The 4 Cs of Success for Building a High Performing Team

[00:00:00] Lauren: You’re a high octane business owner. You’ve got a team on paper. It looks like you’re rolling in success, but there’s a voice inside of you. Whisper, screaming, this isn’t sustainable. Something feels off and I’m gonna lose it off.

Sound familiar. That’s where I come in.[00:00:30] 

My name is Lauren Goldstein and I’m the c e o at Golden Key Partnership. I help top level executives like you avoid burning out and burning down as you’re scaling up. How? By harnessing your superpowers, finding and hiring your ideal. And then simplifying the heck out of your business operations. That was [00:01:00] easy.

It’s my mission and the mission of this podcast to help you see operations in a whole new light. To help you diagnose the real root cause of your company challenges, and to bring your business back to a healthy flow and profit. They call me the Business Doctor, and this is The Biz Doctor Podcast.[00:01:30] 

Welcome back. In today’s episode, I’m gonna talk about something I see pop up time and time again in teams. That’s largely misunderstood and is honestly why most team members fail. Spoiler alert, it’s not actually what you think this episode is for anyone that has a. Wants to hire a team or just plain interested in being a better team player?

I’ve been helping business owners create high performing teams and businesses for over 11 years. You can [00:02:00] imagine all the things that I have seen. Never a dull moment, which I love. But one of the things that I bang my head against the wall with and will die on my soapbox about is most business owners just throw teams together without much thought, except the laundry list they want the person to do.

I don’t know who started this. Jesus, take the wheel. I’m on a mission to stop it cuz not only does it waste hard-earned business revenue, but it wrecks morale and it can have damaging long-term team effects. [00:02:30] So let’s dive into the four Cs of team success. And oh, by the way, these also perfectly align with hiring.

So grab a notebook, get comfy, and let’s dive in. First I wanna talk about a few of my favorite myths around teams. Myth number one, it’s so. I just need to clone myself, or I need to clone so-and-so. This one is hands down my favorite and the one that I see get most business owners into hot water. The truth is that [00:03:00] if you clone yourself, then you’re just going to be the blind leading the blind, and you’re going to have a very lopsided team.

I actually talk about this more in episode. So I won’t dive in too deep into it here, but the reason this is deadly for a team is that if you don’t drop a level deeper into why you or someone on your team is successful in a role, and the chances of lightning striking twice are pretty much zilch. I’m not a fan of the founder cloning themselves, but finding a [00:03:30] like-minded team members who are also high-performing.

You go, Glen Coco, that I’m aligned with, but you gotta peel back the onion a layer or two and see where the magic really. Otherwise, as I said before, you’re gonna have two people with the same weaknesses and the blind leading the blind. Myth number two, most employees should just know what I need and get it done.

Whew. Saying this one out loud makes me cringe, and it also makes me think that maybe this should have [00:04:00] been number one, but gosh, do I hear this a lot. I just want so and so to know what I need before I need it and get it done. Does that sound familiar? Honestly, in fact, one of my clients said that in an exasperation just the other day, which if you work with me, you’ll know was met with a laugh in a moment of tough love.

Because here’s the hard truth about this myth players, which if you’re not familiar with this term, I invite you to go back and listen into episode three are really good at having a plan and [00:04:30] anticipating threats in getting what needs to get done, done. But even a world class player can’t read your mind, trust.

I’m still working on the superpower, have not mastered it. If you find somebody that can read mines, you let me know. Your team needs a clear definition of done mission accountability, our goal to go after. And they need to be set up for success by proper onboarding, which is to be honest, where most business owners fall flat on their face.

And leads me to [00:05:00] myth number three. I’m just going to throw them in the deep end and whoever can swim, can stay. Ooh, shocking. This is the norm, not the exception. In my experience, one of the biggest ROIs is having a comprehensive onboarding process instead of throwing your employees into the deep end and seeing who sinks and who swims.

It also happens to be the thing that is missing in oh, 80% of my client’s teams [00:05:30] when they start with us, because it isn’t sexy, it feels big and overwhelming. And the business is a living, breathing entity, which means that sometimes onboarding changes and a lot of entrepreneurs like to set it and forget it.

Here’s the beautiful thing though. It’s actually really simple and the dividends, it will pay. When you do, it can’t be counted like it really pays you back over and over and over again. The advice I give to my clients is if you find yourself leading a team without an onboarding roadmap, [00:06:00] just ask your.

Honestly, this is one of the most simple things you can do is if you don’t have an onboarding process, which again, most people don’t, so don’t beat yourself up, is lean on your team and you can also build one with your team. But if you ask them what they would’ve liked to have seen when they started or would’ve supported them most as they were getting up to speed, or what advice they would give a new team member, et cetera.

Suddenly your onboarding [00:06:30] process will start building itself. At the end of the day, onboarding is simply introducing them to your business, how it works, who’s who, culture, et cetera. And then most importantly, introducing them to their role. Now, we cut out a lot of time and energy by making the second part of that digestible and simple with our scorecards.

Don’t worry, I’ll link that in the show. Because your team will start anticipating and being autonomous, not to mention empowered when they know what is expected. And that’s [00:07:00] really what all of the onboarding process is set up to do, is to support them in their role, their accountabilities, their expectations, and really just what success in their role is all about.

And if you’ve hung around me long enough, you’ve probably heard my favorite piece of advice about expect. Unshared expectations are nothing more than premeditated resentments. You want your team to be autonomous and anticipate, then take the time to do the upfront work to set them up for success. [00:07:30] I know you hired them to help you so you could get more quote unquote big work done, but they can help you if you don’t take a breath and help them first.

Now that I’ve gotten my top three myths out of the way, let me give you some context on the four Cs of a high performing employee slash team so I can tell you which one takes down the most people. The first C is clarity. Honestly, it all starts with clarity. As you heard me say above, I’m gonna say it again.

Unshared expectations are nothing more than [00:08:00] premeditated resentments. Clarity of not only their role, purpose, accountabilities, expectations, et cetera, but the vision of the. The team needs to know where the ship is sailing to stay on course without those GPS coordinates of your goals. Building a high performing team that sticks is almost impossible.

The second C is capability. This one’s pretty straightforward, but it actually stumps a lot of people. People think about capability as can they use the tools that we use in the business day to day, whether it’s [00:08:30] Salesforce, G-Suite, whatever, that’s not actually what capability. Capability is, do they have the innate talents to be successful in the role?

You can always learn skills, but they have to be hardwired to love what they’re doing and the five acres of land that they’re overseeing. Otherwise, no one wins capacity. Most people think this is about putting too much on someone’s plate, and while that is partially true, it’s more about putting too many unrelated things on their plate.[00:09:00] 

You see, we all have superpowers and what we naturally gravitate. We also know what it’s like to beat our head against the wall, trying to do something not in our wheelhouse because it quote unquote, has to get done. Am I right? And then last but not least, the fourth C is communication. Good. Communication is everything.

It really is the secret sauce to a great team. I like to find out how my team processes information, how they like to get feedback, how they like to be acknowledged and [00:09:30] communicate to them that our company communication is bi direct. I expect them to call me out if I’ve mucked something out and give me feedback to improve whenever they feel called to, and I do the same for them honestly.

I suggest you ditch the yearly reviews and do quarterly reviews paired with OKRs objectives and key results. If that is a foreign term to you. I invite you to read the book, measure what matters, and then address anything in real time. The more feedback and communication you [00:10:00] have, the better the team will.

It really keeps trust and momentum up as well as improves the body of business as you grow. So now that you know the basic definitions of the four Cs, let’s dive into the one that I see take down most teams capacity. The reason this one takes down so many is because no matter how great you are on the other three, if you hang your employee out to drive by adding too many unrelated accountabilities on them, it won’t be long before tick, [00:10:30] tick.

[00:10:31] Music: Boom. 

[00:10:33] Lauren: As I mentioned before, we all naturally go towards the things we’re good at and enjoy and when that is the whole of your role, it is a dream. But if you have things outside your wheelhouse, it’s a slog. And more often than not, those items will get lower priority. I see this a lot with a manager who thinks something is important, but the employee doesn’t.

So lemme paint this picture. Oftentimes this happens because. When you have things that are [00:11:00] outside a skillset or a different energy, things that are not in that employee’s skillset will get subconsciously deprioritized because they’re harder to do and take them out of flow. So it’s not necessarily that they don’t think the thing is important, it’s just that it takes so much energy that for them to do it, that they keep putting it off.

We actually see this in daily life all the time. Just think about stuff that’s on your to-do list that you’re like, oh, [00:11:30] this is something I really don’t wanna do. For me, it’s anything having to do with the taxes or a camp take. So if you have a conflict between a manager and employee where important things are not getting done, chances are there’s either a mismatch in the definition of done or expectations around timelines or going back to capacity.

The reason it’s not getting done is because it’s truly. In alignment with the skillset and energy of that employee. [00:12:00] When you give your employees things that are outside their skillset, superpowers, et cetera, then you’re setting you and them up for failure and disappointment because it’s gonna be this consistent friction point, which gets to the point of no return sometimes, which is.

That word resentment is hands down. The biggest reason why this seat is the one that can create the most havoc and the one that you should pay the most attention to [00:12:30] In teams, there really isn’t anything that can’t be cleaned up or fixed as long as resentment hasn’t entered the room. But once it comes in and you, your team or your employee has started feeling resentment, there’s very little you can do to stop that free.

When an employee gets to this point, my best advice is find a win-win and let them go. Now, if you are at the point of resenting your business, we need to talk cuz it just takes a few tweaks with the business doctor, since you as the [00:13:00] owner, have more control, there are just a few things you can do to step out of that, which are more simple and fun than you might think.

But if it’s your employee, It’s starting to get resentful, then it’s time to cut that out because that resentment is going to breed turmoil in the team. And the analogy I love to use here is, um, if you’ve ever gone to the grocery store and bought like a clam shell of raspberries and they look beautiful, right?

They’re like, oh, this is the perfect one. And the [00:13:30] next day you open the refrigerator and all of a sudden there’s like a few moldy ones and you’re like, what the heck? How did. . Well, it’s because there was one in there that you didn’t see that was molding, that just infiltrated all of them, and that’s how resentment works in teams.

It’s that if you don’t weed it out, if you don’t find it and get it, it will toxically infiltrate your whole team. I’ll leave you with this. Take some time and look at your team and where you and [00:14:00] them align on the four Cs with the most important question. Are all things I or they’re accountable to in our zone of genius.

That’s it for this week’s episode. If you wanna dive deeper into the CS of team success, I invite you to connect with me on linkedin@goldenkeypartnership.com, or even stepping into our C-Suite. I’d love to hear from you and your biggest takeaways, so make sure you’re following along. Tag me on Instagram or LinkedIn or wherever you hang out on the interwebs.

Thanks so much for. [00:14:30] We’ll see you 

[00:14:30] Music: next week.

[00:14:40] Lauren: Thanks for listening to The Biz Doctor Podcast. You’re probably wondering what your next steps are. Hmm. So here are some options for you

no matter what. Head to the show notes or to my website@goldenkeypartnership.com. That’s real. Find two awesome business [00:15:00] resources to help you unlock your team and your. Plus more information about stepping into the C-Suite with me and my team. The C-Suite is the only container of its kind for entrepreneurs.

It was created to give you the tools to bridge the gap that most entrepreneurs have learning how to be an effective business leader. And also providing the mental health support that is necessary to build a world class business.[00:15:30] 

After that, our diagnostic deep dive might just be what the doctor ordered. This deep dive will help us identify what is really holding you and your business back from more profitability. And sustainable growth. All of that info is on our website@goldenkeypartnership.com. I’d also love to connect with you on LinkedIn.

Finally, if you love the Biz Doctor podcast, I’d be grateful if you share it with your friends and colleagues on social media. [00:16:00] Or give us a five star review wherever you listen to your podcast.