When we hear about a “dream team,” our minds envision the perfect basketball team or a group of highly skilled attorneys who have been assembled to represent a high-profile defendant in a legal matter.

But building a team that works together so well that they consistently deliver amazing results shouldn’t be limited to sports or legal teams. It can also be achieved by home service business owners who want to provide their customers with exceptional service and build a positive company culture.

In today’s world, businesses need to develop a culture that separates them from their competitors and helps them recruit and retain good employees. According to the Arbinger Institute, 46% of decision-makers and critical leaders report that culture drives improvements in employee productivity, retention and engagement. The report also pointed out that nearly all executives believe that the importance of company culture will continue to increase as Gen Z begins to fill more open positions.

While you certainly need to consider trucks, equipment and budgets when starting a plumbing or HVAC repair company, you also need to consider how you will lead your team into the future.

Start the journey

No matter if you’ve been in a truck for years and have decided to start your own business, or you are an entrepreneur who has bought into a home service franchise, once you decide to strike out on your own, you need to prepare.

By identifying your core values first, you set the stage to develop your vision. Then, once you decide on the services you plan to provide, you’ll know what skillsets you need from your employees to achieve your goals.

Hiring the right employees to help you implement your vision and provide the services you’ve defined cannot be left up to chance. You will need an effective recruiting strategy to hire the right team, and you will need to advertise where you are sure to reach the team you want to hire.

Are your potential employees on job boards or on social media? Will your best employees come from referrals or by visiting high school and college campuses?

Developing a recruiting process gets your company started on the right footing.

At organizations like CEO Warrior, mentors who have built successful companies can help business leaders develop hiring programs that last beyond the recruitment stage. Don’t forget to consider your onboarding process, your ongoing training programs and performance evaluations if you truly want to retain good people and scale your business growth.

Paint a vision for the future

As the owner, you need to paint a picture of your vision and share it with your employees. You can tell your team to “get on the bus,” but you’ll get more buy-in and loyalty from your workers if you let them know where the bus is going.

In the past, most people discounted a company’s culture. To employees, “culture” was either considered a euphemism for “micromanagement” or that they were being held to a mythical expectation.

No matter your goal, you need to let your team know where you are going and how you are going to get there. From Google to Microsoft to Hubspot to Chewy, companies that were once small start-ups have continued to grow due in no small part to their positive company cultures.

Making people happy and satisfied with their work increases productivity. By giving your employees purpose, communicating regularly with them and offering them the training they need to understand your vision, you provide them with clarity and alignment.

Ultimate communication

Communication has to be a two-way street. In fact, it’s often better that owners, critical manager and other leaders listen far more often than they dictate.

Communication isn’t just speaking and being heard. Not only should you ask your team great questions, you should also wait and really listen to the answers.

Good leaders understand that not everyone is motivated by the same thing, and not every motivator is professional. If you have an employee who is trying to save to buy a home, for example, helping them overcome their own challenges to meet their sales quotas to earn a bonus may be the motivation they need. The more bonuses they receive, the quicker they can purchase their home.

Every team member should know what is expected of them, understand the processes necessary to do their job and where to get support when they need it. You need to let them know what doing a good job looks like.

You may also want to consider having a leader or goal board in the office, so you can see which employees consistently underperform. This isn’t done so that you can embarrass the employee, but so that you can identify those who are struggling and may need more training or support.

Sharpen the axe

You may be the best lumberjack in the field, but if you continue to use the same axe without sharpening the blade, it will eventually become dull.

The same is true of your team.

Ongoing training and programs that provide supplemental growth for your team are the best ways to keep the axe sharp.

Creating a culture of training and development helps employees become more effective and stay efficient in their work. It also helps you find and plug the holes that develop in your business continuity over time.

And training shouldn’t be limited to your employees. You and your frontline managers also need to continue your development. A recent study showed that poor leadership can literally be bad for the heart, so investing in your leaders’ continued development is also good for all your employees.

Pat on the back

And, finally, don’t forget to reward your team.

When we’re training dogs or teaching our children, we often reward them with treats and praise them when they accomplish the goals we’ve set forth for them.

We need to do that for our employees, too. How can you talk about a positive company culture if criticism is rampant but praise is nonexistent?

If your team has met and exceeded their goals, tell them you appreciate them. Show them with a pizza party or a team outing. After all, why have goals if you aren’t excited when they’re reached?

Setting goals, following your vision, delegating to the right leadership team and showing appreciation for your employees’ hard work help you build the best team you can create. And that makes everyone happy.