Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

Dan's Biz Bookshelf: TeamWork—How to Build a High-Performance Team

Interesting fact: Out of 31.5 million small- to mid-size business in this country, 25 million list one employee—the owner. The next 5.3 million business in the group have two to 15 employees, and get this, only the last 600,000 business have more than 15 employees. Frankly, I was shocked by these statistics, enough to make me buy and read the book. I’m glad I did.

In this book, author Natalie Dawson talks about how to grow a team and what it takes to scale that team to success by using various methods of employee engagement.

Hiring people and developing them into a team takes a passionate leader who is able to guide her team through the development of a clear and concise mission statement. As Ms. Dawson points out, “Your mission statement is for your team, and your brand statement is for your clients.”

I like this book because it deals with what many company leaders talk about as “the fuzzy stuff”: core values, shared passions, and common goal achievements. These are all ingredients to making a successful team.

As the author says, “Once you have created your mission statement, vision statement, and core values, put them on everything (literally). By doing so, you make it perfectly clear what your organization is about and what you are looking for.”

Personally, I feel that everyone in the company should be able to not only recite these things but passionately feel them as well. Dawson emphasizes that they should be used in everything, including job postings, the interview and hiring process, and may I add, in the job descriptions.

Then there must be ongoing enforcement through constant communications from daily all-team meetings to setting and meeting PPF (personal, professional, and financial) goals. It’s all about driving passionately toward the common goals of the company’s success and it does work. It always amazes me how people can passionately watch football games every Sunday, witness firsthand how those teams use all of these methods to get their teams all driving in the right direction, and then not make the connection to their own teams at their own companies.

People in the end do not work for money; they work their best, they put everything in the line when it is for a cause they believe in. Buy this book and learn how to do it.

Dan Beaulieu is president of D.B. Management Group. 

TeamWork: How to Build a High-Performance Team

Author: Natalie Dawson

Copyright: 2022 Lioncrest Publishing

Pages: 226 pages

Price: $24