Ep 38 - We Can't Automate the Human Spirit

Welcome to this episode of Power Up Your Team podcast. This is your free resources with tips and tricks for how to build a more resilient team.

I have always believed that the team is the most important asset of any organization large or small. It’s like the organization’s heartbeat.

And yet, I have worked for and coached so many well intended leaders who just not understood or appreciated that. 

They saw their role as pace setters, striving for accurate delivery of work, and timely task completion and monitoring performance. They focused on managing or completing work and not leading people.

Without the Team:

• Work will not get done. If systems perform a significant aspect of work, people need to invent, design, develop and operate them.
• New ideas will not come to the table, innovation of new products and services or continuous improvement on the work itself will not happen
• Connections cannot be made to the people that consume the services at the end of the value chain or to other critical contributors outside your business.

You can automate everything except the human spirit.

As leader of a team, the task of motivating is much more important than the task of monitoring. The task of motivating cannot be automated or systematized. The task of monitoring can.  

What was important for me as employee that 

• my leader cared about us
• I was able to contribute my ideas 
• my leader heard and incorporated my ideas 
• there was a sense of belonging 
• we had a shared purpose 
• my leader trusted my abilities

I could tell if the environment was setup for me to succeed or to fail. 

You can create this positive work environment 

And this work environment is what you as CEO or Founder can create. It’s an outcome of the team structure you put in place, the roles and responsibilities, processes and works systems and, more importantly, your leadership.  

As your company begins to grow you need to swiftly step into a leadership role and leave the planning and execution of the work to your team

At the onset you may have done everything yourself soup to nuts. Then there may have been a phase, during which you collaborated with a few trusted partners. 

With more success and growth, you started  to delegate significant aspect of the work. Your role become to a great deal that of the chief motivator.

The time of this evolution is critical to ensure there is a strong foundation in place so you can level up. If you wait too long you suffocate the team and if you move too fast you create chaos.

At the end of the day, every CEO or founder needs team that 

• effectively collaborates and supports each other in handling day-today operations
• trusts each other to share new ideas, call out things that don’t work and make improvements
• can improvise and adjust to unforeseen circumstance quickly and move forward

As motivator in chief, you create an environment that’s safe and fun so people come to work with their hearts and minds in the right place. As a result, they want to contribute and help you drive your business to the next level of success.

If this episode resonates with you and you like to discuss an issue related to motivating your team, let’s set up a strategy session where we can brainstorm how you can create the team you really want.