It doesn’t matter what industry you are in, the most important thing in your business is the people.
Products, compensation plans, funding, tools, and strategies, are all irrelevant without the right people. There are plenty of examples of companies who have succeeded in all types of industries, where their products were average at best, and their pay scale was not exciting. But the people loved working with the company and poured their heart and soul into making the company great.
A basic tenet of building a high performing team is maintaining the proper balance of the task at hand and the relationship of the people working on the task. Consider this for a moment, among the list of reasons that people leave an organization, in every substantial survey you can find to study, money is rarely in the top 5 reasons. Most every reason has to do with the experience in the work.
The key to this concept is balance. There has to be focus on the task. If the work is not getting done, the organization cannot survive, because there will not be profits substantial enough to go forward. There also has to be a focus on the relationships. If the people are working hard, yet do not feel valued, cared for, or considered, they will begin to decrease their productivity and eventually leave. Some will leave physically and go elsewhere to apply themselves and other’s will leave emotionally, and simply show up, do the least they can to maintain their position, with no care for the work. Eventually this will cause the organization to fail. Both parts have to be maintained.
it is easy to let this get out of whack
The challenge is that it is easy to let this get out of whack. In corporate settings, the leadership has to be purposeful in developing a culture where the people feel cared for, while simultaneously maintaining an aggressive pace of work. It has to start with the leadership.
In a network marketing organization this also falls to the leadership. One of my favorite Mark Twain quotes is “when you need a friend it’s too late to make one.” This speaks directly to this idea. As you grow your business, you will be intertwined relationally with may people. Remember, network marketing is truly relationship marketing. The community of the network has to be a place that feels good for people to belong to. After all, this is a community they are volunteering to be a part of. The community will go through the ups and downs together. If all you are doing is focusing on the work and not the people in the work, then when their is a difficulty and you make the effort to maintain the relationship, it will feel contrived…like you are only interested now in the person because you want them to stay.
this is a community they are volunteering to be a part of
In a job setting, someone may be unhappy with the work environment yet stay anyway. The best people in the corporate type structure will be the ones to leave because that don’t fear making a move. In a network, every one will begin to disconnect if the relationships are not being valued, because there is no consequence to disengaging. This is especially true for the 80% group who have smaller goals, yet aggregately make up 80% of the business volume. If this group does not feel valued and disengages, the other 20%, or higher producers, will no longer be high producers will they?
You must champion both parts to create a strong lasting organization. There has to be a strong work ethic in the culture and a strong relationship base. It is easy in a network to get into the go-go-go place of work. This is a good thing. The faster you work the more forward momentum you create in your own business. It’s simple numbers when you think about it. If you work fast and put 300 people in your pipeline, you will sponsor many people, some of which will follow your work ethic and further the speed of the organization. This is like putting the bricks in the foundation. The relationship is the mortar between the bricks. If you never take the time to put the mortar in place, at some point you will have a big beautiful stack of bricks that can be knocked over by a small issue.
The relationship is the mortar between the bricks
Work fast, and at the same time move purposefully into the relationship space. Take the time to really get to know the people, outside of the business. Don’t let all your conversations with them be about the work. Talk to them about their lives. Don’t let all your meetings with people just be about training and sponsoring. Get together with organization socially. Sure, the business will come up in the conversations when you are having fun socially, but it will be because they want to talk about it and it will be easeful and natural and further the relationship.
It is important to remember that when you build a business you are doing life together with them. Most of the people you work with will be part time. Their lives are full outside of the business. They are navigating the challenges of fitting the development of this wonderful business into the framework of a very busy life. It has to have meaning over and above the money for it to remain something that is important to them. Money is available in the world in many ways. The skills and mentality people develop as a natural outcropping of building a networking business can be used in everything. You will be helping people break out of the box they have been in and when they do, most anything can become possible for them. Be there for them through out their life’s journey and they will stay with you for a long time.
