The clubhouse dynamics you create for your employees lays the foundation for how work’s going to get done. Do you all listen to the same music? Do you like to eat different foods? Do you make baseball caricatures of your teammates like the #WIndiansdid this season? If you’re not all friends who love working together, the workplace can be uptight and uncomfortable. A loose clubhouse fosters better work results because people enjoy coming to work and being given the latitude to kick ass their way with their teammates.
However, the loose clubhouse only works if everyone as a team is held to a high standard and takes accountability and ownership for getting the job done together (something we at Yalo call ‘DIY GSD’). But if you can’t all enjoy other things outside of the office together, you don’t really have much as far as a team relationship or comradery. It’s important to see how people are in their real lives; what affects them, things they enjoy, things they don’t like. Getting to know those things makes it easier when you’re inspiring them to success; discussing projects, brainstorming, assessing deadlines, giving feedback. You must know how to communicate those things effectively. Terry Francona is known as a master of this, built on his years of experience in the clubhouse starting as the son of a MLB player.
Having the right work environment and fostering the type of relationship with your team makes all the difference in losing or winning, which in our business is making every project the best it can be and having very satisfied clients. At the end of the day, we all are expected to deliver for clients what they expect from us. We have to produce excellent work. If you like the people you’re working with and if you know them well and vice versa, then you’ll work well together, and excellent work is will happen.
So, my perspective on our Yalo clubhouse is this.
“I find nothing wrong with opening a bottle of Four Roses at the office after a team lunch. As long as everyone’s held accountable for the more professional, if you will, aspects of the day, I really don’t see why we can’t all sip together.”
A.H.
