The Importance of Understanding Your Team According to Jason Treu

Creating connections with people is important in everyday life, but even more important if you’re an entrepreneur. Being able to relate and convey messages, while understanding and listening to feedback, is a common characteristic of successful people.  

Jason True, an expert in Leadership and teamwork, joins us on this episode of Making Bank to emphasize the connection and communication of business relationships. Jason has helped companies merge, develop, and become more productive. Working with people like Steve Jobs, Mark Cuban, and many more, True has valuable experiences that you can learn from.  

To be successful, simple things must not be overlooked. Putting the focus on communication, a trusting environment, and an understanding of perspectives, True provides insights into some of the most important things he’s learned, and how it can help you be a better entrepreneur.  

Connecting  

When creating a team and a company, the people that are building the foundation of the business will be the ones to determine how successful the company will be. “When you crack a door and you open a door slightly for a human being, there’s a massive opportunity, and that’s where people overlook and I think to try to over-engineer culture and everything else,” says True when talking about emphasizing on building trust.   

Connecting with people and creating relationships that are deeper than surface level is important because you’re finding out what the people that you’re working with are a passion for. You want people to be excited about your new products, excited about each new step of the business, etc. If these people aren’t creating a connection with you or the environment at work, then they aren’t going to put forth the same amount of energy as compared to those that feel the same way.

By asking certain questions, you can get to know people in a vulnerable way. This way creates a level of trust that sometimes is only achieved in a close situation, like family and inner circles. This brings the relationship to make people feel like they’re more than just workers – because they are. Who knows what kind of ideas that may benefit and foster the success of the company could be in the heads of people that you’re working with?  

This talking and vulnerability get people to talk and understand each other beyond the structure of the business. And it goes beyond just the business though. You can take relationships and network beyond just your business, and this networking may in turn help the company in advice and other experience.  

Understanding  

“The other thing that seems to get a lot of people in trouble is not understanding each other’s working styles and being explicit on what people need and how to give it to them,” True says. This misunderstanding often slows down the progress of creating relationships and working towards accomplishing the goals put into place.  

Talking about situations and how you’re going through it with your team can only help. Having an open discourse can open people up to each other. If only one person communicates, it’s like working towards a brick wall – nothing is going to happen.  

“What gets in the way of people working together is misunderstandings, poor perceptions, not good empathy. All the other things that end up happening and people who just think differently and that creates the challenges between them. When you can break that down and people can get out of their way, then you can create great things and work much more successfully together with anyone,” True says.

Understand how to have difficult conversations with people. Knowing the best way to communicate with one person may not be the best way to communicate with another, and once you understand that, approaching critical conversations can become easier and overall benefit your work.  

It’s almost like having a guide with interacting with other people. Once you understand the best way to communicate with individuals, you’ll have a better understanding of the environment.  

“So you understand what to expect because otherwise your expectation is not the other person’s and when expectations don’t meet their conflict or disappointment, and that causes a lot of the problems that go on,” True explains when talking about how important is it to have these important conversations early on when you’re starting to work with people and your team.  

These conversations can save so many disagreements and misunderstandings later on. Not to mention that it saves diversions and roadblocks for the company and creates more time to utilize people and energy.  

Expectations are always going to be different. Teams are going to be very different. It’s going to change from person to person and experience to experience. But this doesn’t have to slow down the progress. The worst thing you can do is not understand someone else, and not bother to try and fix that understanding.