Building an Extraordinary Team: The Heart of the Matter

What you can learn from family might surprise you in business.

[Related: 5 Ways Employee Feedback Can Make You A Better Leader]

When you’re a high-growth mobile technology company, digital age recruiting is difficult. It’s extremely important to find the right match of experience, personality, and dedication in a candidate. But I like the challenge because I enjoy working side-by-side with extraordinary people.

It harkens back to

my days growing up in a big family in Cincinnati, Ohio. I had the luxury of experiencing youth with eight grandparents, (four grandparents and four great-grandparents) – one great grandma lived until I was in Junior High – my grandfather had four brothers, and my mother had 10 sisters and three brothers who all lived within the same four blocks. Even though they saw each other every day, attendance for Sunday dinner was mandatory. The whole family, including aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins gathered together after church to cook meals, fix each other’s cars, and shoot the breeze.

As a tech founder, those early experiences with family reinforced the importance of having good people surround you; how essential it is to delegate and assign tasks and then trust in other people’s core competencies; and how to communicate with respect while making sure everyone is properly instructed and has the tools they need to succeed.

In the world of tech startups, a founder usually attends every event, whether it’s a pitch to investors, a trade show, or client presentation. It can really wear you down. Over the past year, I’ve learned to duplicate my efforts by trusting the people on my team who are proficient and well-resourced.

The biggest

lesson I’ve learned from my ancestors is that, at the end of the day, it takes teamwork to get the job done. That’s what we do at Digital Factory. We show and prove – together. We are result-oriented but people-centered, which is the perfect combination in our line of business.

This is excerpted with permission from a Medium blog post by Lawrence Griffith. Click here for the full post.