Richard Branson's Team Building Tips
Small businesses often try and fail, big corporations always seem to pick up some loose cannons, and even the world’s biggest sports teams never seem to fully understand the winning combination.
Building a team is tough, and although many football fans claim to have the answer, realistically if you have the secret ingredients, surely you’d be the guy at the top of the food chain. Well, one guy who is at the top of his game seems to be willing to share his secrets.
Virgin, once an ambitious record store, is now an international multi-functional business that pretty much has its fingers in all the pies. Richard Branson, Virgin’s emphatic founder and spokesperson, is revered as being one of Britain’s biggest and brightest businessmen, well, ever. So when he dishes out some advice on how to build a good, solid team, I think it’s fair to say that we should listen.
But Branson isn’t just a shrewd businessman, he’s a humble human to boot – he knows when to admit to defeat and when to fold.
He knows when he has screwed up and he knows that you can’t be good at everything. This is evidenced clearly enough in all the enterprises that haven’t quite worked out in Virgin’s favour. But he does have a ton of relevant advice that will give you the best shot at building a functional team and we’re going to share them with you here.
Play Nice
Seems obvious, right? Unfortunately, the main target of most businesses is to make more money, when they are so focussed on how to go about doing that, they don’t necessarily treat your workers as though they are people but rather like cogs in a machine.
Ironically it is when you treat your employees best that they produce the best work – because, guess what, they feel valued!
Praise is another of Branson’s team building tips, and if you think about it, it makes sense. Do you work harder when you’re criticised or when you’re praised? Branson knows how to motivate.
But this is a lot easier to do when you follow another of Branson’s rules – hire a team that are passionate about your project. If they are passionate, they are invested in its success and it’ll make it a lot easier to praise them because they’ll already be trying hard to succeed.
One way to help a team meld together is to arrange some team building events, for example, indoor team building in London courses provide an easy way to fit team building in around a busy working day.
Photo source: FaceBook - Richard Branson
Be Smart
Sometimes things don’t work out though. And you’ve got to be prepared to change tact – be prepared for the worst, change your bank if you must, make sure you’re promoting effectively. Use free marketing wherever you can get it, because it’s the only free thing worth anything.
More than anything, says Branson, it is important to get the details right. And I think we can all agree that too many corners are being cut these days. Too often a job is half-hearted or a person’s hard work goes unnoticed.
Richard Branson says we need to be meticulous and attentive to every aspect of our business, but he’s also got no shortage of advice to give us. Maybe if we listen, one day we’ll be billionaire philanthropists too. Can’t do any harm to listen can it?
Charlie Berry is the Event Director for London based Zing Events, a corporate event company that delivers innovative and creative team building activities.
