Angela Heit | How To Build Better Teams

Joel Harris: The publishing for profit podcast is brought to you by ghost writers in code, earn more money by publishing better content and learn how do we increase your thought leadership so you can build your brand head over to ghost writers and code.com for more information. That’s ghost writers and go.com and now your host, Joel Mark Harris.

Hello, this is Joel Mark Harris, and this is the publishing for profit podcast. Today we speak with Angela Haidt of dream team solutions, and we talk about what makes a good team and a good leader. Angela has been working with hundreds of  companies to build their teams with HR practices, with good leadership skills.

So hopefully you enjoy this episode. Hello, Angela, and welcome to the publishing for profit podcast. We have Angela Haidt of dream team solutions here. She has been spending a lot of her time, building teams, recruiting and, working on, people’s leadership. So, I want to start here, Angela. what.

Angela Heit: What makes a good team? Well, I mean, basically a really great team is a team that, where everybody gets along. So there’s a lot of camaraderie. everybody is contributing, so they’re all contributing equally and everyone is aligned and going in the same direction. So those are kind of the main three things.

If you have those three things, then everything else is a derivative of it. Okay. What, when, when teams fight, is there a, a some sort of solution on a, what do you look at when you have conflict in teams. Well, at first you got to step back and look at where does conflict come from, right? I mean, we, we learn about how to deal with other people in our own family systems.

So, you know, what happens with families. There’s some families who are yellers. There are other families that are silent. See, there’s, you know, and then there’s others that just never acknowledge any kind of emotion or anything like that, right? So there’s like a myriad of different types of families that are out there.

So now think about it. You’ve learned how to deal with other people and how to fight. With people in your family and deal with conflict in there. Now you’re coming into a workplace and you might have a totally different style than another person that’s there. So that’s where sometimes the conflict happens because you got different co styles and nobody really knows how to move forward on it.

So, I mean, the best way to actually deal with it is to come up with a common way of dealing with conflict. Because no matter what happens, there’s always going to be conflict in any kind of a situation where there’s multiple people, right? So if you’ve got a way of actually moving through it, like, you know, step one, two, three, four, then people know how to do it and they do it, and then it becomes a norm, right?

Joel Harris: In terms of how you’re actually in the company, how you deal with the conflict. So that’s what I look at, that I look at. So what kind of conflicts are happening? How do people deal with conflicts. What is the common trait? And it’s always interesting because an entire organization will start to adopt, the way that the owner or the leader of the organization actually deals with conflict.

Angela Heit: So if they kind of sweep it under the rug or their finger pointers in terms of that’s that person’s fault or that kind of thing, it becomes part of the culture. So by setting up a conflict resolution process with that step one, two, three, four kind of thing, what it does is it gives everybody an opportunity to go, okay, let’s deal with this more constructive.

Joel Harris: Cool. is there anything, any commonality that you see with, you know, really high performing teams and how can, how can companies get there. Okay. So when, I mean, obviously in terms of a high performing team, he needs a really good leader. And so when it comes down to the leader, the leader needs to be very clear in terms of the vision, in terms of where they want to go.

Angela Heit: And their vision needs to be something that inspires other people. so a really good example of that is somebody we both know, Alison brand, who basically has set up an organization that says, I want to achieve these types of awards in my. Industry, and so her entire team works towards that. It’s very inspiring, right?

for the group. The second thing is I’m setting out clear goals and how everybody contributes to achieving those goals. So as long as everybody understands what their role is, because everybody in a work situation wants to contribute to something, right? They want to actually do a good job at work. It makes them more fun.

It makes it more satisfying. Right? So you need to understand from your own personal perspective how you contribute to the vision. So it’s the leader’s job to actually communicate that to the person that they’re part of the teams, to basically say, this is your role, this is what you’re doing, and this is how you contribute to the goals, and this is what I expect.

And then the next thing is to track progress, right? So you’re going, okay, so you’re taking along and you’re going towards the, the goal. And the idea is to, basically, you’ve got to track progress and you’ve got to eliminate obstacles, right? Cause you’re going to bow, you’re bound to run into obstacles, right?

So the leader’s job is to actually see them work through them, figure out how to stop. Going there and move around so that he keep moving forward and that the last thing is to celebrate, right? So as a group together to celebrate with everybody else so that people understand that they’re moving somewhere and that they’re achieving something and that they’re all, you know, yay.

I think for me, one of the hardest. Parts of that process is tracking. So what are some tips that you can, you can give that? Well, help businesses, solopreneurs, you know, large organizations track their process and, and know that they’re actually go, you know, they’re reaching towards the goal. Yeah. Well, I mean, there’s a lot of ways of actually traveling and tracking, businesses.

And I’m in, a lot of them comes down to the financials in terms of tracking the financials, because if you’re profitable, you’re actually successful, right? So there’s that one piece, but if you want something a little bit more simpler, really what you’re doing is you’re kind of, again, going back to here’s the vision, and then you say, okay, we want to win X number of awards this year.

So then in order to do that, you need to work backwards and go, okay, to get there, we need to do X, Y, and Z. so what w what you’re doing is when you hit X, you basically go, okay, we’ve hit X, or no, we haven’t hit X yet. And the best way to do that is actually in a meeting. So you do regular weekly meetings where you’re looking at, okay, where is everybody at on the progress of their things?

So if they’re reporting saying, I’m working on X, Y, and Z. And then the second thing is, I have challenges with this. I’m stuck here. Can anybody help me? And then the opportunity for everybody to actually help that person, then it helps everybody to move in the right direction, right? So if everybody’s doing that, there’s a real accountability there.

Nobody can Slack off because you know that every single week you’re going to be reporting on your progress. And if you’re not moving well, then you’re not making any progress, right? So there’s a lot of peer pressure around that. and then. And then as you’re actually measuring it or saying that there is an issue, it allows other people to collaborate with you, right?

Just say, okay, if you do X, or if we come up with something else to do it, or if you do ABC, then you know, we’ll solve that particular problem and you come up with different solutions to solve the particular challenge so that you can get to that, to that next milestone. And then once you hit the milestone, as I said before, celebrate, right?

So that everybody wants to continue to move forward. Oh yeah. I think that’s some really great advice. now that you know, we’re all working remotely with covert 19, it’s, I feel like it’s, it’s really hard to, to work together, to collaborate and to come up with those creative solutions. Can you give us some tips on.

What teams can do to, increase the productivity, increase the collaborativeness, when they’re, they’re working basically in, at home, without any, you know, external input. Yeah. Yeah. I guess, I mean, the biggest problem there is of course, when you’re, you know, when you’re in a group and you’re added office, everybody’s together.

You can walk around, you can walk to each other’s desks, you can ask questions, you know, there’s opportunity for people to eat lunch together, that kind of thing. So other sort of cross pollination kind of happens. All that seems to happen. But when you’re remote, think of it in terms of each individual person being often like in Austin, their little spot, right?

So, so that’s exactly what’s happening right now. So the, the real thing right now is thinking of artificial or other ways of actually making sure that you have that cross pollination. So again, that weekly meeting so that everybody knows where everybody is. Every single week going forward. And then when it comes down to solving challenges, so the challenges that come up in the actual meeting, it gives you the opportunity to say, okay, Joel, you work with Nina over there and YouTube.

Work that out and come back next week to let us know how you’ve actually moved past that. Right? Or you set up smaller, smaller groups to do that. So when you set up those types of things to go forward, each time what you’re doing is you’re naturally involving people. So then they can go on to like, even without something like, you know, like there’s a bunch of tools out there, you know, from everything from Slack to, you know, tick dog has stuff to Microsoft three 60 they all have different things, ways of actually having teams.

But ultimately what it is, it’s basically sharing documents. Which you can do, overeat email, it’s visual, you know, like video training kind of thing. And then there’s, sometimes there’s numbers in terms of what, what’s involved as well. But really, again, you can make it as simple as possible. Just use zoom so that you have those small group collaborations.

And also in the, you know, in the weekly team meeting. Specifically ask people to support each other, like how you can use support the other people that are there. So you give people a chance to kind of little bit jump, brainstorm on things, to bring stuff up. And, and the other thing that’s happening right now, which is interesting, is that because of the coven, social isolation piece, there are more people at home than you would ever find, right?

So if typically if you work from home, you have your own dedicated office space. Because you’ve set that up for yourself, right? Because you’ve made that decision to work from home. Well, here we are in a situation where everybody was kind of forced to work from home. So that means that you know, your mom, your dad, your kids, your siblings, your pets, like everybody’s there.

And the worst thing is, is that right now we’ve been in it for such a long time, and what we were saying before, you know, we’re ready to crawl up the wall so everybody’s really bored. So that means that if you’re working, they’re going to be like tapping on your shoulder, gone, Hey, I want your attention. I want your attention.

So that whole interruption piece is a big piece right now as well. So again, when it comes down to managing that time type of team, what you need to do is you need to acknowledge it. So, you know, as part of the meeting going, okay, so what are your challenges? And the challenges may be noise. It may be distractions.

It may be the fact that everybody’s pulling on the same internet, you know, and on your wifi so that you have no bandwidth to do anything. Right? So all those things need to be addressed. And the best way to do that is to really encourage people to talk about it. And then don’t judge them, but give them a solution.

So help them to come up with the solution, either as a group, you come up with the solution or one-on-one, you look at it and go, okay, what can we do? Can we get you noise canceling headphones? Can we get you a dedicated, you know, high speed internet line? Can we get you a partition? You know, whatever it happens to be, kind of thing.

So it will be a one-to-one. And you’ll have to decide what you actually want to do. And you know, some of it will obviously be predicated by how much money you have available to do it, but you know, the best you can is actually to deal with those types of things. I think one of the things I miss about working in the office is the creative problem solving.

And I feel like. My creative problem solving skills have definitely decreased over the last, you know, a couple of weeks. so is there, I mean, you talked about it a little bit briefly, but is there a way that you can kind of comb those skills, those, those skills that you really need a team to solve?

Comes down to the questions again, right. The questions that you’re asking. So if you’re getting everybody to talk about, again, it’s pretty simple. Like, I mean, I always bring it right back to this simple form of love, which basically says, you know, where are they? What are the obstacles? And you know, I’m like, there’s nothing off limits right now, right?

I mean, you’re in a family situation, you’re. You know your desk situation, the fear that’s coming up right now, because that’s the other piece too, is that, you know, people have their fear, they’re in theater. You can see it all over the internet and everything, right? There’s people are in fear. And so what happens with fears that it takes up most of your brain space, right?

So what happens is that you might be sitting at your computer trying to work. But your brain is going all over the place. It’s either in fight or flight, so you’re not necessarily being productive, right? So that all reduces creativity. So giving people the opportunity to voice what their issues are and then addressing them as a team, again, helps to increase the amount of collaboration and then the amount of cooperation and creativity to solve them.

Right? And everybody’s going to come up with different solutions.  you talk about a fear. You know, I, I did some research before, you know, jumping on this podcast. you know, you, you write several really well, written LinkedIn articles. One specifically jumps up in my mind about fear and how. Yeah. I think, you know, you talk a lot about the media and how you, like you said that the, there’s so much fear on the internet.

You just open Facebook these days and all it is is people are very scared. What specifically, I guess, what can leaders do? What can business owners do to help their employees help themselves through this time where it’s very uncertain and really combat that fear. Well, I mean from, from the business owner themselves is the first thing is they need to acknowledge that there is fear.

Cause I mean, you know, these are delicate subjects, right? In terms of talking about fear, it’s kind of similar to the old, it’s kind of a mess, you know? mental kind of disorder kind of thing. In terms of, of looking at. Lost my train of thought about  how leaders can, can help through fear. Basically. It’s kind of like stress right? You know, that kind of side of things where it’s hard to talk about because if people are having issues, on that psychological side of things, it’s not ever ZZ taught to talk about from a manager’s perspective. And the employee does not always want it.

Talk about it neither, right. Cause they don’t want to show that they’ve got high anxiety or whatever’s going on. Cause they don’t want to seem like they’re less than. So really being, open about it and acknowledging it is really the first point of it and talking about it. And that means one on one conversations.

And it also means group conversations because what you’re going to find in the entire team is that people are going to have similar fears right. So then people don’t feel so alone in it. And then the second thing is once you actually have acknowledged dance, it’s really a shirt reassuring people again to say, you know what?

This is normal. This is what our brain goes through when we’re in fear, and we can actually move forward and lay out a path. So again, back to the vision. It’s like, what’s the business? What’s the business look like right now? What do we need to do? Cause if it’s still up and running and you’re having your, your employees work remotely, you’ve got tasks to actually complete.

So what is the plan to do things right now? And then it’s like, what does it look like? So what is your business gonna look like? Post Ovid. Right? So what are some plans that you have in place to maybe change how you do business? Cause this is definitely gonna change how things actually happen and how business is done.

Just even in terms of how many people will probably be working remotely going forward. It’s going to be much more acceptable than even that it is right now. And then the last thing is the opportunity for people to provide support to each other. So, you know, reaching out or just checking in with each other to say, how are you doing?

That always helps. things like group exercise programs, group of social things like, you know, a beer or wine night kind of thing where everybody comes in to to do that kind of thing. There’s a lot of online games as well. And that’s, that’s really what my next article was about, which is really about, inspiring and motivating your team and kind of making a little bit more fun.

Right? And these terrible times. So what kind of games can you actually play with your people online. so there’s that you can do that kind of thing. So anything to actually lighten the mood and how people to move forward and know that there’s a way to actually get forward and that they’re still going to have a job when they finish.

Cause that’s really ultimately the point. Right.  yes. so you’ve worked with, you know, hundreds of companies, you know, through your career you’ve seen so many leaders. What makes a good leader and what can people. Learn how to, how to be a good leader. Yeah. Well it’s interesting. I was just thinking about that cause I was putting a presentation together and no, a business when you’re a business owner and the leader of the business.

The business is a direct reflection of you, right? So we can only go as far as you can go. So whatever areas you’re not willing to touch or really to look at is the areas in your business is probably reflecting the same thing back, right? So let’s say that you have a problem with conflict and you don’t really like dealing with conflict.

And so you’ll never talk to that person that I know many business owners that are in this particular situation because they tend to, they end up having performance issues with their employees because. You know, the first time something comes up and it’s not the way that they want to, they let it slide and then the second time they let it slide and the third time, you know, until it becomes a pattern.

And then, you know, at some point in time they might get to a point where they blow up at the person because they’ve done it 15 times the wrong way, and the other person’s kind of sitting there going, I don’t understand. Yeah. Because you’ve never said anything before. Right? So those kinds of things, where are the areas where you’re not willing to go to is where do you need to actually push through?

Because your business is a direct reflection of that. And so I’ll give you, I’ll give you another example. So when I was running my second business, that’s the business that I grew to, 25 people and I sold. one of the interesting things that I found just that. There was, we went from $1,500 a month, which didn’t cover anything when we first started, to $250,000 a month.

So we just went full in two and a half year period. And the interesting thing that I noticed when we were actually growing, because I was the one who handled the money in terms of the money going in and the money going out. I hit a certain plateau, like, you know, it was like $25,000 coming in, going out.

Right. Cause we had a lot of people, right. So, you know, the money would be going in and they’d be going out and whatever area I didn’t feel comfortable with. So once I started getting like. 25,000 it’s $50,000 a month. It’s $100,000 a month and I’m writing checks for it. Right. You it only moved to the next level.

Once I actually got comfortable with that particular level and got comfortable with that. And those numbers because as I had my own kind of fear come up in it, it would stop. So that’s what I’ve noticed with businesses in general. When I look at all the businesses that I’ve worked with, whatever plateaus you reach, you have to actually work through that plateau before it moves to the next level.

So business will only grow as fast as the leader grows. That’s so true. And just thinking about what you said earlier about. Not being afraid to confront your employee, and having that same mistake made over and over and over. I’ve done that so many times. So it’s interesting to hear that other people have that problem.

So, I’m happy all the time. I think that’s probably one of the biggest issues. You know, with, with leaders in general who are, you know, learning to lead a team is that they’re not, one thing is they’re not necessarily always clear in terms of what their expectations are. So the other, so they’re waiting, they’re kind of going, Oh, that’s assumed.

But nothing’s ever assumed, right? So when another person doesn’t quite do what they wanted them to do, it’s an opportunity for them to actually go through and go, no, this is actually how we do things here. And this is, you know, this is what we need you to do and what, so when you have that kind of conversation right up front and makes it really easy, but if you do let it slide, because our human brains kind of go.

Oh, well, that person’s brand new. We’ll let them, you know, they’re not doing it. Or the second time it’s like, Oh, they didn’t do that on purpose. There’s such a nice guy. That kind of thing. So you just kind of let it slide from that perspective. But after a certain point, you know, you get to a point where you go, Oh my God, what am I gonna need that person?

So it does get to that. So yeah, it’s very common. So your, your company dream team solutions is a relatively new creation. Can you tell us kind of like the origin story of, you know, how you know, you’re, that company came about. How and why are you moving in this direction? Well, I spend, so, I mentioned, I’ve been working for myself now, as I said, for 26 years.

My second business was the one that grew to 25 people, and I actually sold that. So that was in 2002. and then I started, Crystal’s people solutions, which was basically HR and team solutions for small business owners here in Vancouver. and what I found was that there were the same problems get happening over and over and over again for my business owners, and I would solve them from them each.

So what I wanted to do is I actually wanted to actually have a bigger reach. So a lot of what I’m doing now is that my new site is really a resource site for leaders. Who want to do better at people management because they know that if they’re better at the people management and the leadership side of it, they can grow their business faster.

So what I offer is I actually offer programs. So there are courses and there’s programs. So the courses are either they’re standalone, where you can just do them on your phone, or you actually have coaching to help you move through it faster or better. I also do group coaching programs where a group of business owners will be working together on a particular, subject.

So one of the things that I’m actually doing right now is creating one on remote team leadership and how to get the most out of your people in those kinds of situations. Because as I mentioned before, what’s probably gonna happen now is that. We’ve all gone on mass at home and all of those organizations that were actually resisting, you know, the idea of having people work from home have now had to jump into it.

I don’t think there’s going to be any going back. I’m not saying that everybody’s going to continue to work from home, but there’s going to be a lot more people that have that flexibility of going in and out. And there’s a lot of challenges, as we mentioned before, in terms of working from home. So that’s going to be my next program.

So that’s going to be a six week program. And then I’ve got a year long leadership program as well, which is basically around setting your business up properly. So every aspect of it. From your workflow, the right people, your goals, your vision, the whole thing in terms of the internal side of things, to track it, to eliminate obstacles, to celebrate wins, like all of that, to set it up from beginning to end so that it grows faster so everybody can actually move in that direction.

Joel Harris: Cool. That’s a lot of, yeah, a lot of, learning a lot of programs. So that’s, that’s amazing. can you walk us through, so the, the one year leadership per, who’s that for and what can they get out of it? Well, let me just go to my, my sales page. I remember it.

Angela Heit: Yeah. Basically. So, so the ideas is, is your long leadership program. It’s for business owners and leaders. So you could be a leader of a department and a slightly larger company as well. It would work for both. so they understand that growing their business faster is by leveraging their team. So you know that there’s no real business out there that exists really without any people.

And the bigger the business gets in, the more successful the business gets, the more people there are. Excuse me, my voice is going on me.

so, so leveraging their team is really the fastest way to actually get to the point of growth. So we look at, increasing team performance. we’re looking at consciously creating a high performing company culture so that we can get a greater ROI on the wages that we pay. we’re leveraging the town skills and abilities of your team and you’re structuring your people and the work that they do so that it goes faster.

Joel Harris: Yeah. Cool. All right. I’m going to switch gears on you a little bit because this is, about, publishing. so can we talk about your LinkedIn articles and why, why choose that as a way to market yourself. A, I like writing, so I enjoy writing and I haven’t really had the opportunity to really do that kind of thing.

Angela Heit: generally I would say that my people are probably on LinkedIn more so than they would be on Facebook. I don’t really know Instagram, so I’m not sure about Instagram in terms of where people are there. But generally what I’m looking for is I’m looking for those business leaders and owners who tend to have more of a presence on LinkedIn than they do.

Or at least on a business side, that’s what they’re looking for. Versus like a Facebook, they might be on Facebook as well, but when they’re on Facebook, it’s more social. Right? They’re just doing back and forth with their family or their friends. They’re not necessarily looking for stuff with regards to business there.

So that’s why I chose LinkedIn. Cool. Is there, what other marketing channels, if any, do you use? Okay, well, the. The thing is, is that all of my business up til, you know, over the 26 years, it’s really come from referrals. So it’s come from referrals from, people that I’ve done business with. And then referral organizations like the one we belong to with BNI.

Right? But I mean, what I find is that, you know, if you do, if you do great at what you’re doing, they’ll refer you to other people. and then also provide value, right? So the value really is, so these articles that I’m putting out are answers to people’s questions. So I get these kinds of questions all the time.

So what I’m doing is I’m putting out the information to them, both by email and then on LinkedIn, so that they have the opportunity to actually learn from it and you know, to grow and to go further on it. So, yeah. So referral and. LinkedIn, I guess I don’t really do a lot.

is there, so, you know, you mentioned that you liked writing. is there a book or maybe a person that has been really influential in your life and especially in your, I guess, your business life that, you know, has kind of changed the course of your direction.

Well, I, I find it interesting because, I don’t actually always read a lot of, of business books. what I do is I’m actually inspired by. More in terms of personal growth. So I was looking at it from a personal growth perspective, and I’m looking at it from a psychology, psychological perspective because my degree is actually in psychology, in human behavior.

So mom, I’m always interested in how people interact and how they actually work together. And you don’t always get that. You get that in some business folks. You do. but I’m not specifically that, You know that inspired by that, like one of the books I’m reading right now, so I’m just finishing it up.

it’s, called the surrender experiment and it’s written by, Michael Sager. So Michael Sager, he built a company, it was a billion dollar company. over his career. But he doesn’t describe himself as a business person. He describes himself as a Yogi and a meditator. So he, this, this entire book is basically about how have you surrender to life.

whatever your concept of how big or whatever your vision is, is nothing in comparison to what life will bring you in. So he didn’t have the dream to actually create $1 billion company. But this particular book just goes through one, you know, one incident after another, one for one incidence, one synchronicity after another way.

He needs the right people, the right things happen, everything happens in the right, perfect moment for him to get to that particular particular place. And it’s the story of all the connections of all that as he goes through. So that I find actually quite. Quite inspiring, especially right now because we don’t know what the future’s going to look like.

And so the idea of getting to a point where you’re surrendering to it, we’re not kind of fighting and worried about it and all that kind of stuff, and you can surrender to it. The more you have that peace and that place where you can actually then. Come up with the inspired way to match, actually move forward with your own business.

So that to me is probably more inspiring then some of the, you know, other kind of more typical business books. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast, Angela. Where can people find you. So a dream team. Dot solutions. And you can also find me on LinkedIn under Angela height and then on Facebook if you want to connect with me more socially as Angelica  .

Awesome. well, thank you so much for being here and for your time and all your wisdom. So yeah, thanks so much. All take care. Bye. Thank you for listening to publishing for profit. Please like and subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. .