When you embark upon the journey of being an entrepreneur, you are very passionate about what you are trying to build and are very closely involved in each and every activity of the startup. However as you start garnering more and more customers and your business expands, you start feeling the stress of carrying out various activities that need to be done as a part of your growing business. There also comes a stage where you realize that it is not practically possible to manage every aspect of the business all by yourself and that you need to fill in an additional workforce who shares the same vision for your business as much as you do.
As an entrepreneur you wouldn’t want to lose control over some of the crucial aspects of the business. In order to avoid this you would certainly hire the right team for delegating several tasks so that you get enough time and energy to focus on the bigger picture and to broaden your vision.
So what exactly are the ingredients that one should look for in a team while scaling up ones business? What type of a team composition might give you that edge over the competition? What kind of team should you hire, that will help you build sustainable business? There are no easy answers or instant solutions to many such leadership hiring needs.
Hence, here are seven guidelines/attributes that can help you build the right team for scaling your business:
- Always hire team members who share the same passion and vision for your business as you do. Such people would also be self-driven and would be willing to go that extra mile. They also bring in a lot of excitement and energy in the work environment and would help you translate your vision into actions and help hire leaders at subordinate levels who are in sync with the same vision.
- Hire team members that you can trust. Trust and transparency are vital ingredients for building any scalable business model. Trustworthiness is not only crucial for positions requiring financial dealing, it is essential for executive decision roles. You need to empower people with decision making abilities as with growing business you cannot be a part of every executive decision.
- You must hire people who are good team players. Individual performers can bring heroic results sometimes, but such results may not be always sustainable in the long term. For sustainable performance and results, the ability of people to work in a team environment is essential. With extremely collaborative organization structure, such good team players can contribute significantly towards the organization.
- People with significantly more knowledge than you, always, undoubtedly bring something new into the organization that adds tremendous value. So do hire such people from time to time. Everyone has specific strengths and weaknesses and you need people who can contribute in your business in different ways. There would be people who have already experienced and solved problems that you are trying to resolve and such experience or exposure could be handy in faster decision making or reducing the learning curve for the better.
- Hire team members that bring in a different perspective and are not hesitant to share their thoughts. Make sure you are not surrounded by people who do not dare to question. You may not be correct 100% of the time and need to get different perspective around your thought process. People with independent and unbiased views can bring in a lot of value in your business.
- Hire people with a learning attitude. Learning is a life-long process and with the ever changing market and technology dynamics, people with a learning attitude are an asset to any organization.
- Always go for people who exhibit a passion for winning. People who are passionate about winning bring positive energy into the organization. Bring in people who want to do the best work in the field and have a sense of pride in the organization’s accomplishments. People with such a streak are open to new initiatives, achieve targets or bring in solutions that otherwise seem impossible with a linear approach.