I believe that the biggest challenge a leader has to face is finding the right people to build a business.

When I started at Napoleon Perdis, I was fortunate to start off from a blank slate with no prior experience, hence, no hang ups, no prejudices.  I learnt quickly and fell hard along the way, making sure the lessons I aquired along the way became deeply ingrained.

Trust is the biggest thing in building a business. Employees have to be able to trust their leader to make the right decisions on their behalf. In turn, leaders have to be able to trust their staff to execute the  strategy to make the business succeed. Both parties have to feel confident that one is doing right by the other.

Getting the people you need on board and invested is one thing but creating a team is different altogether. There are so many factors that must be understood and sorted for it to work.

To begin with, personalities play the biggest role in a group dynamic because unlike skills, they aren’t something you can sharpen or improve upon. Personalities are innate, so it’s best to cultivate them by creating a team of people that complement one another. Some people are visionaries and others are executors and different people have different strengths and weaknesses. It is the dynamic of a well-constructed team that makes big things happen. The principal challenge is to cultivate that dynamic.

When you’re building a business, the most important thing you can do is communicate your philosophy and continue to remind your staff why they are getting out of bed every day.

The most successful companies around the globe are the ones that make their entire team feel like they are an integral part of the success of the company.

It’s about creating a culture of accomplishment and sharing in the wins.

A business culture is cemented when an entire company, large or small, feels like it has a real purpose. It’s that “all-in” mentality of working towards the same goals, having the same fears and enjoying the same successes that morphs a company into a corporate family.

It is the leader’sjob to ensure their people are as motivated as they are. A company’s inspiration and drive has to resonate down to the people who turn up to face another day.  Without motivation, there would be nothing.

The interactions between a person and the team, the dynamic of that team within its group and the way that group fits in with the rest of the company will determine the ultimate success for the business, not just a savvy executive suite.

These interactions make a business successful and are also what can make it all come crashing down!

An organisation is only as good as the sum of its parts – the people, their virtues and how they practise them day in and day out. When you take your people and their personalities and make them feel like they truly belong to something, that is when the magic really starts to happen.