Key Takeaways
- Private business owners build high-performing organizations by hiring coachable leaders aligned with role requirements, character values and culture.
- Clear expectations, strong communication and team trust reduce distractions, improve accountability and support employee engagement.
- Daily use of core values, task cohesion, social cohesion and trusted advisors strengthens retention, decision-making and enterprise value.
Many private business owners and leadership teams are facing a common challenge: how to build organizations that sustain high performance in an environment marked by constant change, rising employee expectations, remote and logistical challenges and increasing operational complexity.
Leaders are struggling with issues such as employee disengagement, lack of accountability, communication breakdowns, cultural inconsistency and difficulty retaining top talent. It is common in many organizations for teams to operate in silos, for managers to spend more time reacting than leading and then for that growth to begin to stall because alignment and trust have eroded.
When these issues go unaddressed, the consequences can be significant — increased turnover, reduced productivity, weakened culture, slower decision-making and diminished enterprise value.
Culture of Elite Sport
Several principles borrowed from elite sport may be especially relevant in today’s business environment. The most successful athletic teams create cultures built on similar shared core values and work ethic, commitment to the process, trust in leadership and each other, striving to improve physically, psychologically, emotionally — qualities that are equally essential for private businesses seeking long-term success.
Elite athletes who are truly successful are motivated, intrinsically, that is, they derive joy from deliberate practice and doing what they love versus external motivation, reward or outside recognition. It doesn’t mean athletes don’t enjoy their accomplishments; however, it is not the driving force of their efforts.
Business owners and leadership teams must cultivate those same internal drivers throughout their organizations if they hope to build cohesive, high-performing teams that thrive over time. While creating an organization that reflects these same attributes is a bit trickier and more difficult, these five steps will be helpful.
1. Hire people who you can coach.
Your direct leadership team should reflect what you admire in others. Obviously, they should be technically sound for the role they are in and they should have the personality traits and character values you honor. If there is misalignment, it won’t take long to feel it, and it will be a waste of time, resources and effort to try to get past it. If there is any deficit, quickly assess the individual’s capability of improvement, make a plan, create clear expectations and support, monitor them and decide if it’s truly a fit. Sometimes it’s not and that’s okay, for you and for them.
2. Lead by example.
This seems obvious for any entrepreneur, but cultivating these three activities will resonate with your employees and allow them to perform at high levels
- Clarify your expectations — When employees know what is expected and how their performance is measured, they are able to get into flow. Flow is the absence of distraction and the achievement of goals. Distractions come in the form of second-guessing, fear of failure, office politics, unclear policies and procedures, poor communication and undervaluing the importance of employee input.
- Have stellar communication — Great communication creates trust in the organization, both with strategy and with each other. Whether it’s effective listening that leads to smart decisions or consistent pathways for both informing and gathering information, strong communication priorities are essential for any organization to thrive.
- Create a TEAM environment — Many assume they know what a true team environment is. Using the acronym TEAM, we can simplify it like this:
- T – Trust — Teammates who trust each other and leadership are more cohesive and execute at higher levels.
- E – Effort — When efforts are experienced as mutual and shared, distractions are minimized.
- A – Admire — When teammates admire each other’s work ethic, attitude and perseverance, an atmosphere of humility is enhanced.
- M – Mutuality — As team members align their goals and aspirations, the entire group moves in a forward, cohesive direction.
3. Create task and social cohesion within your organization.
High levels of performance are achieved by having both task and social cohesion operating effectively. Task cohesion occurs when everyone is aligned with getting the job done well and skill sets are employed to accomplish goals. Social cohesion occurs when everyone enjoys or is satisfied with the process. Paying attention to both of these dynamics will create higher levels of organizational performance and satisfaction. This ultimately plays a large role in employee retention and business success.
4. Focus on utilizing and operationalizing core values daily.
More than having core values displayed on a plaque in the front office, they can be used to drive business success. When employees understand how core values are practiced daily through independent and effective decision-making, the entire organization operates in flow. One client in the media industry was considering raising prices for new subscribers while not doing so for existing ones. When they reviewed the decision by discussing their core values as a gut check, their core value of integrity prompted another conversation, as the decision did not align with that value. They decided to wait to raise prices, re-evaluate their business and strategic models and make a decision based on those findings.
5. Hire advisors who complement your skill sets.
It is far more beneficial to learn something new than to simply be told “yes.” The greatest leaders are those who are comfortable knowing that they didn’t know it all. They seek expertise because they know they need it, not because they feel inadequate. You are the smartest when you have the smartest, most experienced and trustworthy professionals on your team of advisors. The chances of achieving higher levels of success increase with this winning combination.
Reaching Success
The organizations that will thrive in the future are those that recognize culture and leadership are not soft concepts — they are strategic advantages. Championship teams in sport excel not only because of talent, but because teammates respect one another, trust the process and are united by a shared commitment to success. Business owners who embrace these same principles and lead with intentionality position their organizations not only to perform at higher levels today, but to sustain excellence for years to come.
In today’s business environment, sustainable success is no longer driven solely by strategy, products or financial performance. It is driven by people — by the ability of leaders to create organizations built on trust, shared work ethic, stellar communication, alignment of task and social cohesion and unified purpose. Much like elite athletic teams, high-performing private businesses do not succeed by accident. They succeed because they intentionally cultivate cultures where individuals are coachable, intrinsically motivated, connected to a common mission and committed to continual improvement.
Building this type of organization requires a high level of awareness, intentionality and consistency. It demands leaders who model the behaviors they expect from others, operationalize their core values daily and surround themselves with talented people and trusted advisors who strengthen the organization as a whole. While creating a cohesive, high-performing culture is challenging, the long-term rewards are significant: stronger employee engagement and satisfaction, more effective and consistent decision-making, improved retention, fewer distractions, increased adaptability and flow and ultimately greater enterprise value.
We Can Help
We at PKF O’Connor Davies support private business owners at every stage of their business or family office life cycle. We use highly effective performance inventories that assess individual and team performance and we implement customized plans to help enhance your organization’s performance at every level.
Contact Us
If you have any questions, please contact your PKF O’Connor Davies client service team or:
Cynthia Adams Harrison, Ed. D., LICSW
Managing Director
Center for Private Business Owners
charrison@pkfod.com | 914.575.2744