Issue #71 Here’s how to keep your team engaged

It’s Valentine’s Day! So there is only one obvious thing to talk about:

Building St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.

Yeah, I know; everyone else is talking about love, chocolates, and roses. But how much of that can you really read?  

Rather than trot out tired tropes over here, we thought we’d share a crucial lesson Christopher Wren learned 300 years ago that is equally meaningful today.  

Maybe a more true expression of caring in business? 

More on that in a second.

First some Updates

⭐️ Love performance evaluations? Well, you’ve gotta do them anyway; good thing we have an updated template. Check out our new and improved template here; we also have a blog post (here) explaining how to do your performance evaluations. This is an important way to align your team to your values and your why.

🍻 Can you spare a click to help a friend? Beerternational is building its Instagram presence. To get followers, they need followers, so how about following them? They talk about their cool international craft beer brands and are a pretty fun team. Check them out here.

🎧 Our latest podcast on the Hat’s Chart for MSPs is here. You’ll learn our hats chart epiphany and why creating a hats chart is so crucial even when you are just starting out. Wondering what a hats chart is? This will help.

All managers, at some point, struggle with motivating their team.

Imagine having to do this over 40 years.  

Teams of people who cut, carve, and fit stone all by hand (without power tools or laser levels) in just the right way.

Getting it wrong meant not only a strongly worded letter from the king full of exclamation points and what-fors, but also the total collapse of the structure.

And, since architects traditionally spent the first dangerous, nights in the building after removing the scaffolding… death.

So, it was worth getting right. This fell to Christopher Wren – he had to motivate these workers. Not in an air-conditioned office, but outside.

In London.

(Yeah, you think you have it tough).

The story of discovery (maybe true, maybe apocryphal, but good nonetheless) begins with Wren strolling through the construction site incognito.

He walked up to three workers and asked them what they were doing.

• The first one said: “I am cutting a piece of stone.”
• The second one said: ” I am earning five shillings twopence a day.”
• The third one said: “I am helping Sir Christopher Wren build a beautiful Cathedral.”

The first worker focused on his work and the second on earning a living. The third saw the bigger picture.

All three are correct, but Wren discovered that when people see themselves as part of the bigger picture, when they get the why, they feel more motivated.  

They cut stone better, do it for longer, and feel more fulfilled doing it. 

As Simon Sinek puts it, “if you hire people who believe what you believe, they work for you with blood, sweat, and tears.”

So if you really want to show your love to your team, dump the chocolates and heart-shaped cards – get clear about your values and your why.

A cohesive team requires that every member is there to build the cathedral.

Yes, they may be cutting stones or digging a trench, and yes, they do this for the money, but your shared values and shared “why” keep the team together.  

Related: read more about values.

🙋🏽Have Marketing Questions?

Ask them here: register a question, we’ll do our best to find an answer, and we’ll talk about these questions on February 24… at 11 AM.  

The meeting link (and reminders) will go out to Insiders in a separate email.