People challenges are one of the four root challenges besetting all business owners.

Team dynamics is more than just getting the right people, it’s also about how individuals on the team interact with each other.

Today we have brought on Joe Stewart, an expert in team dynamics, to discuss the ins and outs of getting a group of individuals on the same page and working together.

The health and strength of your business is not just in customers, orders, and money in the bank. It is greatly dependent upon your culture and how people work together for a common cause.

In This Episode:

Team Dynamics: How people interact with one another.

Three Keys to Moving Forward in Business

1. Vision: Do you know where you are going
2. Traction: Are you staying disciplined and accountable to put in the work
3. Healthy: Are you open and honest with each other to be aligned with the vision of the business

It is critical to be open enough with each other to be transparent. Trust builds a safe space to be vulnerable about how you really are doing so you can overcome challenges and move forward.

You cannot grow without discomfort. When you are uncomfortable one of two things is happening. One, you do not feel safe. Two, you are being pushed. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Common mistakes owners make with teams is not having a clear enough vision and focus for people to align themselves behind.

Redeem Your Business Today by the Following:

How can we honor God in our business?

Before meetings take time to share what God has been doing and teaching you in your life.

One challenge from today:

In everyday life and conversation sharpen your listening skills by asking strangers about their day. Ask, listen, learn, and make someone’s day brighter by showing them you care by listening to them.

More About Joe Stewart

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-stewart-85aa54255/

More About David Schmidt

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Website redeemingbusinesstoday.com

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Mentioned in this episode:

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David:

[0:00] Imagine putting a team together for launch of a new product and just released from corporate. And you are building a team with the best players, but once you get them together in a meeting, you find there's division because there's different opinions about how to get this product to market. What do you do? If you've ever worked with people, you know that they're all different. And sometimes it's a challenge to get them to align and play together. And today I brought along expert Joe Stewart to talk about team dynamics and how to basically read a room and how to, more importantly, how to get a, hopefully not a dysfunctional team, but a dysfunctional team into unity and work together. Joe, welcome. And to start off, why don't you take three to four minutes, tell a little bit about yourself and as an EOS implementer and the experience you have in aligning teams together.

Joe:

[0:49] Yeah, thanks, David. Thanks for having me on. appreciate uh the lead up there i'm excited to talk about some team dynamics and alignment today uh myself not always you know the funnest conversation but uh i've been an entrepreneur most of my life so that was kind of accidental i didn't plan on doing any of that but uh several years ago that's just kind of how it shook out so oh i'm having some my out of focus son of a gun, so uh in my early 20s i helped a guy um oh man this is throwing me off i'm sorry you're good i just don't know why my camera's doing that.

Joe:

[1:38] There we go. Okay. So in my early twenties, I was working for somebody, uh, he owned the company. I called him up. I said, Hey, I want to do your job, right? This is cool, but I want to do your job. How do I do that? And, uh, long story short, I mean, that was a bold swing. I didn't realize how bold that was until many years later when I looked back on it. Um, you know, but luckily he invited me over for dinner and, uh, took me in under his wing and, uh, started to kind of show me the ropes of the insides of running his operation. I didn't end up doing that, but it was a valuable lesson. Ended up opening the company with my parents. We built it from the ground up. I was there for the first five years, built all the ops, ran all the ops, which is just code for doing everything all the time whenever it happens.

Joe:

[2:29] Trial by fire there. Left the family business after about five years, Started two companies of my own. Several years into that, we just hit a ceiling. We had two good companies, but we hit a ceiling. We were frustrated and discovered EOS. EOS was the system that really helped us to look at our business differently, to have a better relationship with our business, and ultimately break through some ceilings.

Joe:

[2:57] Over four years at one of those companies, we ended up growing about 250%. It was really...

Joe:

[3:05] We created just a really turnkey business, too. So when the opportunity came up, we were able to sell it. And that was great for our family. It was one of those God moments, right? We didn't really plan on that happening. But in that moment in life, it was the right thing to do. And we had a great business that we were able to sell to somebody. And they were able to. It's still going today. So I went back and helped my parents and their company for a couple of years. They were growing. Things were a little bit messy. and we hired an EOS implementer. He came in, he helped us figure some things out. We grew, we, we about doubled in size over three years and, um, it's got real financially healthy. We're delivering our service at a much higher quality. And, um, it was just, it was really impactful. Helped my parents retire. Uh, I moved on to the next phase of life, which is now just helping other business owners, you know, get out of their own way, get freedom, um, get what they want out of their companies. You know, so I do that by helping them implement EOS and EOS is just a complete set of simple tools, um, business principles. There's a proven process. And, uh, from a high level, it's really just helping them to get what we call vision traction and healthy. So what I mean by that is vision, uh, from the standpoint of I'm working with those leaders to just be on the same page in a hundred percent alignment with where the company is going to go and how it's going to get there.

Joe:

[4:34] Traction from the standpoint of helping those leaders to instill the discipline and accountability into that team that it takes. Thank you on that vision day in and day out. And then healthy is about just being a healthy team. Sorry, my lights were going off in my office. Um, you know, as leaders, we don't always make great teams. So healthy is all about having an open and honest, uh, culture, being around people that you're having fun with. You love to be together. You can be vulnerable with each other. Um, most importantly, you're all rolling the boat in the same direction, right? So as goes the leadership, we'll go the rest of the company. We're going to get to the point where everybody in the business, whether it's 10 people or 250, 300 people, everybody's in alignment with that vision. Everybody's working in the day-to-day with discipline and accountability to execute on that vision, gaining consistent traction. And you're all just moving forward as a healthy, cohesive, functional team. So that's the high-level nutshell, you know, of Joe Stewart, where I've been, where I'm at, and what I do now.

David:

[5:41] Okay. Yeah, very good. Well, hey, Joe. This is a Christian podcast. I like to encourage my listeners to be salt and light in this world. And so I like to ask my guests, what is one thing, What is one way you have found that you can glorify God in your business that others may be able to implement or may not know about?

Joe:

[5:58] Oh, one way. It's like every way, man.

David:

[6:03] I know that. I know that. Just pick one way.

Joe:

[6:07] We, you know, I think one way that I do it, this is goofy, but before every single session, we check in. It's like it's the first part of the agenda.

Joe:

[6:19] And just sharing how God's working in my life, you know, and it's not always going deep. But sometimes it's just saying, you know, my personal best is, you know, I've been I've been praying about this and, you know, God's been speaking to me and it's awesome and I can feel it and I love it. And then it's just moving right along to whatever's next. I have a handful of Christian companies that I work with that it's just we're just open about it. We pray before we start. We pray at lunch. We pray when we end. It's, you know, like like the spirit is present with us. But then there's other companies that aren't and that's OK. right um but there's an opportunity there just you know to share god with other people who might not know him like i know him and i've had one example that i can think of recently where a guy called me and just said hey man you're always talking about god like just can you tell me about it like i'm just interested you know and i don't know that's that's the stuff for me you know because uh you know my wife and i are in unity on on this like everything we have is just been a gift from him and you know the the challenge is to be present enough to to to try to be good stewards of all this stuff you know of our of our business of our resources of our time and our energy and all that stuff so.

David:

[7:48] No, good answer. I love it. It's good. And so, okay, we're going to talk about team dynamics. Okay. So to define it, what would, how would you define simply team dynamics?

Joe:

[8:00] Gosh i i'd have to look on dictionary.com to define it the right way but for me it's just how people interact with each other yeah it's it's um you know when you have a group of people there you know one dynamic is that group of people so if it's five people it's how does how do these five people interrelate with each other but then inside of the team you know what are the subsets? If there's five people, you may have, you know, two groups of two, there might be an alliance here, you know, there might be some mistrust somewhere, or maybe there's, you know, somebody has a relationship that's just deeper and longer than the other. So there's the group as the whole, but then there's also individual relationships and dynamics that can happen within that team as well. Did that answer it?

David:

[8:54] That makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, people working together and yeah, it's, it's just like family dynamics. Um, I, I know when I meet with my brothers and sisters on individual basis, I can talk to them. It's fun. I don't know what happens when we all get together. My, my brothers just get hyper and loud and everything else is like, why are you doing that? But you know, individually they don't. And it's just the dynamic of everybody in the group and it just goes wild. So it is different between just two people or five people or 10 people that there's different dynamic there. Absolutely.

Joe:

[9:32] Yeah. And I think, uh, like when we're talking about business, we're talking about, you know, like a leadership team, you know, the heart of team health for me is, uh, trust, you know, and that's, that's one of the, I mean, I, I kind of.

Joe:

[9:48] I kind of sell, sell this out right away in the beginning. I tell people, look at all these tools are going to work for you. Um, the velocity in, in which that they will work will be directly correlated to the level of health that we can build here. And that level of health is predicated a thousand percent on how open and honest we can be with each other. And what I mean by that is honesty, I define it like honesty is just being 100% you, true, authentic you. Don't give me a facade. You don't need to be someone else for me, right? I want to know 100% like what you need, what you want, what you feel, what you desire, what's holding you back, what's ticking you off, just complete transparency. And then openness is the other half of that. Openness is just being able to receive that when somebody's just being real and raw with you right just taking it in and letting it go right you don't have to love what they're saying you don't have to agree with what they're saying you don't have to solve what they're bringing up right entrepreneurial people you know achievers we love to solve stuff right so.

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