In this episode of Transform Your Workplace, Brandon Laws sits down with Natalie Dawson, leadership expert and author of Teamwork: How to Build a High-Performance Team. The two discuss teamwork dynamics in the workplace and best practices for engaging and developing people, for the betterment of both the employee and the business at large.
GUEST AT A GLANCE
Natalie Dawson is a career-development expert with extensive knowledge in interviewing, hiring, onboarding, and managing employees. The author of Teamwork: How to Build a High-Performance Team, Natalie teaches business owners how to scale teams and create a culture of employee engagement.
A QUICK GLIMPSE INTO OUR PODCAST
🔊 Podcast: Transform Your Workplace, sponsored by Xenium HR
🎙️ Host: Brandon Laws
📋 In his own words: “The Transform Your Workplace podcast is your go-to source for the latest workplace trends, big ideas, and time-tested methods straight from the mouths of industry experts and respected thought-leaders.”
ACCOMPLISHING THE MISSION
According to guest Natalie Dawson, creating a business through people is one of the most difficult things you can do. “If all [your team ] did every day, all day, was what you asked them to do when you asked them to do it — to eat, sleep, breathe your business,” Natalie explained, “that would be really easy.” However, people are dynamic, so leaders must figure out the balance between striving toward accomplishing the mission and guiding employees toward their own career aspirations.
“It’s figuring out what the boundaries are inside your culture to accomplish the target and keep the main thing the main thing while also creating this environment that people actually enjoy and feel like they aren’t pushing themselves inside.”
PODCAST EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
Hiring the Right People
“I’m looking for people who are goal-oriented. I’m looking for people who understand where our organization is going and who have the attitude and willingness to just go all in. In the second interview, we go into more of the technical side of the job. And I think one thing that’s made us very successful in hiring people is really having them actually do the work ahead of time so that we know — on day one, this person who’s a videographer actually knows how to shoot a video or this person who’s responsible for our AR department actually knows how to like reconcile our financials or charter accounts.”
A Pipeline of Talent
“Every single day still to this day, I promote crazy, awesome things that our team gets to do, and that creates our pipeline. If you’re only promoting for your customer in order to acquire a new client or a new patient or whoever your end consumer is, you’re really missing the biggest part of the scaling game.”
Communicating Your Values
“Every day, our entire organization joins a daily meeting, and at the end of this meeting, we have a team member open one of our books that has been written by either myself or one of our co-founders. […] But the person who gets to read from the book is somebody who won the Core Values Award that week. So for five days on this all-team call, they get to be acknowledged for having demonstrated one of our core values, so it’s a peer-nominated program that’s happening every single day.”
A Good Fit
“Employee onboarding can change from organization to organization, but I really like to approach it by asking how to get people the information that they need as efficiently and quickly as possible while also over-delivering from a self-development standpoint so that they are a different person at the end of that four weeks. And if they’re like, ‘this is too much — I can’t take this well,’ they probably weren’t a good fit to begin with. We have big goals, big aspirations. And if people are already worn out in the first four weeks, they’re probably not gonna last very long.”
Realizing What They Want
“When you recognize for the first time that you want more and that you could learn the skills necessary to create that life, you’re likely going to do anything that you can in order to get that — if it’s the thing that you really want. Most employers actually flip this and they’re like, ‘Here, just do this thing, and then hopefully you’ll get what you want’ instead of saying, ‘Hey, what do you want? And then how can I help you get there faster and to create success with you?’ And so we ask every single one of our team members about their personal, professional, and financial goals because, once we know what their goals are, we know how we’re supposed to coach them.”
Careers, Not Jobs
“So it’s not just about a job, which most people think is very transactional. […] We’re saying, ‘Hey, you could start here as a marketing coordinator and be a future partner and have equity in this business because you’re all in with helping us solve our biggest problems. […] You have the opportunity to be a part of something that changes the trajectory of your life.’ […] We’re only willing to invest in team members who demonstrate that they’re willing to take criticism and feedback, to actually pivot, to develop skill sets, to read books, and to take courses so that they’re ready for those opportunities.”
LEARN MORE
Get a free copy of Natalie Dawson’s book, Teamwork: How to Build a High-Performance Team, here.