3 Steps to Building a World-Class Team

Do any of these things describe your experience with building your team?

You’ve got clock-watching, paycheck-motivated employees who don’t seem emotionally invested in their jobs…
You’ve hired someone who you think will be great, but they’re not what you thought they’d be…
You have talented employees, but you don’t know how to motivate them and maximize their potential and productivity…
You don’t have the time to sift through a million applications, and once you pick a few good candidates, you don’t know how to properly interview them to get the best new team members…
You rarely have employees who meet your expectations, but you can’t compromise what you want…
You’re not sure how to make your employees happy on a continual basis, and you feel like you’re never going to get the right team…
You just want employees who WORK—with each other, with you, and for your business.

If you answered YES, then you’re not alone. Business owners, private practice owners, entrepreneurs… EVERYONE with employees all over the country has the same problems when it comes to building their team.

And that’s because great teams—world-class teams—are built with a 3-pronged approach. And that’s what we’re going to talk about here.

World-Class Step #1: Measure Applicants Effectively

This is the only technique that most people in charge of hiring use… but that doesn’t mean that they’re doing it correctly.

The way that most applicants are measured is through resume reviews, reference checks, and the interview process. That’s the standard process for hiring a new employee, and it’s one that has been building sub-par teams for decades.

What you should be using is a system that meets a number of requirements:

The system you use should be objective, not subjective. The interview process doesn’t work with this requirement because we tend to hire people we like rather than hiring the right person for the team.
The system you use should be specific to your company culture. This makes it hard to use many outside recruitment agencies because they’re hiring based on THEIR company culture, not yours.
The system you use should be nearly impossible to “game” or cheat. Unfortunately, personality tests and resumes fail this requirement because it takes a simple Google search to find someone who will teach you how to “pass” this part of the interview process. It’s unfortunate, but oftentimes, applicants will do whatever it takes to get ahead.
The system you use needs to encompass MORE than ability or behavior. It needs to measure what is called Real Talent (or potential), which is the true marker of whether someone will be successful in their position. The system you use should be measuring whether someone has the talent to succeed, the ability to access and use that talent for the tasks you’re giving them, and the motivation to use them to the best of their ability.

What you need is a hiring and performance system. A tool that will give you clairvoyance and dead-on predictions as to how candidates would perform on the job.

Like many entrepreneurs who recognize the need for these tools, you may have invested in personality profiles for hiring candidates. There are some famous ones out there that we’ve all heard of or had personal experience with … Colby, Meyers-Briggs, DISC, etc. They’re interesting and they do reveal quite a bit about your candidates’ personalities.

But what they don’t do is assess how those candidates will perform. What’s lacking from those “personality profiles” is the one thing that you really need to grow your organization into the productive, profit-producing machine you hoped for when you started your business … ACCURATE PERFORMANCE PREDICTION.

Until now, you’ve either relied on your own intuition and experience or one of those personality profiles to guide you through the hiring process, but you and I both know that what you’ve always needed is something that will accurately predict how each candidate will perform.

The Real Talent Hiring & Performance System Gives You a Dead-On Accurate Prediction of Performance BEFORE You Hire!

This system is specifically developed to determine how potential employees will perform in YOUR company’s culture. The Real Talent Hiring MRI is the tool we use to accurately measure and reflect how your candidates will perform FOR YOU.

Because let’s face it: when you are building a world-class team, you’ve got to start off on the right foot. After that, you can move onto Step #2.

World-Class Step #2: Improve Communication Within Your Team

Even when you've got the right team members, you still need to foster an environment of communication and collaboration. Each employee not only needs training, responsibility, and authority for his or her own position, but they also need to work well with the rest of your team.

In all honesty, the natural place for your employees is one of suspicion and distrust. Your employees are naturally watching their backs, guarding their jobs, and keeping secrets from their coworkers.

Collaboration can only happen when people can REALLY talk to each other. If you don’t actively foster collaboration and communication within your organization, it can lead to a major breakdown. And quite honestly, it can ruin your company from the inside out. Your goals will be unreachable, projects will be rife with conflict, and your company's resources will be wasted.

I’m not saying that your employees need to be best friends. In all honesty, your employees don’t even need to like each other in order to be an effective team—they just have to be able to work together.

In addition to fostering collaboration, you need to ensure that you’re continually developing your team (see Step #3) so that you ALWAYS have the best employees for your business.

With our Real Talent Team Collaboration program, we redefine "Team Think" to get everyone on the same page with common goals and real ownership of their positions in your organization.

Each member of your team will complete the 15-minute Real Talent Collaboration exercise and then participate in an open, safe, and facilitated discussion to address concerns and deficits that come to light with the exercise.

The Real Talent Team Collaboration discussion accelerates your business' results by building alignment with your team. Trust increases, judgment decreases, and your employees will begin to work together more effectively.

After the discussion, we'll also have an in-depth "deeper level" discussion with the managers only. This discussion will center around solving high-level issues as well as understanding your team members on an individual level.

World-Class Step #3: Reinvest in Your Employees and Train Your Stars

Once you’ve completed Steps #1 and #2, you’ll have a team that has the right Talent and potential, plus you’ll know that your employees are in the right position for success. And if you wanted to stop there, you’d have built a great team.

But if you want a world-class team, you need to consistently groom each of your employees to take a bigger role within your company, whether it’s in their current position or a future position that they’re not ready for yet.

I spend a lot of time speaking with, listening to, and coaching small business owners. Every day, I measure management capacity and talent. As a result, I’ve learned exactly what good management requires—and what it can do for your business.

I’ve also witnessed the disastrous consequences of bad management: disgruntled employees, low morale, turnover, poor customer service, lackluster effort, declining revenues… you name it.

Part of being a good manager is consistently investing in your employees so that they become better at their job, improve their skills, and have a reason to care about their position at your company. All the consequences of bad management can be avoided when employees feel like they’re important to you and your company.

Whether it’s encouraging your employees to take on unassigned projects (as many tech companies like Google encourage), travel to industry conferences, or simply have additional resources to help them build their knowledgebase—invest your resources in your employees to get the best from them.

The top reason people leave their jobs isn’t because of money, their commute, or lack of challenge. It’s because they don’t like, respect, or get along with their direct boss, or because they’re being so mismanaged that they end up doing anything they can to get out.

Real Talent has a way for you to nip the problems caused by bad management in the bud. A way for you to learn how to cultivate, manage, and get the most out of all of your employees, not just your superstars. A way for you to build morale, increase productivity, and enhance your bottom line because of your ability to retain motivated, satisfied employees.

The Performance Management & Coaching System Helps You Continue to Get the Best Out of Your Superstars

This system includes:

How to coach others to Superstar performance
How to keep your staff focused on the job
How to give constructive comments to your Superstars the right way
How to easily handle your most difficult employees
How to empower your staff to solve any problem for you
How to conduct motivating team and 1-on-1 employee meetings
How to hold your team accountable to their performance deadlines

These essential skills are literally quick and easy to learn and implement, and they will enable you (and your management team!) to drive employee performance in a nonconfrontational way that produces real results. It really is a win-win. Your employees will love it and your business will prosper.