Hold Hands and Run

gearsSo let’s now talk about the idea of surrounding yourself with the right people as you grow your career and business and purging people who are holding you back. The Pearl to keep in mind here is: “it’s easier to run with a hundred than drag one.”

Successfully holding hands and running with a hundred (or whatever the number is that is relevant to your company) requires that those you are running with want to collaborate and join others who have a common goal. The team you run with must be able to vision working together to accomplish the predetermined goals and objectives. So as you work on gathering up these “hand-holders,” you need to continually “vet” people you bring into your business and your sphere as a way of avoiding finding yourself in a situation where you have to drag someone.

Applying the Pearl

What do I mean by “vet?” When we were building our information technology company we developed a strategy for interviewing people who wanted to join our company. First of all we screened the candidate sufficiently enough to know that they were qualified for the position before they even came in.

When we sat down with them and started a dialog, they immediately would begin to discuss their qualifications. We would usually gracefully stop them and say, “We have already studied your qualifications and we know that you are capable of doing the work. We are together today to find out if this job is right for you.” After giving that a few seconds to sink in we would ask the all-important question that we’d already posed to ourselves: “What’s your dream?”

What we wanted to have was a discussion on how the candidate could work with us and support our vision for the company while simultaneously fulfilling their career goals, leading to them reaching their personal dream. If the candidate could do that, we wanted that person on our team.

The important memorable point on “holding hands and running” is this:

  • The critical factor in achieving a “holding hands and running” company culture is to ensure that the leaders you surround yourself with have a dream and understand collaboration, which intuitively enables them to support one another and jointly “run.”

The other half of “it’s easier to run with a hundred than drag one” pearl is the “dragging one” issue. We will build on it in a later offering but think on the following in the meantime:

  • When you have a motivated and excited leadership team and a growing organization, if you find yourself spending time trying to turn a negative individual around, your team will be stumbling over you and each other instead of being able to run together.
  • Don’t drag anyone; you can’t have a bigger dream for someone than they have for themselves.

My hope is as you follow my guidance about success and winning that you don’t shrug and think this dialog about having a dream is trivial and “rinky-dink;” it’s not! It’s a tool to get into the head of people you are dealing with and surrounding yourself with, assuring they are positive people you can “hold-hands-with” and run.

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