Emily Morgan, VITAL QuickBooks Process Manager, shares her perspective on how intentional leadership and team-building can turn a group of individuals into a high-performing, unified team.

Let’s face it: even the best business plan and budget on earth won’t go very far without the right people in place. Your people are your best asset! They are the ones taking the dream and making it a reality.

But having a group of people working together doesn’t necessarily mean you have a bonafide team on your hands. You could just have a working group. Think of a working group as a golf team: everyone moves along the course together but they’re just tracking their own scores and not working together to reach a common goal. A true team is more like a basketball team: passing the ball back and forth, using each other’s different positions and skills to their advantage to win the game together.

I was working with a business owner who kept referring to his employees as a team, but the framework he was using didn’t meet my definition of that word. I explained to him the difference between a “working group” and a team. So, I asked him, “When you say team, what does that word mean to you?” He paused and was unsure how to answer, and after a moment realized that what he had was not in fact a team working together toward a common goal, but just a group of employees that worked together in the same building.

Well, that’s all well and good, right? So how do we build a great team in the first place? Well usually some mindsets have to change first:

1. As the leader, be vulnerable, because vulnerability builds trust in your team.
   • You want your team bought in? Then they need to know what the business means to you, your goals and dreams for the business, and how what they do matters to you.
2. As the leader, be humble.
   • Not only should you encourage open feedback and communication from your team, but you should also welcome it.
3. As the leader, be teachable.
   • Now that you have some feedback, actually do something with it. Really examine yourself and see which pieces of constructive criticism are useful, and work to apply those changes.

Some Caveats:

• Not every single piece of feedback needs to be acted upon, but it is still important to really hear what your employees are saying.
• You asked for feedback, so don’t retaliate when they give it to you!