As a leader, one of the simplest ways to strengthen your team and build an a great company culture is to figure out how to embrace your ‘inner weirdness’. We don’t mean, embrace being a total crazy person… but just to embrace being ‘Authentic’.
By building this authenticity amongst your team, you develop a ‘company’ with perfect authenticity.
There are plenty of benefits of acting weird around your employees. Here are a few to get you started:
1. You’ll encourage your employees to be themselves.
As you start building a team, its pretty normal that new employees will be nervous meeting everyone else for the first time. The best way to get them to open up is to immediately share embarrassing stories about yourself during those first few meetings. This will get them to start laughing, and they’ll realise that the leader of the company is down to earth.
Some leaders think they need to be stern, and appear to be perfect all the time – but this is far from true. You need to be open with your team about your weaknesses, because that’s how you build respect and credibility. No one wants to work for a leader who seems fake, just as you don’t want your employees acting fake.
Once you start opening up and acting ‘weirder’ around the workplace, you’ll notice the rest of your team become much more comfortable being themselves.
2. Your company will be more innovative.
Sometimes it’s hard to get all team members to feel comfortable enough to speak up when they have an idea. As a leader – voicing out-of-the-box ideas in meetings is a perfect way to get everyone else to start chiming in with ideas.
You might even want to throw out a really weird idea that you know your team probably won’t not like. This will register to your team members that their ideas can’t be as bad or weird as yours, and they’ll start speaking up more. Because you’re the leader, your employees will feel empowered when their ideas are picked over yours. Your team will build enough confidence to start innovating without you.
3. You’ll hire better people.
Once your team members start showing their inner weirdness, it will start rubbing off on people whom you interview. Right off the bat, they’ll be able to see what working at your company will be like – authentic. Allowing the applicant to feel comfortable enough to be authentic, will give you a much better indication of whether they will be a good fit for your business.
So, go ahead, be yourself. Be authentic… after all, we’re all a little weird.
What’s next?
- Join our Kick-Ass Tradies Facebook Group, for access to trade business specific conversations, tips and resources, plus a like-minded community of tradies.
- Book a 15-minute Game Plan Call with Andy, owner of Dr. DRiP plumbing and co-founder of Lifestyle Tradie, to clarify your priorities and get clear action steps.
