Building a core team is essential for any small business. Having people working within your business that you can trust not only puts your mind at rest, but helps efficiency during the most challenging times.

Knowing how to build and manage a core of people can be the ‘make-or-break’ part of a small business. These five areas are vital in forming a business team, from startup to selling.

1) Recruiting

If you haven’t already found people to make up your core team, recruiting the right people remains vital. The first hirees for a new company shape future development, perhaps more than any other early decision.

Recruiting services are a great way to look at the pool of individuals to determine who best fits your business plans. Many platforms offer cheap alternatives to the classic headhunters and recruiters that are typically too expensive for small businesses. Background checks made easy by new technologies also mean you can vet people you’re considering hiring to ensure they are who they say they are.

2) Interviewing

Having collected a group of candidates, the next stage – interviewing – brings unique challenges. As simple as this process may seem, the two-way nature of it can give you pause for thought. While determining if someone fits your plans, they are also determining if your business suits theirs.

Unlike jobs in larger companies, a small business runs on how well a few people interact. During the interview stage, the applicant’s character and personality matter as much as the experience on paper. Your team must be able to work smoothly together, no matter how experienced each individual may be. During an interview, you can determine if an applicant will fit your company culture. 

3) Effective Delegation

Once you have your team, it is essential to remember that it is a team. As obvious as it sounds, small business founders often forget this. As the team leader, you may want to take everything on alone, but taking on too much responsibility and not allowing team members to step up will hurt your business.

There are many reasons for not delegating, but the overall effect on a business’s performance remains well documented. Having gone through the difficulty of hiring an expert team, the worst thing that you can do is not use it.

4) Communication

Communication is critical. You always hear people talk about excellent communication, but it is worth being reminded of. 

Modern work-place technologies mean communicating can take place instantly, clearly, and from pretty much anywhere. 

It has never been easier to keep each of your colleagues in the loop of tasks that need doing. Always keeping everyone up-to-date on problems will help make everyone feel included in a team dynamic. 

Do not be afraid to be overly communicative. Don’t send messages every two minutes, but if you think someone needs to know something fast, message them. ‘Over-communicating’ as an industry approach is agreed as the lesser of two evils.

5) Review

The chaos of starting a small business can make it impossible to look at the bigger picture. However, at every stage of a business’s development, stepping back and reassessing is very important.

When it comes to a small team, seeing how each person fits in and whether new spots need to be opened up requires regular reviews. Sometimes reviews not only help you but allows members to bring up issues or ideas they didn’t find space to earlier.

Final Tips

A small business’s core team provides the most critical functions going forward. They chart the development and organize the structure of an initial idea or basic startup. Businesses are the people that run them, nothing more. Finding and managing a team that shares your passion while bringing their ideas and skills will continue to be a challenging yet essential part of running a small business.

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