Jason Hoover
Years ago I sold cars for a living. It was a job I thoroughly loved because I enjoyed both selling and vehicles. This combination contributed to my being one of the top performing sales consultants each month. Now, many years later, I’m still learning valuable lessons from those days.
I was fortunate to work for the top automotive group in our region. Being so, I and the other consultants experienced what it’s like to be apart of an award winning team year after year. And we didn’t get those awards by accident either. It was all due to an ongoing, finely tuned, high performance team training.
The Team Machine
What I learned was that your team is the machine that makes it all happen. This company knew its position in the market rode on the success of its consultants. That’s why they took every opportunity to fine tune our abilities so that we were a high performing machine.
As an entrepreneur, you are the driver of the vehicle. However, it is the engine that makes it move. If you have any breakdowns in the engine, then you’re stuck. Your company’s performance simply relies on the output of it’s team.
That being the case, you want to build a high performing team. Not only that, you also want to get top performance from them. And just as you wouldn’t purchase a Mercedes SL AMG Roadster (which is REALLY nice by the way) and then neglect it, neither should you put together a great team and neglect them.
So let’s take a look at 3 powerful parts to building and maintaining a high performance team machine…
3 Key’s to High Performance Teams
- Invest: A powerful motivator is to invest in someone. We are emotional beings and if you invest in your team members, they will want to reciprocate. And they do this by giving back even more. But please, oh please don’t be like a man I worked for a while back and say “I invest in my employees by giving them a paycheck.” That’s not investing. That’s just purchasing someone’s time.
- How: Pay for advanced training and not something that is just particular to your product. Let this be a life elevating experience.
- Inspire: A top characteristic of great leaders is the ability to inspire. One great way to do this is from investing in them. People want to be apart of something great and are looking for someone to take them there. It’s our nature to give more of ourself when we are passionate about something and are attached to it emotionally. So if you can inspire your team and connect their passion to your goal, you will gain even more productivity and performance from them.
- How: Constantly share the vision while showing them how it will enrich their lives and the lives of their family for being apart of it. Make it life changing.
- Influence: If you invest and inspire your team then you will gain influence. And as John Maxwell is known for saying, “Leadership is influence. Nothing more, nothing less.” Once you establish a positive influence with your team, you create a machine that is virtually unstoppable.
- How: Engage with them constantly. Let them know you care about what they do and how you greatly value their participation. Tell them how they are instrumental to the vision and that together the goal will be accomplished.
As with any high performance vehicle, to keep it running at top performance, it takes intentional attention. Continually invest in your team. Keep inspiring them to do their best work. And lead them with positive influence so that you all may reach great accomplishments and capture success.
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