As a person who runs a business, you have many responsibilities, and you have people that you are responsible for. You will have unofficial team members (and possibly official team members too) that you are responsible for.
Those team members may not be officially team members at all. They may not be people that you pay. They are more often than not, especially for those of you that are sole traders that are doing all alone, lone wolf type people, they are the people that support you emotionally.
They are the people that tolerate your constant waffling about what it is that you do, and so on. They are the people that are there for you when things are going tits up; they are the people that encourage you and build you up enough to be brave enough to step out into the world and say, This is what I do, come buy it from me.
The unofficial team are your first and strongest team
Those people, you are responsible for them. Now, as I said, you may not be paying those people, they may not be properly officially team members, but they are people that are on your team, regardless.
They are people that require from you something in return. More often than not what they require from you in return is very, very simple. So those people that support you emotionally, generally speaking, what they want from you is for you to recognise the support that you give them. And that’s it.
Those people that encourage you to be brave enough to step forward into the world, and declare what it is that you do, to put it out there, so to speak. Those people, what they want from you is for you to actually take that step forward and do that thing, whatever it may be.
You are not alone, not when you recognise the team
It’s simple, so simple, and yet you have it in your head that you are some sort of lone wolf; that you’re doing things on your own and you’re not. Nothing could be further from the truth.
You are doing things solo, officially, but never are you doing things solo in reality. Nobody does anything solo, we just don’t operate that way as human beings. We live together in groups, we have families, we have friends, and so on.
You have a team, regardless of whether those team members are actually members of your business or not. You have a team. So respect that team. Understand their position, and indeed, your own position within that team. You need to understand that those people need something from you in return for what they do for you.
Deploy empathy when dealing with your unofficial team
Understand that the people may have no expectation of return, especially those that are providing you with encouragement and emotional support, but they deserve it all the same. They deserve the recognition for what they do for you, they deserve a bit of support back, they deserve some encouragement themselves, they deserve to see that their efforts have actually meant something to you.
Those unofficial team members, they are an essential part of any business.
No successful business operates without them. No human being operates without them.
Understanding the dynamic of that team will help you improve your life. It will help you improve your business and it will also teach you some things about good and healthy relationships. Some things that you can apply to your business relationships too, from your relationships with suppliers and customers to your relationships with actual paid team members, and so on.
The lessons that you learn, If you take the time to actually stop or recognise them, those lessons are invaluable. There is no course No book, no nothing that can help you with that. Its too basic. Too basic because it comes down to basic human interaction.
Every interaction is a transaction.
When someone gives, you give back. If you want something from somebody, you need to give something to them in the first place, it’s a transaction. Everything is a transaction in some way, shape, or form.
Understanding the transactional nature of life is your route to happiness and fulfilment, understanding that is your route towards building a strong and healthy support network, understanding that is your path towards building a strong and almost unbreakable team in your business and in your life.
Take a step back and evaluate your relationships with people, what do those people bring to your life and vice versa. What value do they provide you, and what value do you provide them? And don’t ever underestimate that value because when it’s gone, you will really feel how much that input was worth, you will really feel the loss of that person in your life, and everything that they do for you.
The loss of those potential future transactions, you will feel that, and you will feel it deeply, and it will hurt. So take time to understand those relationships and actually every aspect of your life will improve as a result.
Your support network is stronger than you might think
Self awareness is required when trying to understand the true nature of your support network. That level of self awareness requires reflection and deep thought, something I talk about in this post https://mybizacademy.co.uk/be-more-self-aware-its-not-hard
If you would like some help to figure this stuff out then send me an email. Head over to the contact page of my company website to do so https://mikethebizguy.co.uk/Contact