Building a Diverse Team with Growth in Mind
When you first start to build a team, it’s common to look for employees based on their skillset. Do you need someone to answer the phones or handle your email and scheduling? A great Receptionist or Executive Assistant will fill those needs. However, your team is much more than just skillsets and availability; in order to grow a profitable business, you need to hire a diverse team that will position you for growth.
There are several different facets that go into putting together the right team – the one that will drive your business forward and free you up to focus on the things that truly matter to you!
Understanding the personalities, working styles, and strengths and weaknesses of your team is essential to building a strong, thriving team that will position you for growth. Building this team is also a key aspect of your client care system, however. Your client base is diverse – it’s made up of people with different personalities, coming from different backgrounds. Building a diverse team allows you to be inclusive and serve a wider range of people.
Here are some strategies to get you started!
Balancing Personalities
Having the right personalities in the right positions is vital to growing a productive team.
Think about it: if you have a team full of people who are highly competitive, not a lot of collaboration is likely to take place. If your team is made up completely of people who love to check items off the list, they will be unlikely to innovate new ideas.
However, when you have a balance of personalities in key positions, your team will be uniquely equipped to collaborate, innovate, and get things done. This takes a lot of pressure off you!
This isn’t something that you can tackle a few months (or years) into the process, though. Building a balanced team starts with your hiring system! One thing that clients learn in our Hiring and Onboarding Boot Camp program is to include a personality test such as DISC in your vetting process.
This is something that I do in my own company. For example, I’m currently working on hiring a Marketing Coordinator. Because my Marketing Team is made up primarily of creative, innovative thinkers, I need to balance the team out with an organized project manager who can both work with my team and keep everything on track.
In my Applicant Tracking System, I can filter candidates by DISC results with just a click. This allows me to proactively build my team for growth!
Understanding Working Styles
Once you have an understanding of the personalities on your team, it’s time to get a bit more granular. Different members of your team will work in different ways; understanding their working habits and styles is key to being able to effectively manage each person.
Some people must have detailed checklists in order to stay on top of their tasks; other people work in more of a “free form” manner and perform better within a more flexible structure. There are pros and cons to both but understanding how each person works is a necessary part of both managing them and helping them grow.
Understanding these tendencies and traits will also help you better balance the workloads and workflows that will work best for each of your team members. In turn, this will help each person become more productive and profitable!
Highlighting Strengths and Shoring Up Weaknesses
The hiring process starts with a job description but hiring the right people and equipping them to collaborate is a vital part of setting yourself up for growth. In reality, the job description is a guide.
The perfect person for your team may not fit every area of your job description, but that’s alright. There are ways to shore up those weaknesses. Does another employee excel at those few tasks and have some extra bandwidth? Allowing your team members to collaborate could be the perfect solution.
On my team, we collaborate on a regular basis. Sales will work with Client Happiness to plan and execute events. My Copywriter works with coaches and other team members to transform their insights into content, allowing them to focus on working with our clients.
At the end of the day, it’s all about keeping your team working within their zones of genius! If one person can step in to help another, everyone thrives – and your business becomes more profitable with less effort.
This is what building a diverse team with growth in mind can do: it can allow you to build a business that grows (even when you don’t spend all your time growing it!) and a team that works together to innovate, build the right systems, and drive profit!