Building Your Team
It doesn’t matter who you are or what you do with your days – you need a team.
Each person has been given only so many talents and strengths. I don’t remember reading anywhere in the history of the human race where one person was gifted with every single talent. When you focus on your strengths, your strengths become stronger. So, in order to accomplish great success in life — in order to create some peace and harmony in your life — you need a team around you to fulfill your dreams.
Only when teams come into play do quantum leaps happen.
We’ve already addressed your strengths and weaknesses. You want to begin bringing people into your life who have the strengths that you, yourself, do not possess. You also want to bring people around you who actually enjoy what you really dislike doing so that you’re no longer expending your energies on what you don’t have passion for. Teamwork gives you the freedom to do what you do best. It gives you the freedom to follow God’s order — your purpose on this planet.
FALLACIES ABOUT “TEAMS”
Individuals tend to shy away from building teams for the following reasons:
- They think that nobody can do the task better than they can.
- People think they will become dependent on their team in a bad way.
- They’re afraid their team members might leave after bringing them into the fold. (To that, I say “So what?”)
- A team member might actually end up doing a job better than they do!
- People worry about losing power or authority if they have a team. They might lose ownership. They might lose control.
- People doubt their own leadership abilities or the ability to handle and manage a team.
- Poor experiences from the past might be holding people back from creating a team again.
EXERCISE #1: WHAT DO YOU NEED?
Return to page 29 in chapter 3 of this workbook. Here, you listed your weaknesses and put the names of people next to those weaknesses who either possessed strengths in this category or might know of someone who does.
Now that you’ve been through your goal setting exercise and have listed your top three priorities, re-list each of those three goals here, then in relation to each goal, where you might need to find people with strengths to help you along your path. These might be the same people you’ve listed in the previous exercise, or you might want to list new tasks or positions now that you’re looking at a “real world” situation.
My A#1 Personal Goal:
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Team Members and Tasks To Help Me Achieve This Goal
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My #1 Professional Goal
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Team Members and Tasks To Help Me Achieve This Goal
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My #1 Financial Goal
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Team Members and Tasks To Help Me Achieve This Goal
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CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
Once you have established a team, you must trust them and have faith in them. Let go of trying to control them. It is your responsibility to supervise and motivate, but it’s not your responsibility to interfere and guide them on a daily basis because that will be contrary to establishing a good team. You have to let them do their job. As soon as you begin boxing people in, they will not be able to perform as well as they could with their own free mind and spirit.
"When you put a “team member” in place, this person doesn’t have to be doing full-time work for you. This person might work 3 hours a month for you. He or she might work one hour a week. It all depends on your need – you’ll find a person who will fill that spot, no matter how small that spot seems to be." – DR. AGARWAL