11
FROM THE FOUNDER
Building your team
Y our job as a leader – whether that is for the entire company, an office, a department, or a design team – is all about building your team. While you undoubtedly have other responsibilities, one of your primary roles is assembling, maintaining, and motivating your team. While you undoubtedly have other responsibilities, one of your primary roles as a leader is assembling, maintaining, and motivating your team.
Mark Zweig
Unfortunately, unless you start a business with a clean sheet of paper, you are bound to inherit some or all of your team members. So, many times you have to work with the people you have – or at least largely do for some period of time – until the timing is right to move some new talent into your team. That’s not always a bad thing. You may think you know the character and capabilities of someone based on limited exposure to them and their track records, but then again, you may not. Sometimes you have to work with people for a while to appreciate all they bring to the team – or to learn about their negative behaviors that hurt the team. So time – if you have it – can be a good thing. My experience is that it helps when you, as the leader, really get to know the people who work with you (and “with” is an important word, because no
one wants to work “for” someone else!). Working alongside them is the best way I know how to do this. Too many managers think they are above doing the actual work of the team and when they have that attitude, problems will develop! Or, they are under the impression that doing the actual work of the business is not the best use of their time, because they have the misconception that they should be full- time managers. You build trust and respect when you show you are willing to do any job that needs doing yourself. It also helps you figure out what individual people are best and worst at doing. By the same token, you also have to get to know your people as just that – people. We all carry our personal baggage into the workplace. I know I did. Leaders
See MARK ZWEIG , page 12
THE ZWEIG LETTER DECEMBER 5, 2022, ISSUE 1467
Made with FlippingBook Annual report