 It's really hard to accomplish anything worth doing all by ourselves. Here's how you can build a great team around you to help accomplish your goals. Welcome back and congratulations on taking one more step towards becoming one of the great leaders of tomorrow. One of the great things about being a leader is all the great people we get to work with on our teams. Today I'll give you four tips on how to build a great team around you to help accomplish your mission. And stay tuned for the end. I'm going to give you a link to where you can download our free Leadership Development Plan Workbook. And that'll help you set your career goals for the next two, five and ten years and build a plan of action to achieve them. One of the things that's true about the military is we very rarely have the same people on a team from beginning to end of a project or mission. We've always got people moving in and out and getting reassigned. So we're always in a mode of developing the talent on our team and building our leadership capacity on those teams. Hopefully you have a little bit more stability on your team. But these four tips today should help you build your team whether you're starting a brand new team for a brand new project or you're just looking to do a little bit of development and training with your existing team or maybe bringing in some new team members. Tip number one for you today is to assess the needs of your team, whether that's skills, experience, knowledge, whatever it is. And this is a great tip for if you've already got an existing team and you have a space to fill, you need to bring in a new member. And it's great if you get to choose who that new member is. Sometimes you don't always get to choose who our members of our team are. But if you get to choose who that new member is, take a look at the skills you think you need on your team and what maybe some of the gaps are that you don't have and try to find someone who's got that skill set or at least some of those skills that you can bring in. And if you can't find someone who has exactly the skill set you need, don't worry about it. Try to find someone who kind of fits the bill, gets most of it there and then you can develop the skills in them or in another team member and kind of fill in those gaps in your team. Again, whether it's skills, knowledge or experience, find someone who fills the gaps in your team the things you feel you need to have to go forward with your mission. Tip number two is to find people who compliment you and the other members of your team. And I don't mean compliment like saying nice things about you, although that is nice when that happens. I'm talking about people who compliment you in the areas where maybe you're not as strong and you compliment them in areas they're not as strong. And this kind of relates to skills like we talked about in the first tip, skills, knowledge and experience, but what I'm really talking about is maybe more personality and attitudes and behaviors kinds of things. If you're working on a project where you might need to go make presentations and sell things to people and you're not really a people person or you're very analytical type, maybe you want someone on your team who is a little more personable, a little more warm and help bridge that gap to make people feel welcome and invited when you're presenting to them or they're coming to see you. So try to find people who compliment you, not just the skills, knowledge and experience gaps, but those attitudes, behaviors and personality traits that will compliment you and your team members that you're all working as a team and providing all the support that everybody needs. Tip number three is to think about the culture you want to have on your team and to bring in people who match that culture. You know, if you're a startup, a small business startup, there's probably going to be a lot of late nights. There's probably going to be a lot of quick turns on getting things done and trying to build pitches and get out. You might be jumping on a plane to the last minute to go see someone. So, you know, that's the kind of people you need to bring in. People are going to be comfortable with that ambiguity. People are going to be comfortable with not knowing where the next sale is coming from. If you're in a bigger organization that prides itself on excellence and being thorough and disciplined, much like the military was, those are going to be the kind of people you want to bring into the organization. People who believe in excellence and thoroughness and discipline. So, you want to try to match the culture. It doesn't have to be a perfect match like we talked about. You're looking for people who complement you, not just that skills, knowledge, and expertise gap, and not just those personalities, but people who might complement the culture. People who might be a devil's advocate and say, hey, what if we think about this a different way? So, think about the culture you want to have. And if you want to have an innovative culture, you might need to bring in someone who's a little bit innovative. Even if your older culture is a little more thorough and disciplined. Tip number four is to have a plan for developing the skills on your team. That's the skills for each team member, and not just their technical skills, but their leadership skills as well. And it's important to have a plan for this, because you want to make sure that you're giving everyone on your team enough leadership opportunities for them to learn and grow and prove themselves, and to be able to move up into a leadership position when the time is right for them later. Without a plan, sometimes we can play favorites. I know we don't want to talk about that, but that happens sometimes. Or sometimes people get overlooked for whatever reason. So, having a plan for how you're going to develop each member of your team's skills, especially their leadership skills, those soft skills, whether it's leadership skills, presentation skills, communication skills, the things that don't lend themselves easily to technical analysis. Have a plan for how you're going to help each team member learn and grow, and be able to advance in their career. As you guys know, I like to include a bonus tip for you sometimes. And on this topic, I do have a bonus tip for you today. And that's don't be afraid to let your team members move on when they get an opportunity. When they get a great opportunity to go take a leadership role somewhere else, don't be afraid to let them move on. A lot of leaders want to keep their team together. They don't want to let their team go off to do another opportunity, because they've got things working well. But we need to do that. We need to let our team members learn and grow and develop and move on to better opportunities so that they can continue to learn and grow and do great things in the world. So don't be afraid to let your team members go. There comes a time when every person needs to move on and do something else. As leaders, we should be embracing that. We should be helping our team members prepare for that. And we shouldn't be trying to hold them back because it's more convenient for us. So there you go. Four tips plus a bonus tip for building your dream team. Whether it's a pre-existing team or you're getting to pick your own people from the very start of a brand new project, these four tips will help you put that team together, set it up so that they complement each other in terms of skills and personality traits, and it'll help you build that team and develop them and grow so that they can all move on, you can all move on and grow together to greater opportunities. If you found this helpful, please like, comment, and share it with a friend or co-worker. If you have any business or leadership questions we'd love to hear from you, leave us a comment or email us at info at EvilGeniusLeadership.com. EvilGeniusLeadership.com is also where you can find out about all of our coaching programs. So if you're looking for a little more one-on-one training on your sticking points when it comes to leadership and business, go ahead and look there and send us an email and we'll talk about setting you up with a free consultation. Thanks for watching today. I really appreciate it. Remember, the future is out there. Lead the way.