. Our work isn’t easy or perfect, and it may not be the culture for everyone. That being said, we have heard our team tell us and others that they believe that Dan and I want them to flourish. They believe that we trust them. They like that we give them autonomy, and allow them to explore ways to be better at their craft so that they can be better as individuals and as a team. As some put it,
“They treat us like adults!”
Mostly importantly they feel that they are doing good work that brings value to our customers and to each other.
Some tips
A few practical things to consider when building the company you want to work for.
- People reflect or react to the leaders.
- Hire carefully to continue to build the culture you’d want to work for.
- Don’t get so far removed from your team, that you can’t see what it might be like to work for you. (#UndercoverBoss)
- Remember what you saw modeled (Good and bad) around you, as you got started. Don’t do the bad things, and try to adopt the good things.
Tell us what you think?
- What would be your dream job? The job where you believe you’d want to come in every day and do great work?
- Have a job that you love? Why do you love it?
- Built a team that you would want to work for? What makes it that team.
Don’t forget to 👏👏👏👏👏👏. Medium likes that!
