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“Unity is strength… when there is teamwork and collaboration, wonderful things can be achieved.â€

Mattie Stepanek 

  I don’t believe a business can rise to the level of exceptional with their customers unless it has a unified team.   Every business, company, and employee will perform better, enjoy their work more, and reach a higher level of success when they are unified.  As their team becomes unified, then so does their message.   By creating this unified team I, therefore, believe every business can attain exceptional customer service .  So how do we do that?  How does a team become unified?  Well, a great place to start is by recognizing these 5 Important Truths of Team Unity.

1.  You.   Or, as I like to say, unity starts with U!  What are you doing to improve YOU?  What are you doing to become a better boss, employee, father, coach, friend etc…?  What daily steps, if any, are you taking to be a better you?  Being a better you is the foundation needed to becoming part of a unified team.  Becoming better at something does not happen naturally.  We have to work at it.  Remember when we were little and we wanted to play baseball or perhaps soccer.  We would drive our parents crazy replaying that same kick or throw over and over til we got better.  Our hope was that one day we would get to use that skill in the big leagues.  Well guess what?  Now that you are in the big leagues, you can’t stop getting better.   It’s time to keep on practicing.  Keep kicking or throwing that ball against the wall.  So what are you doing to keep getting better?  Getting better requires being intentional with your time, your efforts, and your inputs. You have to put in the work and effort to improve yourself before you can expect to have a positive effect on others.

2.   Trust.  Funny thing about trust, it takes a long time to earn but only one second to lose it.  Trust is something that must be earned day by day.  You can earn your employees, co-workers, and friends trust first and foremost from leading by example.  Let them see that you’re the man/woman you say you are.  Are you the same person at the office and out of the office?  If you make any promises are you the kind of person that keeps them?  Don’t be that person that is always saying that you’ll get together or you’ll do this and that and never follow through.  Be the guy that does what he says and says what he does.  Ultimately you’ll be judged by what you do, not by what you say.  James Earl Carter, Jr. said, “To be true to ourselves, we must be true to others.”

3.  Communication. George Bernard Shaw said it best, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”  Ahh… so much is either gained or lost by communication.  As Dave Ramsey says “If the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing then you can’t have unity.”  What you end up with then, is a large gray area in the middle, which often times isn’t good!  Without communication, people will use their own imaginations and pre-conceived notions to determine for the company what goes in the middle.  Don’t let that happen. Make communication an important part of your unification.

4.  Power.  There is a lot of power when a team becomes unified.  There are endless sports analogies of what a team is able to overcome by operating as a unit.  The best or most talented teams are not always the ones that win the Super bowl, the pennant, or the cup.  It is typically the best unified teams that win.  Super bowl winning coach and NY Times best-selling author, Tony Dungy, said that when he won the super bowl in the 2006-2007 season with the Baltimore Colts it was not with his most talented team.  He would have considered them to be the 4^th or 5 most talented team that he had coached.  But what they had was unity in vision and desire.  When the going was good they fought hard, when the going got tough they fought harder.  They had a unified goal and that was to win the Super bowl together.

5.  Service.  Not to be served but to serve!   Servant leadership!  Dan Cathy of Chik-fil-a says that he works for his 60,000 employees and they happen to sell chicken.  He’s saying that he is in the employee business first, chicken business second.  Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines was all about his employees.   He hung out with them, flew with them, threw parties for them, and remembered their names.   So while all the airlines were having financial difficulties, Southwest was recording profits.  What are these two exceptional CEO’s trying to tell us?  We need to get to know and serve each other.  Do you remember the movie “The Blind Side“?  At one point Leigh Ann Tuohy, played by Sandra Bullock, steps out onto the practice field to help her now son Michael Orr find the understanding and motivation to protect his quarter back.  She said to him, “This team is your family and you have to protect them.”  On the next play Michael obliterated the rusher.  The coach, with a perplexed look on his face, asked her, “Leigh Ann, what did you say to him?”  She said, “You need to get to know your players!”  Get to know your people. Tom Peters in the Pursuit of Wow says, “If you want to put customers first, then you must put employees more first.”  Recognize the human element in your employees or co-workers.  They have families, troubles, illnesses, fears, children, broken cars, old pets etc…  Business is a human game.  Uninspired people rarely do inspiring work. Luke 6:31 sums it all up, “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”  This is known as the golden rule and this is what’s called service.  

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