As a founder or executive in an early-stage leadership position, you play a vital role in laying the foundation for what success looks like in your organization and cultivating a workplace culture where individuals can collaborate and perform effectively. Ellen Sweeney, tenured people operations consultant and leadership coach, with over 10+ years of building best-in-class teams at brands such as Pressed Juicery and MeUndies, shares her sound tips for team setup.
Your First Few Hires
“Your early hires are some of the most critical hires,” shares Sweeney. Not only do you need to find someone that has the right technical skill set, but someone who has the right soft skills and maintains core value alignment. This doesn’t equate to “Do I want to get a beer with this person?” Instead, consider “Does this person support the mission I’ve established for my organization?” or “Can this person roll with the punches?”
These early hires have a significant impact early on and ultimately shape the broader organization that follows. Beyond hiring people you trust, here are tips to set these foundational team members up for success:
- Lead by Empowerment: Equip them with the necessary skills and knowledge to perform their roles effectively, then empower your team leads to make decisions and take ownership of their functional teams' success. When you’ve hired individuals you trust, you can, in turn, trust their judgment and expertise to shape the future of your organization and of people. It all begins with people excited to build your business.
- Clear Goal Setting: Establish realistic and achievable goals for both individuals and their growing teams, including the key performance indicators (KPIs) by which their success will be measured. Doing so helps in motivating your team and gives them a sense of direction in their work.
- It’s OK to Try Again. As critical as these first hires are to lay the foundation for your organization, don’t get paralyzed by making the wrong decision. While it's never fun to make a mis-hire, the reality is, it happens even with the best of interview processes. If an early employee is lacking the technical skills necessary to succeed, or not sharing the core value alignment that is critical to long term success, it's okay to make a thoughtful change.
Goal Setting & Recognition
When setting team goals, it’s your role as a founder or leader to get your team excited about where you’re going.
- Long Term → Short Term. Think about your long-term company goals – where do you envision yourself being? What is required to get there? By backing into these long-term goals on short-term intervals, your executing team is better set up for success in working towards manageable milestones.
- Workshop. Getting the team involved in the goal-setting process from the beginning is a great way to ensure organizational buy-in. Hold collaborative meetings or workshops where team members can contribute their ideas and suggestions for team and individual goals.
- Lead By Example. As the leader of the organization, not only do you need to demonstrate the qualities and behaviors you want to see in your team leaders, but you need to live and breathe the goals you’ve established. Don’t just set it and forget it – provide recurring updates, give insight into progress, and reward good work along the way.
Rewarding good work is essential for reinforcing behavior, motivating employees, and fostering a culture of appreciation and recognition. Effective ways to recognize a job well done include:
- Public Recognition: A simple but powerful way to reward good work is through genuine verbal recognition. Go beyond saying "good job" and tell them what they did, what results they drove, and why it was valuable goes a long way. This can be done in a designated Slack channel or team meeting setting.
- Written Appreciation: If your employee prefers to be recognized privately, sending personalized thank-you notes or emails expressing your gratitude for their exceptional work adds a personal touch and can make employees feel valued and appreciated.
Whether verbal or written, the act of acknowledging a job well done can be the difference in retaining an employee.
- Promotions and Advancements: Recognizing good work via compensation and title promotion is also a means of reward, so have these dedicated moments via annual reviews. If you can’t give someone what they want, it’s best to be upfront and honest about progress. People simply want to understand how they are doing to avoid creating narratives about their performance.
Building Culture
As a founder, your culture starts and ends with you – you set the tone. Every person you bring on to follow is adding to the culture or shifting it just a little bit more and culture is an always evolving state of the business. Though team-building activities are only one piece of the culture-building puzzle, Ellen suggests planning bonding events with the following in mind:
- Understand Your Team’s Interests. Team bonding is not one size fits all. It’s key to understand what your team enjoys and activities that are conducive to their lifestyles. It’s important to diversify outings so there is something for everyone and enables different groups to join. Solely hosting after-work events can potentially eliminate a teammate who has a pet waiting for them or a family to get home to. Exclusively hosting happy hours may deter team members who prefer not to drink.
- Don’t Undervalue Micro-Moments. Team bonding does not always need to be an all-day or all-night event. Sometimes stopping the day to acknowledge good work, or bringing in a celebratory lunch, is the right level of camaraderie for your organization's size or workload.
- Don’t Overprogram. It can be easy to get super excited about getting to know new team members. However, be mindful of doing too much where it becomes a burden or chore for attendees. Do just enough to keep it fresh and inviting, but not inundating.