10 Things That Make You a Better Leader When Starting a New Team

Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) members are young, innovative business professionals continually finding new ways to be a better leader for their businesses. Ten of them share how you can be different, disruptive, or rebellious as you launch a new team.

1. Motivating Your Team

As a leader, you have to always see the bigger picture and motivate your team to constantly be moving in the right direction, no matter the bumps they hit. With a new team, hiccups are bound to happen, and if you aren’t there to guide your team, they will become frustrated and lost. Remain helpful and positive every step of the way, and in the end, you will all grow professionally.

– Phil Laboon, Eyeflow Internet Marketing

2. Sharing Your Role as Leader

What’s exciting about leading a new team is that you become one leader of many. The challenge is to bring people aboard who believe in your vision and trust you to take the company in the right direction. Those who do will stand behind you, but that doesn’t make them followers. So much about a new team, its culture and procedures, are undecided; it forces everyone to make huge decisions.

– Manpreet Singh, TalkLocal

3. Communicating More Than You Have To

In the early days of working with a new team, I prefer over-communicating. It’s better than the alternative of letting them be confused because you didn’t want to exasperate them. I pay attention to creating more touch points and more check-ins at the beginning of working together as a team. This is especially useful if you work with a team that works across many geographies.

– Pratham Mittal, Outgrow

4. Caring

As a leader, you always have to genuinely care about everyone on your team. Never classify your people as a commodity, as they are much bigger than that. Don’t create more followers; rather, create more leaders and make sure that everyone supports the bigger picture and vision. Have fun with it, be crazy and be different, as success comes from doing things differently.

– Engelo Rumora, List’n Sell Realty

5. Holding Your Team Accountable

The main thing I’ve learned about good teams running our company for the past seven years is that it starts and ends with accountability. It took me a long time to learn this. Keeping people accountable isn’t easy; it’s uncomfortable, and many people will reject it. But getting people to commit to an action, then circling back to keep them accountable is the most important trait of a new team.

– Fan Bi, Blank Label

6. Trust

t doesn’t sound rebellious to trust your staff, but when compared to other company officers, it begins to sound very radical. This is partly instinct and partly my attempt to imitate the manager I admired most on the way up. She worked so hard that everyone else was scared to fall behind, so they worked hard to keep up. She led by example but understood individuality.

– Brandon Stapper, 858 Graphics

7. Character

At Trustify, our best leaders are those whose characters are above reproach. Working with diligence and excellence in all they do is highly valued by myself and the staff under other leaders. Being able to identify the good in everyone, clients and staff, keeps them focused on the mission of our work. Those who create drama, have a negative outlook, or are reactive to people and situations are not leaders.

– Jennifer Mellon, Trustify

8. Taking Personal Interest

Show team members immediately that this isn’t like their old job. A few years back, a new hire said he would miss his annual football trip to begin working with us. Not on my watch! Later that day, I surprised him with flights and a ticket to the game. Who cares about the cost and pushing back his first day? We’re a team, and we want people to have fun.

– Brandon Laughridge, PolicyZip

9. Promoting a Healthy Company Culture

It’s important to be the type of leader who embodies the kind of person you are. Personally, I take pride in stepping outside the lines and going with what works for me. Judging success is about having goals and measuring your results. Having a solid team with a company culture that elicits the want to produce incredible work will only help the company grow in an upward direction.

– Bryanne Lawless, BLND Public Relations

10. Challenging Your Team

Give your team members tasks with specific objectives but with no set strategies. This forces them to think outside of the box and find new, creative ways to accomplish traditional tasks. They will either find a more efficient process to get the task done or a painstakingly long process. By challenging them with no set strategies, they will learn what works or doesn’t work in an innovative way.

– Chad Keller, WUDN

Young Entrepreneur Council

Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched BusinessCollective (http://businesscollective.com), a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.