There is no time in a business to life when a new employee has nearly as much effect on the growth of a business as during the first few years when a startup team is formed from a couple of individuals, who have barely worked together before. The pressure of building the right team around the individual with the right skills and expertise you are going to need to develop can be difficult, but again from experience working with many startups, it’s doable. To find the best and most talented individuals for your startup team, you can seek out help in the industry or peruse job boards for resumes or referrals, but ultimately you are responsible for finding the right people.
Many startups have been built by a combination of several leaders who brought diverse styles and skill sets to the table, resulting in a successful team. One key to building the right team in your company is providing clear expectations. The more clarity you can express, the easier it will be for individuals to understand what their roles will be, and how they will be expected to contribute to the company.
Leaders need to encourage and hold people accountable for their behaviors. This is often difficult for new leaders to do, because oftentimes employees do not fully understand that their behaviors have an influence on the outcomes of their positions. One effective way to do this is to ask employees for honest feedback on how they feel about a particular issue, or ask them to describe a specific situation where they might have contributed to the resolution of a problem. Then, using specific wording, create a list of goals or objectives for everyone to read so they can evaluate their own contributions to the success of the team. This type of feedback is not only useful for establishing who is responsible for positive actions, but also for encouraging individuals to make sure their behaviors are conforming to the organization’s goals.
In terms of hiring the right talent, hiring a mix of expertise is usually more successful than hiring individuals with each specialization. For example, when working in the Human Resources department, many leaders may feel that the best candidates are those who have both human resources and marketing experience. Although a marketing department may prefer to hire someone who has experience in recruiting, they may actually gain more success by hiring an experienced HR specialist who can manage the HR side of their business while effectively promoting their own talent.
It’s important to note that hiring the right talent is not only important for building the right team, but is also essential to achieving organizational success. Building teams that are made up of the best talent possible, from every perspective, helps ensure that the most productivity is achieved during a given period of time. Building teams that are made up of the wrong talent, from every perspective, results in a team that doesn’t contribute to the overall success of the business. As such, organizations must focus their time and attention on hiring the right people for the right job. There are several steps that organizations should take in order to effectively do this, including a series of assessments that should be designed to find the best team members, while finding ways to retain those that aren’t as effective at a given task.
There are several reasons why a leader’s leadership team might not make the most efficient or successful group. If your business is looking to hire the right people to join your ranks, consider starting out with a basic job interview to identify potential team members. In addition to interviewing each individual candidate, you should also consider developing a support system composed of leadership team members who can coach each other on how to build the right team, support the new member, and keep the new member motivated.
