How to Build a Startup Team?

It’s not an individual but a team that marks the success of any business. Therefore, every startup or business needs a strong team.

A team is a group of individuals with different unique skills who come together, work under the same umbrella for a common goal and contribute their efforts to achieve that goal.

But, success is a hard way to get! Building a winning startup team could be challenging for founders and team leaders. Hiring people, providing them training, connecting them with the goals of team members, building bonds that are positive to the team; all of this is time and effort consuming.

The leaders, who dare to ignore the importance of a team, will end up with an unorganized business, and eventually loses its pace, and dump themselves in its own confusion.

Whereas, leaders who spend their time building a strong team for their startup or their business, give them a huge advantage and grow their startup in all situations.

We will focus on the core of team-building in this article and try to understand the major aspect of building a strong startup or business team.

Let’s begin.

Why Not an Individual? Why a Team!

Building a successful startup is challenging but you being the key person have to take all major decisions. But when it comes to implementation; a strong startup team is required.

For those who think that they alone can do it, remember “One Man Can’t Spin All Plates”.

Overconfidence can be deadly. One shade of color can’t make a real painting. Therefore, an individual can’t do everything that a team member in a startup does.

A team is your only living resource that can bring your business idea to life with their creativity and skills.

Business involves web-of-work. Each work demands a different set of resources and skills, hence a team with people of different skills is mandatory for a successful startup.

Now, we will explain to you four different points that need to be taken care of while forming a team for your startup. These are:

Team Structure
Team Behaviour
Role & Responsibilities
Success & Failure

Let’s look at each aspect one by one.

1. An Ideal Team Structure

The first step towards building a startup team is deciding its structure. A strong structure defines how an ideal team will look like and what members it will have?

A team is complete with a team leader and some dedicated team members. And, the team should not be confused with the community.

The number of team members depends on the range of goals, and the variety of tasks required to achieve success. It must be dynamic, i.e. the team has frequent in and out of members based on requirements or other reasons.

Nowadays, it is done more frequently due to changes in market demand and technology.

Steps to decide team structure:

Be clear with your goals and strategies you would adopt for it.
Break down the goal into different sub-tasks
Assign the right tasks to the right person
Make them understand the power of a strong group and direct them towards a common goal
Connect all members under a common leader
Each member is accountable for their work, and together their work must be complementary to each other.

Overlapping of the work must be avoided, as that might create conflict. So, there must be a proper delegation of work.

So, a successful team is meaningful only if its members play their own individual part without interfering in others’. And, together their contribution in amalgamation forms a complete task.

2. An Ideal Team Behavior

The strength of a good team is not just defined by its structure but also the mindset of the team members.

Behavioral aspects of team members and team leaders decide their abstract interaction, and psychologically impact each other’s goal. Their minds need a common alignment towards the mission and, require sync or understanding that builds better communication and exchange of ideas.

Each individual mind should have the urge to contribute to the common mission more than just doing their day job.

Judging the work of other team members should be avoided. Instead, everyone should focus on giving their best and motivating others to give their best without judging others’ work in the team.

Mutual respect among team members is equally important. Disputes sometimes are obvious and should be resolved with healthy communication.

3. Roles and Responsibilities

Real action results in real outcomes. It’s the individual roles and responsibilities, and how sincerely they carry out their roles, decide the overall outcome of teamwork in a startup.

The leader of the team gives direction to the workflow and keeps the team united and free from all conflicts.

While each team member needs to look upon their own task and how effectively they do that, decide the real, final outcomes.

A good team member also considers “helping other team members” as a genuine responsibility.

4. Success/failure & Celebration/learning

How you treat your team on the basis of success or failure decides the future and the strength of your team.

Success is not guaranteed. And, it should not be assumed that having a good team always brings success.

Failure is more probable, and success is less. You need to be ready to face failure more than success. Also, failure has more lessons than success. So, start learning from your failures as well.

Conversely, when success knocks on the door, take your team for a celebration. Give them a good treat and thank and appreciate them for their hard work.

Celebration fills them with new energy, refreshes their minds, and changes the mood to take the next higher flight.

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Final Words!

Every mission needs a strong team. And, three key contexts for a strong team are—clear direction, strong structure, and the right mindset.

Startup and business founders need to invest serious concern over team formation because a good team decides the success and failure of an entrepreneurial mission.

These are some conclusive traits to build a startup team:

Team leaders must have leadership traits.
Team members must have complementary skills and expertise.
Members should not belittle each other; no matter how small/big their roles are.
Strong interaction and communication between members and leaders.
Respect and trust for each other
Team members should not fear or hesitate to share their opinions and ideas.
Learn from failure.
Success needs to be scaled up after the celebration

These traits make up a winning team, and although success can’t be guaranteed, it can become more probable.

Thanks for reading the article. Your opinions in the comments will be well appreciated.

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