Building a strong team takes more than hiring the right people.
In this special compilation episode, Christina May revisits conversations with Spencer Teel, Dondre Lawson, Jeff Schwartz, Denny Woolley, and Karen Barbour about what it takes to develop, align, and support people as a business grows.
They share stories of changing the environment around a team, developing talent from within, making expectations visible, using healthy disagreement to make better decisions, and knowing when it is time to rebuild a team. From creating clearer paths for people to grow to recognizing when support has become enabling, these conversations reveal a common lesson: strong teams are built intentionally, and leadership means knowing what your people need to succeed.
Spencer Teel: Yeah, when the team could sense that I was burnt out, you know, that probably had, I won't say a cancerous effect, but probably a negative impact on some of the team without me really fully recognizing that and knowing it.
Jeff Schwartz: They give us a common language. They just help hold everybody equally accountable across the board, internally.
Denny Woolley: Sometimes we have some really difficult discussions. At the end, we know we've come out with a good solution.
Karen Barbour: I turned it over, and it was very painful.
Welcome to The Breakout Moment. Most leaders will tell you that their people are their greatest asset. But this doesn't answer a harder question. What do you actually do when the people side of the business just isn't working?
The solution isn't always to find different people. Sometimes leaders need to change the environment, the expectations, or the support around their people.
And sometimes the first and hardest place to look is actually at yourself as a leader. And that's where Spencer Teel's story starts.
Spencer Teel: Yeah, when the team could sense that I was burnt out, you know, that probably had, I won't say a cancerous effect, but probably a negative impact on some of the team without me really fully recognizing that and knowing it.
Christina May: When did you recognize that?
ST: When did I recognize it?
CM: Yeah. When did you recognize, like, I knew you probably recognized you were burnt out, but when did you recognize that that was impacting the team?
ST: I think my wife probably called me out. I know she did.
CM: They're good at that.
ST: Yeah, she's fantastic. And she, you know, she saw this general sense of unhappiness and, you know, lack of fulfillment in my life. And she just was very candid in saying, "Hey, you know, this is impacting not only me and the family, but I'm sure your team."
And that's when I sought out some help from my advisory board. Got this book, and it really helped me formalize my thoughts. I had this vision, what the business looked like, but didn't ever have that ability to really translate that to people, to really get that understanding.
CM: And I think it's hard for us to do, you know, as leaders, as organizations. We spend all this time in spreadsheets and numbers, and, you know, you're keeping the lights on, right? At the end of the day, as leaders of organizations, I mean, we've got a really basic job description. You know, move obstacles out of the way and find opportunities.
And you live in a spreadsheet, you know, and whether or not you naturally gravitate towards the human side of it or not, that part of the job never goes away.
ST: Oh, for sure. And that was a real important part of the vision, was that realization that it's not just living in numbers on a spreadsheet, right?
You know, really focusing in on our purpose, which is "Built to Serve," is our motto, why we exist. So it's to serve our clients, provide opportunities for our people, and support for the communities we're building. And, you know, everything that the vision revolves around is our people. And they are the ones that make everything reality.
CM: So if you live beyond that spreadsheet mantra and focus and change the narrative to more of a people-first approach, the spreadsheet takes care of itself and the numbers take care of themselves. And that's where I think true success lives.
ST: That component has always been part of our company's DNA, crediting my dad, you know, really living by our take on the golden rule, the platinum rule, doing unto others as they would have them do unto you.
So really reverse the table a little and understand what motivates others, and then act on it. So it took that to really provide that clarity to our people.
So I think, to your question, it was a natural reinforcement to what we already had, just in a very clear and concise manner. I think we just naturally got buy-in once that all fell into place, was outlined in the vision and components of the vision.
It really all just helped feed into that philosophy through programs like Teel Construction University, TCU, getting our training platform together over the course of those three years, building it out to the team to really support their learning and growth in business.
Spencer's story started with changing the environment around the team and giving people a clearer path to grow. But what happens when the person you need isn't sitting in the applicant pool just yet?
Dondre Lawson has found another solution. Bring people in early and help them grow into the talent the business needs.
Dondre Lawson: I think for some of the students, too, they're so serious. When they come into the program, I want you to talk to us like we're not your boss, right? Because it's not that type of environment. It's a learning environment.
And so, my defense contractors, and for the defense contractors that will see this, it is a learning environment. When you bring that person in, right, if it's a young Dondre and I'm coming in and I want to learn, or people just want to learn as much as they possibly can, learn and learn, run free.
CM: Yep.
DL: And they're going to work probably harder than your seniors because those people already have predetermined mindsets on their job. They already have predetermined, you know, mindsets on the customer. And, you know, they might have a family, they might have other obligations, mortgages.
CM: All the things.
DL: Right. But the 18- or 19-year-old that's there...
CM: I got nothing to lose.
DL: Nothing.
CM: Right.
DL: And so they are some of the most hungry people that I have seen. I'll give you one more example. I've had one of our employees who's our LSP manager, who has been with us since he was 15.
CM: Wow.
DL: He knows everything about our commercial side of the business. Everything. He graduates from Towson in May, or this month. I think next week he graduates.
CM: Okay.
DL: Full-time job. He can't go anywhere.
CM: He can't?
DL: He cannot leave.
CM: It's on record.
DL: Yes. He cannot leave because, as we grow, he gets to grow.
And then when I was his age working, I was not making the amount of money that we pay him. He's so good at his job that we're like, it doesn't matter what age he is. You have the experience. You've got six years of experience on paper, and you know the process of how we do things here. Here you go.
CM: Some of my best employees, we have an internship-to-hire program, and some of my best employees, what I call my alumni, have been through that because they come in, they're eager to learn. They don't have a set mindset. They get to learn your way of doing business. They bring this eagerness and energy into your organization.
So I think the question I would have to close it out, if you could, if you were to pinpoint or recommend to someone who is a little hesitant towards bringing in, whether it's in technology or not, you know, someone who's 18, 19, 20 into their organization, what piece of advice would you give them to set them up for success?
DL: For the business?
CM: For the business, yep.
DL: Hire an intern. Look for someone in college. Start advertising. Find people that want to get into the space and utilize those people. It will be the best, especially for small businesses, it will be the best thing you've ever done.
Small businesses absolutely, positively must start working with school systems. You don't have a choice.
That defense interns program, we have one contractor in particular. They had the interns build them a chatbot. The chatbot goes to SAM.gov, it will scrape SAM.gov, and it will then come back to them every Friday with a list of things that they can go bid on.
An intern built it.
And they took one of those, they submitted, and won the $3 million contract.
CM: And that's the ROI. That's ROI, right?
Giving people room to grow only works if they know what they're growing toward. A strong culture needs more than just shared values on a wall.
Jeff Schwartz created a system with a shared language his team can use to set expectations, give feedback, and hold each other accountable.
Jeff Schwartz: One big one is our AME Way, which is a system of 30 fundamentals. And it's really a way of, what I learned through that process was, no matter what, if you have a vision statement or you have a culture, if you think you don't have a vision statement or a culture, you have something.
CM: You have something. Yes, you do.
JS: You can either formalize it and help mold it, or you can just let it evolve, let it happen, whatever is going to happen.
And so we made a big, meaningful step, and we started this 30-fundamental program. Rather than having a vision statement on the wall that you expect everybody to memorize and everything, the 30 fundamentals to us are more about the behaviors, the actions that we want for our company, how we treat our clients.
And to me, they're small, short, simple.
We do a new one each week. Some people say 30 is too many. We could argue about that however long you want, but the fact is they give us a common language.
And whether it's be fanatic about response time, whether it's think safe, work safe, keep things fun, make healthy choices, I believe that they just provide these guiding principles.
If you're not sure, or if you're having a difficult interoffice conversation, it helps everybody sort of speak the same language, and they help hold everybody equally accountable across the board.
And we get feedback from our clients. It's on every email that goes out.
CM: We've seen it.
JS: If we've dropped the ball or something, oftentimes the clients will read our fundamental of the week and remind us that we missed it.
And we like that. We want our clients to help hold us accountable when we make a mistake.
A strong team doesn't have to agree on everything. In fact, a team that never pushes back can create a different problem. Bad ideas survive because no one is willing to challenge them.
For Denny Woolley, disagreement is something that he can use to test ideas, learn from, and get to a better answer.
CM: A lot of us obviously have a relationship with AI where we're like, is that accurate or not? Where is that coming from? How are you guys mitigating, you know, what we're all dealing with with these tools?
DW: Well, that's where we're fortunate to have the experience that we do and that we have people with experience on staff, maybe in other environments, right, with other companies, that can bring that to the table so that collectively we can evaluate things.
I mean, strength in team. Internally, sometimes we have some really difficult discussions, right?
CM: Spirited debate. That's what we call it, spirited debate.
DW: With colorful metaphors.
CM: That's okay. We like a good colorful metaphor every once in a while.
DW: But what I enjoy at Genesis, at the end, we know we've come out with a good solution, right? And then we can look back and we can high-five and really help the client get to where it needs to be.
So the key aspect is draw from the 30,000 different projects that we've got of what applies. And we might be in a manufacturing environment, but it might be the little lab project over here that we did that satisfies the big problem that we've got on this multimillion-dollar manufacturing facility.
So it's the ability to recognize that, the use of teams to just throw out something to the ether to a group of people and say, "Hey, does anyone have any background or knowledge about this?"
And invariably someone will jump in and say, "Yeah, we did such-and-such a project back in 20-blah-blah-blah, and this is what we came out with. Here, I'll send you the link for it."
CM: And that creativity and collaboration, it always comes back into environment, strength of team, being in a safe place where people can contribute and feel safe to contribute.
I think one of the biggest red flags that you can walk into is a whole bunch of people that just say yes. If there isn't that spirited debate and some of that healthy friction, it's forcing everybody to grow, right?
You know, we talk about sometimes internally about someone being a steak knife versus a butter knife.
DW: Right. Well, friction is what makes a knife sharper.
CM: It's very true. So it doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing.
So it sounds like you guys have found a way to really tap into the strength of the talent and have a healthy conversation and healthy conflict to get to a really good place for the customer.
DW: And by listening to the customer and staying focused on what the goal is. And we know we're in a really good spot when the next project comes along and we get together with the same people we had the spirited debate with. You know, like, remember last time?
CM: Tell me real quick before we wrap things up. Do you have an interesting story from one of these spirited debates that you guys have had where, you know, you didn't think something was going to work a certain way, and then you walk into, again, we'll just call it a spirited debate, and you come out with a solution that wasn't even in the back of your mind? It's the collective that really turned it into something special.
DW: Yeah, it's a really great question. I can think of one we had recently where there were some members of the team that felt a certain way about evaluating how a purified water system was going to work, right?
And then an instrument that was designed by the vendor was called out as being in the wrong place, the wrong type.
And of course, everyone's got their opinion on, well, this is what we think it should be.
And so I happened to be the member of staff that was on site and said, okay, let's try out these theories, right? And get another instrument in the location where it should be.
And the feedback that we get, of course, it's the, "Oh, I didn't realize that that's what was going to happen."
So some people had theorized yes, some people had theorized no, but at least we're able to present it back to everyone in such a way that everyone can learn from it.
And I think that's the most important thing. As I age on in the business, I think one of the strengths that those of us that are older have is that we're not afraid to be vulnerable.
CM: It's okay to be wrong. Oh my gosh, you know what? If something has gone wrong, I have learned something.
That's how I look at it now. I think when you're younger, you run from that, you're embarrassed or whatever. You always want to be right. I think it's just an inexperience-and-youth thing.
Now it's like, oh, cool, I was wrong. Great. I know what to do now.
DW: Or pass that on to someone else.
CM: Correct.
Unfortunately, training, support, and honest disagreement can't solve all your people problems.
Karen Barbour had to recognize when helping had become enabling and make the painful decision to rebuild her team.
Karen Barbour: And, you know, I'm an enabler. And when you enable, I don't enable anymore, but you enable, then you become victimized, and then you become persecuted.
And that trend was happening my whole life. And I was an enabler, and I had these expectations of people. Boy, are they an inhibitor of growth and success.
You've got to get rid of those for anybody, male or female, if you want to be successful. It's not that you turn into a narcissist. No. But you just have to get smart about who you are internally, and you can't have personal growth if you put everything else externally on people.
CM: Correct. And I think where I so agree with you on that, but I think maybe we get in conflict, too. You can't do everything yourself.
KB: Oh, yes, you can.
CM: No, you can't. Oh no, you can't.
KB: I know, but you tell yourself you can.
CM: You tell yourself you can, right? AI now tells us we can do everything with AI, but none of that's true. You still need external people.
And so it's the balance between those two, especially if you are someone who is an enabler and you're running a team. That is so difficult.
And you have a unique story around that, too. You completely turned over your team.
KB: I turned it over, and it was very painful.
CM: In a short time period, actually.
KB: Well, it didn't feel short.
CM: Yeah. Oh gosh, I do that too. I think about things forever before I do them.
KB: I had a friend at the time who had another agency that did what I did, and so I asked them, listen, if I get rid of my team, could we enter into a joint venture relationship? And I'll give you 50% of my commission if I can use your back-office support.
And that did not go well. And some of the employees that I had kept were in the joint venture. So it was a populated joint venture.
But I said, you know, you can't steal my employees after this JV ends because it was only temporary. I needed to use their back-office support until I could find good people to work for me.
That blew up in my face, and it was not good. So I had to terminate employees.
Because in the end, you've got to find people who believe in your possibilities. If you have to defend yourself at work for every idea that you have, if you have to micromanage people, if you have to question your employees over the simplest things, you don't have time for that.
And so I do have a new team, and now we're a family-run agency. My daughter works for me, my son-in-law, his brother, soon his sister, and I have a friend who works for me who's kind of like a sister.
She's been there with me for 15 years.
Build people. Set clear expectations, make room for honest disagreement, and when the fit is broken, be willing to make that hard decision.
Good leadership isn't about fixing people. It's about creating conditions for them to succeed and knowing when something truly needs to change.