Culture Matters: Building the Wise Firm

I’ve never lived through a pandemic before. I’ve never lead a team or company through so much unknown or during such an unprecedented time.

Business investments take place throughout all levels of a company and when you hear the words business investment you might think of items such as stocks, bonds, and dividends. Perhaps you picture shrewd business deals taking place between titans of the industry behind large, mahogany office doors. While you wouldn’t be wrong, I would like to take a moment to talk about a different type of business investment that we can all take part in no matter what our role or responsibilities. I am referring to investing in your team.

Does collaboration really make a difference in the workplace? Does it make a difference for our clients? Does it make a difference in how everyone feels about their work family? Does it make a difference in how well they do their jobs?

Have you ever had an emergency come up, want to take a vacation, or just an afternoon off? 

Have you ever been so busy that you can’t handle a project alone or need a fresh perspective? Sure, we all have. Life happens. But when you have others who you can depend on, it sure does make life go a little more smoothly. 

When I think of service, my earliest memories go back to childhood. As a child, my parents encouraged me and my brother to sort through our toys to identify things we no longer played with so we could donate to other children in the community. Now as an adult, I’m often reminded of service through Gary Chapman’s The Five Love Languages. My husband’s love language happens to be “Acts of Service.” I’m reminded weekly about acts of service as I perform the undesirable job of cleaning the bathrooms or making the dreaded trip to the grocery store.

Strong teams don’t just happen. You know that.  I know that.  Yet, so many people lack the intentionality required to build a strong team. 

I’ve been privileged to grow and serve on some amazing teams led by strong, intentional individuals. I could write a dissertation on what I’ve learned about building strong teams simply based on their examples, but today I want to share three intentional practices that I’ve incorporated into my career:

My wife and I take walks during the week. It’s hard since we both work full-time jobs, but it’s an investment we make time for as often as we can.  During our walks, we cover a wide range of topics from money, to in-laws, to you-name-it. Today, we hit heads and identified some key areas that we both struggle with. In order to work through those things, we’ve determined that we need to speak the other’s language, and speak it well.