The story is based on my five years of experience working with amazing team members in content marketing at iPrice Group. Here are my 10 key learnings from this journey:

(Really) Teach what you preach

People will directly or indirectly replicate how their leaders behave. If we want people to read, we need to read. If we want people to be creative, show what creative behaviour looks like. If we want people to put their heart into their work, put ours.

“Monkey sees, monkey do”.

Build, develop, and reward a learning behaviour

Learning is one of the biggest factors for people to join or leave a team company. It’s also one of the most crucial skills in any organisation. If it’s done well, the team can be really-really effective and performs really well.

Everyone wants people to learn. But to learn we need to have a supportive environment. We need to build + continuously develop + reward the behaviour of learning.

Give people a chance to learn something new or level up their understanding of a certain topic. And when people learn, reward their behaviour. As simple as saying “good learnings!” or until the extent of asking them to do a sharing session with the rest of the team.

Also Read: Making offline marketing cool again: How this AI startup is changing the future of B2C advertising

Put extremely high standards on the hiring

“People are the foundation of any company’s success”
– Trillion Dollar Coach

• Make an easy to digest + compelling job description in any openings in your team
• Do a passive search and ask for a recommendation from “high performers”
• Provide pre-screening questions in the application form. This is to help you to do an early check of the applicants. Highly recommended as this saves a lot of your time.
• Prepare a set of questions to check all aspects from the candidate: behavioural + technical
• Form a case study to understand more detail about their understanding of the topics and ability to produce something
• Give chance + encourage the candidates to ask you questions
• (If possible) Ask other team members to have a chat with the candidates

The process might be slightly longer, but it’s really worth it.

Genuinely care with your team and invest time to coach them

One of our main responsibility as a manager is to develop our people. Spending time with them so they can learn the most important skills they need to have to be really successful in their role now (technical and behavioural).

To do this effectively, we need to genuinely care about their personal and career growth. Always ask questions and clarify what areas they really interested in + need to learn at their stage now. Never assume.

Whenever you see progress, congratulate them and let them know they are progressing. It’s important because people want to know whether they are progressing or not.

Create a safe environment for people to discuss, debate, and disagree

“High-performing teams need psychological safety”

–  HBR

Be super-super explicit to everyone in the team that it’s totally okay to openly share their opinion (even if it’s different); it’s okay to disagree (as long as they have a strong reason), and it’s okay to debate on a topic (as long they are being respectful to each other).

As a manager, continuously remind people about this. Show an example of how to do it right, and reward people that promoting this value.

Also Read: Epsilo raises US$2M to expand its SaaS e-commerce marketing platform across Asia

Proactively ask for feedback from team members + act on it

Naturally, people hate feedback. But at the same time, we know it’s super valuable.

Make people understand why it’s extremely valuable to have this mentality in the team (Why?). Once they understand the why give them a regular example (day-to-day basis) on how to give good feedback + how to openly receive one.

The top recommendation when it comes to this is the book by Kim Scott, Radical Candor.

Encourage and trust your team to try and do an experiment

Most of you who read it probably works on tech companies, or if not working in a company that wants to be successful. So one of the keys is to continue innovating. Coming up with new ideas + test them out.

Observe any problem or challenges you have in your team and ask people “So do you guys think we can do about it?” Really listen to all the ideas and let them own it and test their solution.

Be very clear and explicit with what we expect from the team

Never ever assume people know what’s in our minds. They are not a mentalist. Want people to be punctual in a meeting? Tell them.

Want people to be respectful with each other? Tell them. Being explicit sometimes is not easy. But it’ll save a lot of time for everyone.

Celebrate wins and learnings

Whenever people learn something new or achieve something (small or big) celebrate in a team. Let people know that their hard work is important and people aware of it. Especially you as their manager.

Also Read: Why team-building exercises won’t make your staff more productive

Few ideas (during this COVID-19 period) 

• Create a chat group to “celebrate wins and achievements”,
• Publicly mention the work + the person on social media (LinkedIn/ Twitter)
• Send small gifts (food)
• Have a dedicated session to thank other people

Learn to tell jokes

The rationale is to bring fun elements into your team. You don’t need to be a stand-up comedian. Just learn to tell few jokes and be fun in the team!

–

Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing contributions from the community. Become a thought leader in the community and share your opinions or ideas and earn a byline by submitting a post.

Join our e27 Telegram group, FB community or like the e27 Facebook page

Image Credit: ål nik on Unsplash

The post 10 lessons on building a great team  by a marketing employee appeared first on e27.