So often the advice you will read or hear about building strong teams centers around treating everyone equally. When, in fact, the way to grow a team is not by treating everyone the same, but by recognizing that everyone performs differently. Successful leaders treat everyone on their team with equal respect but with different expectations. If you took a look at your team right now, you would easily see that some work harder than others, some are self-motivated, some wait to be told what to do next, and others rarely work their business. The best leaders search out the individuals who are willing to do more, to develop new skills, and really care about their business. Once these individuals are identified, the leader devotes the bulk of their leadership time with this group.

Recently I was speaking with a very frustrated Sales Director. She was spending hours each month trying to "save" team members who had not been active in their business for over 90 days and were getting ready to go "inactive". In an effort to maintain a high team count, this leader was doing everything she could think of to shore up the sales for this dormant group including inviting them to work in sales booths she was hosting. When they did show up to help her with the booths, their sales results were minimal and they eventually became inactive anyway. As a result the leader was upset that she had wasted so much time and had little to show for her efforts. I asked the leader to tell me what a football coach would do in a playoff game - would the coach fill the starting line-up with players who rarely played or would the coach pick the very best team members to be first string? She quickly got the analogy between manning her sales booths and filling a game roster.

Look at the amount of time you are spending with your team. Are you allocating the bulk (80%) of your leadership time to members that are performing? Or are you allocating too much of your time to individuals whose hearts are not really in the business? When leading your team, think about the way a good coach runs a team -equal respect paired with different expectations and, based on performance, different coaching time allotted.

Be a good coach and allocate your time wisely!