Building a solid team involves changing the way we view working relationships as a whole.

When building a company, one thing is fundamental: a team. You need a team that you can count on and trust, that has a strategic vision and that wears the company shirt in order to grow. It just so happens that teams have been the Achilles heel of good ideas. Wrong hires, inflated roles, reduced salaries and working relationships that end traumatically.

The most direct consequence of this scenario is the employer’s constant insecurity when it comes to hiring and total distrust of those who are already part of the team. Within this spectrum, the person in charge tries to take precautions by increasing control, micro-managing tasks and inventing spreadsheets and more spreadsheets for the employee to fill in so that everyone knows exactly what is being done. Then the same thing happens… And not only do teams have high turnover, but the culture of the company as a whole is one of control.

“Was it the job description that was wrong? Should I hire a company to make this selection for me, because I don’t have a head anymore?”

And hiring is starting to happen at a time when the company is growing. Growing, expanding, ultimately means increasing in size and, with that, losing some of the vision you had when the company was starting out. No matter how many spreadsheets or employee control platforms you hire, you lose sight of the whole company when it grows. That’s where the most difficult part of any human relationship comes in: trust. And when we are managed by mistrust, we take the most destructive attitudes towards a relationship, and this goes for both personal and work relationships.

Working in an environment of mistrust and constant scrutiny builds an unproductive culture. People who enjoy their work and want to use all their creativity and potential to grow within it do so not because they are being supervised, but because they feel comfortable doing so, because they want to see the company grow and grow together. And this doesn’t happen in abusive relationships, and controlling an employee is a form of abuse.

“Okay, but what then? So what do I do to change this culture and get the best out of my employees?”

As well as investigating what your company’s culture is like and reflecting on the oppression in the workplace, a few small steps make all the difference.

Hire with purpose. Show your company that it’s not a CV that rules. Diversity creates a chain effect not only in the exchanges within the company but also in society, so start there. Be creative in your selection process to find out who the person you’re interviewing is.

Zappos would send a driver in a limousine to pick up the interviewee and take him home, and then ask the driver how he was treated by the interviewee. At Scooto, the selection process consists of paying the person to work for us for a week. During this period, they work normally as if they had already been hired. The person finds out if that’s what they want and the company sees their work attitude. In 3 years, we’ve had 0% turn over due to people joining through this selection process.

Then give them the job, set out the deliverables and let them get to work. If they’ve agreed to the salary, if they’ve passed the process, you already know what they’re capable of. Explain what they need to deliver and when. And that’s it. Give them the flexibility to work the way they see fit. Whether it’s in bed, at the beach house, in the early hours of the morning, two days working hard and stopping for one… If you work the way you want, you’ll be happier. And, oddly enough, happy people work better. Give them the space to achieve this.

What has become clear during this quarantine is that the entire face-to-face work environment has its origins in the need to control employees. It is oppressive by nature and does not guarantee results. Now, we collectively realize that, with everyone at home, the work hasn’t stopped being delivered and that working relationships don’t have to be oppressive to generate results. On the contrary.