5 Essential Steps to Build Your Dream Team

I started working in business management more than 25 years ago. I’ve led teams of thousands of people and driven companies to success.

A couple years ago, however, I came to the point in my career where I was ready to try something new. I dramatically shrunk the size of my team and kept only the most talented and creative people. I began to really focus on efficiency and wanted to see what a team of highly skilled people — a “Dream Team” — could accomplish given the right resources and attention.

The results were incredible; even though, we’re smaller now, my team is much more productive and the quality of our work is higher. I still outsource to meet technical or more specialized needs in order to get the output I need. In reality, the size of your team depends on your specific needs, but what really matters is that it is efficient, creative, and always ready for new challenges.

Below, I have shared the five essential steps YOU need to know to build and manage your own Dream Team.

1. Assemble the team. Talent trumps all. Always try to hire great talent when it walks in the door, even if it comes with a price tag. Form a multidisciplinary team of people who can think on their feet and handle the main necessities of your project or company. You have to learn to delegate. Therefore, you must be able to trust your team. Remember you can’t do everything, and you should use your time efficiently.
2. Diversify the team. Diversity + creativity + talent = innovation.Diverse teams offer a wider perspective in every situation. In my career, I have always placed a big emphasis on including women in my teams. Not only is it a moral mission of mine, but gender diversity has also been shown to be linked to better financial performance. From the workforce standpoint, diverse teams foster productivity by offering broader perspectives and stimulating innovation to generate better solutions. By building teams made up of men and women, a business manager takes full advantage of the workforce’s talent by producing a better mix of leadership capacity to drive better performance.
3. Keep the team happy. Once you have the talent, invest the time, resources, and effort to retain them. Always remember that your team members could leave your project at any time, so it’s your job to keep them happy. Give them challenges; encourage them to give their best of themselves. Set high expectations for them, of course, but always with fairness, and most important, with respect.
4. Walk the talk.As a leader, what you sayand what you do need to be consistent. In order for your team to trust you, you need to follow through on your promises and take action to back up your words. In addition, you should remain open to constructive criticism from your team because this is an opportunity to improve. You must be fair at all times, have the humility to accept when you’ve made a mistake, and say you’re sorry when necessary. As a team leader, you will have to face many challenges. Always take responsibility for your actions and decisions.
5. Be creative. Money is a powerful motivator, but there are so many more ways to inspire development. Besides economic incentives, you should keep your team motivated in all ways. Always think about their personal and professional growth. Don’t let them get in a rut. Your job is also to keep them in constant learning mode.

No matter what, the first step is knowing yourself. You have to be honest with the mirror in order to know what type of people you work best with. And more important, you need to be able to motivate yourself to be better everyday, so that you can do the same for your “Dream Team”.