Five Tips to Building a Strong Green Team

So much of one's personal and professional life depends on relationships, from access to the newest information or leads, to following up with an appropriate consultant, to making connections with potential advisors or staff. Your green team will obviously have a strong commitment to building the green, sustainable, eco-friendly, and fair trade community - and many will already have a portfolio of jobs, volunteer actions, and pro bono work related to the cause.

When it comes to making decisions about the most important issue of who you want on your executive team, or who you want to have as a business partner, here are five areas to review:

1) Balance of strengths and weaknesses. A well-rounded team has a different person fulfilling each needed role. Someone may be good with numbers, someone may be good with marketing, someone may be a techie, someone may be good with customer outreach… Regardless of the role, make sure you have a balanced team, with different viewpoints and a diversity of experience. One teammate's weakness can be supported by another teammate's point of strength.

2) Technology comfort. If your team is spread out, you'll need people who are conversant with technology like Skype or web meetings. If you need e-mail responsiveness, then your team will need to be available to e-mail. Make sure that you have a match between your team's level of comfort and the needs of your business, which in today's world is 24/7 every single day.

3) Attitude. In any business proposition, the traits that carry the project forward are availability, positivity, competence, timeliness, and most importantly, a cheerful attitude. If someone is not responsive, is constantly griping, is demonstrating incompetence, doesn't communicate well, or is showing disrespect, you've already dropped them in favor of someone with a can-do approach and enthusiasm.

4) Instinct. The best business relationships are similar to marriages - lead individuals spend many working hours together with a shared sense of purpose, concern, and passion. If the teammates instinctually understand each other and can come to agreement in the face of challenge, by including a healthy dose of discussion and by focusing on problem-solving and "big-picture" thinking, then the company's objectives will be met quicker and with less stumbling.

5) Locked-up agreements. Even with the best-laid plans, things happen. Make sure to put everything in writing. Document all arrangements and fill in the official paperwork when ready, including membership or shareholder agreements, operating agreements, bylaws, and special attention paid to expectations and desired deliverables, timelines, or other objective measurements. If it's on paper and signed by all parties, it's defensible and can hold up in the case of the inevitable disagreements or changed situations.

Sometimes you just have to make a gut choice about your teammate - and move forward with where you are at that given moment. Each of us has failures, but I truly believe that the more failures you have, the closer you are to reaching your ultimate success. Define it, achieve it, and win it --- and share the journey with your business partners along the way.

Photo by fazen