Bradley Sugars

Brad Sugars explains that the key to building an incredible team is to be a great leader. A great leader who has a strong vision of where he is taking the company will attract great people who want to be a part of that vision.

If you run a poor business, then you will only be able to attract poor quality people. Brad Sugars believes another key component is holding people accountable to do their job. If you find that you made a poor hiring decision and the person is not capable of doing the work, then you owe it to the company to remove the incompetent person and replace him with a competent person.  Realize that if you do not require excellence, and you allow people to perform at a mediocre level, then the best your company will ever be is mediocre.

Obviously one of the most important decisions you make is who to hire? A lot can be said for business experience, background, and personality profiling, but in the end Brad Sugars advocates hiring based on three traits:  mind, heart, and spirit. Give preference to candidates who have a proven track record of the right training, intellect, and experience for the position. You want employees who are already motivated by your vision, and who bring a passion into what they love to do. Finally, you want your candidates to have the attitude and desire to work hard.  It is much easier to hire candidates who already possess these traits, than to try to instill it in them once they are hired. The success rate is much higher if the traits are inherent.

The benefits of having an incredible team are exponential.

Brad Sugars defines success as a commercial profitable enterprise that works without the owner.

You have to put the right people in the right positions to be able to execute the system you have designed to perfection. People should be empowered to make the right decisions for the company while adhering to a strict set of guiding principles which are written down for all to see.

Brad Sugars provides the following 6 keys to building a winning team:

1. Strong leadership
2. Aligned around a common goal
3. Defined written rules of the game that everybody follows
4. Clearly defined action plan - explains who is doing what by when
5. Culture must support risk taking - if you are not making mistakes you are failing by default
6. One hundred percent involvement and one hundred percent inclusion - every team member is either a positive or a negative value.   If they are not contributing to the goals of the company, they are creating a drain on your resources.  It is the leadership’s responsibility to make sure that all employees feel included in the company goals.