Leadership with Purpose: How to Build and Engage a Collaborative Team

At Upleveling Your Business, we help a lot of business owners develop strategic hiring plans and build their hiring and onboarding systems. The challenge doesn’t stop there, though! If you want to build a strong, sustainable team that will help you drive your business forward, you must be intentional about your leadership and culture.

It’s one thing to give orders because you’re the boss; it’s very much another to direct a team who will gladly follow you to build the business you want to own.

Learning to lead with purpose and build a strong culture does take guidance and effort, but there are some essential steps you can take now. I’d love to share them with you!

Step 1: Have a Personal Direction and Focus

This step is one of the most important foundational steps you can take. If you don’t have a strong direction and focus, why should your team follow you?

Defining and honing your vision can seem like an intimidating task, but it’s an essential one. Sometimes, a business owner will just know what their purpose and vision is. There is no question in their mind – they know who they want to serve and how, what they want to do and why.

Often though, the “why” and “who” are things that elude business owners. When our Marketing Coaches work with a client, they will often ask the owner to describe who they are, what sets their company apart, and who they do and don’t want to work with.

Sometimes the owner will have a quick answer, but often, those questions are met with, “Oh. Umm…good question. Let me think.”

Our Coaches don’t ask those questions because they think the owner has all they answers; they ask because they want to get our clients thinking about what their purpose really is. What do they love to do? Who do they love to work with? What is their ultimate vision for their company?

Once you can answer these questions, you can also communicate them with your team – and they will be equipped to collaborate more with each other!

Step 2: Keep Your Purpose Front and Center

There are studies that suggest that on average, we each make upwards of 35,000 choices per day. Whether this is true or not, as business owners, we have a lot on our plates. Some decisions can be punted until we have the time and energy to truly consider them, but others have to be made on the spot. And some, we have to trust our team members to make.

In order to make these decisions wisely and effectively, you have to keep your purpose front and center. Otherwise, you’ll run the risk of making them based on emotion and stress (never a great combination).

This is where your Core Values come in. Again, this is a step that many business owners skip, but they serve as a foundation for your decisions.

When in doubt, you can turn to your Core Values. Is your decision in line with them?

Your next step is to turn to your business plan. This plan doesn’t have to be a huge, complicated set of numbers and 5-year projections that you would hand to a potential investor; it’s literally your goals and growth strategy for the upcoming quarters.

Once your decision passes your Core Values test, you can judge it by your business plan. Is it in line with your goals and planned promotions? If not, do you have the bandwidth to pivot, and will it bring you a strong enough ROI?

When you have your purpose in writing, you can more easily make the strong decisions your team is depending on you to make. When strong decisions are in place, your team will be able to work together to carry them out much more effectively.

Step 3: Focus on Your Team Members’ Zones of Genius

Defining and communicating your vision is an essential part of leadership, and keeping them front and center provides the example that your team will respond to.

There’s another point to consider, though: keeping your team engaged and productive.

20 years ago, businesses hired employees based on whether they fit into the “box” of the role that was open. The business created job descriptions and hired the person who could check the most boxes – and it was very rare that an employee could escape that checklist.

Today, however, things have changed. Businesses still create job ads and candidates still respond to them, but that’s where the similarities end. Many business owners are looking for the candidate who will best fit the company culture, who wants to meet the challenges and grow.

At the same time, most candidates are looking for the company where they can grow, feel a sense of purpose, and be confident that the company aligns with their values.

In order to find and retain the top talent you’re looking for, you have to look beyond the checkboxes of the job description and figure out how to keep each person working within their zone of genius.

At UYB, one of the ways we do this is through quarterly reviews. These set 1:1 meetings give me a chance to meet with each employee and learn more about what they love to do, how they would like to grow, and what else they believe they can bring to the company.

These are actually some of my favorite meetings – I learn so many incredible things about my team and find ways to fill smaller roles without having to hire new people!

When your team is certain about your vision, your purpose, and your confidence in their ability, it becomes so much easier to build a culture that allows for collaboration. And when that collaboration takes place, everyone wins!

There is obviously more to leadership than these three steps, but they are foundational – and they’ll work for every type of business. If you’re interested in developing your leadership and culture further, let me know!