Whether you’re bringing employees, or contractors onto your online team, you want to partner with people who are motivated and excited to work with you and your brand. You want a culture where team members connect on a personal level, collaborate with each other in their areas of specialty, and communicate with clarity and empathy.
If you are looking to build or improve your team culture in the online space, my guest, Becky Brunner, is an amazing resource for female entrepreneurs looking to lead a team of motivated, connected, and happy employees and contractors.
Becky is a value-driven, adventure-loving, team culture strategist. And she’s a pro at guiding business owners to incorporate a strategy that develops and nurtures a positive team culture in order to keep productivity high, relationships strong, and employees genuinely happy.
You’re going to get some great actionable tips from this episode and make sure to scroll to the end of the notes for ways to connect with Becky and get free access to her 30 Days to Team Connection Prompts.
Highlights from this Episode
We talk about:
- The three pillars of her business- Connection, collaboration, and communication, and how she uses them to help business owners make the most of their online teams.
- How to connect when working with a team in a virtual environment, and the value of leading with transparency and prioritizing communication.
- Finding good-fit team members authentically, and keeping it super simple and flexible when nurturing those relationships and building team cohesiveness
- Hiring online employees vs contractors, and why it’s important to keep informal interactions and team-building initiatives light, flexible, and optional while being open and upfront and transparent as the leader.
- How to spark authentic collaboration and team connection through Voxer
- Leadership resources like enneagram and disc assessments to help teams understand each other deeply, and to enable business owners to know how to align values, bring teams together and nurture their team members’ strengths
- The 6 questions to get business owners thinking critically about where to begin on their team-building journey.
- How you can access her team culture consulting services to dig deeper. Check out the links at the bottom of the show notes for access to tips ideas and free resources
Captivating Quotes from this Episode:
9:27 Strategies to build connections in a virtual world when it’s not second nature
“And so maybe for you, it’s not natural, you need to add it to your calendar. So at one o’clock every Tuesday, you need to make a note to say –check in with Bob Fran and Cindy because I want to know how they’re doing. Like what are they up to? Did they have a good weekend? Is their family okay? Did they play basketball this weekend? Whatever it is, making those connections sometimes has to be an extra effort. For me it’s natural. I’m naturally an Enneagram 2, hospitality is born in me …those things come naturally to me. And I’ve come to realize that’s, that’s not natural for everyone. So sometimes you need to take that effort to add it to your account or add it to your project management tool until it becomes a regular habit.
12:10 Why and how to start small
Yeah, and I think starting small is so crucial. Because a lot of times if you try doing all the things like- I’m going to do connection and collaboration and communication today, and then tomorrow, we’re going to be great, like, I promise, you’re probably going to fail, because it’s just too much at once, and people are going to be overwhelmed. Starting small is not only going to help you but it’s going to help your team members because they need to slowly trust and see that they can, they can connect, they can collaborate, they can communicate, they are ready. Because until you kind of take that first step, again, starting small, then they will start to feel more comfortable.
19:10- Choosing small, daily steps over lavish events
That just leads to something that I talked about as well like it is amazing to give lavish gifts and do events and retreats for your team members. But you don’t really realize until you start doing it that the little things every day and the little connections and the praise and appreciation that you can show your team members. Even just small things; a $5 Starbucks gift card like Julie you did an incredible job this week like kicking butt we know that you know Jane was out of the office this week and you stepped up to the plate you were incredible and you helped out and not just sharing that to you shared that to the team. Not necessarily that we gave you the gift but that we are so appreciative of what you do and that you stepped up to the plate because everyone should understand and see the excitement that we have for the people that we work with.
29:48 Digging deep into people’s strengths
It can be an incredible change. Because you’ve found their gift. Another person on the team may have, like incredible organizing and managing skills that you would have no idea of. Maybe they worked in another position, that you may have them work with a project manager on certain tasks because their brain works like that. And they absolutely love it. So really digging deep into people’s strengths has been incredibly empowering for me. And I think that more team leaders should really dig into that. Because a person may not share all of their strengths, they may not think of it as a strength, they may think of it as just a regular thing that they do. But to bring it into your business may be a very important part of how you run things.
31:18 Why spending time connecting to your team matters
I would say that taking your team from Meh to a connected and thriving team will help boost productivity and will help make your team members eager to possibly take new things on to bring ideas to the table that may have never been brought up before. I’ve seen amazing things happen once these people have a stronger and more positive culture. In that, just like I said before, team members are willing to jump in and bring in new ideas, they’re willing to take on more leadership roles. They’re willing to maybe connect with team members that they’ve never connected with before. It brings team members potentially to a leadership level that you haven’t even ever seen.
For more tips on creating a thriving and positive team culture:
Website: https://choosehappyassisting.com/
Facebook @choosehappyassisting
Resources:
Snag Becky’s 30 days of team connection prompts
Live Free Academy ( Formerly OTO)
BEFORE YOU GO: If you loved this episode I’d be so honored if you shared it with a friend!