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Chapter Two

Who You Surround Yourself With Will Determine Your Wealth and Success — Who's on the Team?

In order to build a cohesive unit, it helps to start with great players. This is true whether you are talking about a business, a nonprofit agency, a club, a down-line, a community, government or even a family. Great players are determined by their talent, desire and willingness to play by the code.

It’s true that in some cases you don’t have much choice who is in your group. The code, however, allows those who have not yet joined to decide if this is the type of team they want to be on. And for those who are already on the team, it allows them to decide if they want to stay or not.

I know that this seems a bit brutal, but you have to make a decision about whether you are playing to be comfortable or to be liked or if you really want to win. Look, I may want to play football for the Philadelphia Eagles, but that doesn’t mean I get to! Do I have what it takes to play on that team? NO!

A great team is not just a group of people with a common objective. It is a group committed to working together toward a common goal in which each person’s unique abilities will be tested and stretched to the fullest. They are willing to subordinate themselves to the good of the team and to follow rules that may subject them to scrutiny, correction and review. Teams are not always fun. They can be messy, upsetting and downright pains in the you-know-what. But the results that a great team can accomplish are truly exhilarating. The power, trust and confidence of a hot team are unstoppable.

True teams have a very clear set of priorities:

• Mission first

• Needs of the team second

• Needs of the individual third

In many organizations that I have worked with over the last fifteen years, the priorities were totally reversed. I find that many want to know “What’s in it for me?” first. If they’re sure that they are getting that, they might help someone else on their team, as long as it doesn’t infringe on their time, money or effort. And then they’ll support the mission.

Unfortunately, the reason so many teams wallow in mediocrity is that, regardless of what people say (because anyone can talk a good story!), the mission seems to come last. Personal interests take precedence and the leader, business owner or entrepreneur is faced with fighting the battle alone and hoping to get some support along the way. In reality, most people don’t believe that if they take care of the mission first, the rest gets taken care of.

That’s no team.

On the Rich Dad team, elevating the financial well-being of humanity comes first or you can’t be on the team. It’s 24/7, and time, money and personal considerations are put aside for the good of the mission and the team. Guess what? In this scenario, everyone wins big. In the other, there are lots of excuses but few results.

I’ll give you an example: I used to own an air freight trucking company in California where I had crewmembers working around the clock. We had a deadline for loading trucks—if they weren’t loaded and ready to depart by 3:00 a.m., they would not make delivery on time to the East Coast. We had several instances where we had so much freight that our night crew, who loaded those trucks, was falling behind.

By 11:00 p.m., it became apparent that we were not going to make the cutoffs. So in true team fashion, the night crew foreman got on the phone and called up the day crew and asked them to come in to help, even though they had already worked a full shift that day.

Not one person complained about it. The daytime folks took care of the paperwork and the administrative work, so that the night crew could focus its attention on loading those trucks and getting them out on time. Trucks pulled out by 2:45 a.m. and the mission was accomplished. Everyone high-fived, some went to breakfast and the rest went home to bed. We didn’t have to do it often, but everyone felt exhilarated and pumped when we did. No one asked for overtime, extra time off or special favors. Mission came first, teammates second and self third. It happened because we had a rule in our Code of Honor that said to “never abandon a teammate in need.” Because of that rule, no one felt unsupported, and no one was left behind.

Our company’s mission in that situation was to load those trucks and get them out on time. But what is so important to recognize here is that in the attempt to accomplish the mission, the needs of the team, or in this case the night crew, were met. And ultimately, the needs of the individuals were met as well. No one had to feel stressed out or unsupported, because the work got done. We had ourselves a championship team.

But what’s also important to recognize is that the fact that you want to play on a team doesn’t mean that you qualify. So how do you determine who should be on the team?

The Draft: Getting Players on the Team

If desire isn’t enough, what should you look for when creating a team? Who are the people you surround yourself with, and will they push you up, hold you to the same standards or bring you down? You have to make that call. As we get older, this gets harder to do, because it may mean breaking habits and a social circle that you’ve grown comfortable with. There comes to be a feeling of emotional obligation. So the quicker you take a look at who’s on your team, the better.

Here are the questions you need to ask yourself when pulling a team together:

1. What kind of energy do they have?

At SalesDogs, the motto is “Highest energy wins!” This is especially true in sales, but also on any team that interfaces with other people. What kind of energy? Engaging, interactive, inquisitive, active, bright and full of possibility. A great team player never thinks or speaks in terms of “can’t,” only in terms of “how can we?” You know the kind of person I am talking about. In their own way, they light up a room with either excitement and enthusiasm, calmness and focus or strength and confidence. I cannot stress the importance of energy enough, because it permeates everything that you do. It is the source of resourcefulness and connectedness with others and laces the environment with upbeat feelings that increase speed and possibility. Who do you have around you? Think about it. Criticism is okay, in fact imperative, but does it expand the possibilities or contract them?

2. Do they have a desire to win?

One of Rich Dad’s rules is that you must have an undying desire to win. Not that you will win all the time, but that you are going for it. Some people just want to be liked, to be comfortable and to be part of a team, and that’s great. But do they want to win? Are they willing to do what it takes? Lots of people say they want to win, but do they really? It’s an easy thing to say, but where are they when the “heat” is on?

Ask yourself, “Do I want to win?” Because why in the world would you have people on your team who are only there to collect a paycheck and hang out, not really caring if the team wins? Sure, everybody likes to win. But are they willing to put in the time and energy? I’m not an advocate of hard work for its own sake, but I do advocate doing whatever it takes to get the win. Are they willing to put off immediate gratification for that long-term success?

3. Are they willing to let somebody else win?

Being on a team means that you put aside your desire for immediate personal gain and that you are willing to support others. That means you don’t always get to be the star. You have to be okay with sitting on the bench if that’s what’s best for the team. If someone has a better idea, be willing to listen with an open mind and keep quiet until they complete their thoughts. People who want to know about their salary before they find out the mission are highly suspect.

4. Are they personally responsible?

Another necessary quality for anyone who wants to join a team is the willingness to take responsibility, not blaming others but owning up to mistakes. In your interview, ask any candidate about the biggest mistakes and the biggest wins he or she ever made and why they happened. What went wrong? Did someone else get the blame? Were there circumstances beyond their control? What did this person learn from that experience? Listen very carefully to their answers. You don’t want someone on your team who can’t take responsibility or who points fingers at others. That breeds distrust, and will destroy your team. You want someone who will say, “I learned something from that,” or, “Next time I would do this.”

5. Are they willing to submit to the code?

Anyone looking to join your team must understand the current Code of Honor. Once it’s explained, he or she can do one of three things:

• Agree with it (great!)

• Disagree with it (in which case this person is a wrong fit for the team)

• Ask questions to clarify

Using my example of the trucking company’s code, new candidates would sometimes ask whether they would receive more money for helping the night crew. Our staff would smile and say no and would gently but firmly tell them that our outfit was probably not a good fit for them. It doesn’t mean they were bad people, but they just wouldn’t fit in a culture that defines “never abandon a teammate in need” the way we did.

6. Do they have unique talent or ability?

Ideally each person on the team should be there because of the unique abilities and talents that they bring to their positions. Accountants do not need to be artists or copywriters. Salespeople do not need to be technicians. When putting your team together or rearranging an existing one, make sure that you get the best people doing what they do best. Shaquille O’Neal for the LA Lakers is six-foot-ten and 350 pounds. He is a great power forward. He would make a terrible jockey! Get my point? We’ll talk more about this later.

In the end, who is on the team is determined by the standards that you set and the code that you are willing to live by. Once you draw a line in the sand and make clear who you are, what your standards are and what is acceptable and what is not, you will have a lineup of people who want to play that way. You may also have some fallout from those who don’t want to play that way in the beginning. And that’s okay.

In choosing who is on the team, I tend to follow the advice I heard once from Bill Cosby on one of his shows. He said, “I don’t know the key to success, but I do know that the key to failure is trying to please everyone.”

If you try to accommodate everyone, you will attract a bit of everything. As a result, you will have to deal with all kinds of different neuroses. You have enough on your hands to deal with, and unless you have a degree in psychology, why bother?

Great Expectations

If a person has the energy, willingness to take third priority, the undying desire to do what it takes to win, a willingness to take responsibility, a willingness to adhere to and support the code, and a bit of talent, you have a good start. Make sure that the rules are clear and consistent.

While change is a constant, changing the rules should not be. The code lives on in spite of what happens. The bigger the team gets, the tighter the code needs to be to ensure peak performance. If you are a five-person team in a Phoenix, Arizona, office, the code is easily supported. But as you open offices in New York, London, Singapore, Sydney, Los Angeles, Chicago, and so forth, it gets tougher to hold to the same standards.

Try this experiment: Take about a two- to three-foot piece of kite string and tie a small weight to the end of it. Twirl it above your head as a cowboy would a lasso. Swing it faster. What happens? You have to hold on tighter. Lengthen the string. What happens? You have to hold on even tighter and pick up speed in order to keep the weight aloft.

The same is true of teams as they grow in numbers and spread out geographically. The code has to be stronger, better supported and revisited with more frequency as size increases. You also have to pick up speed or the whole project never gets off the ground. This is backward to what happens as companies grow. They typically get more bureaucratic and slow down.

On the other side of the coin, one of my clients, Singapore Airlines, engages in what some would consider an unreasonable demand on their senior management staff. The incredible number of visits from senior staff to remote stations and regions around the globe continues to reestablish the culture, attitude and code from Singapore itself. Their execs sacrifice time from family and spend countless hours in the air in an incredible commitment to the spirit of that forty-plus-year-old airline. They combine speed, frequency and deep cultural attitudes into an organization that has continued to be rated as the number-one airline in the world, which has also continued to make profit quarter after quarter through even the toughest times in the industry.

In the case of existing teams, the code must be a matter of choice. If people have been on the team for a long time without clear rules, they have to be given a choice to play or not with the new code. It’s unfair to spring new rules on people without warning or reasons why. But they do have to choose! It’s tough, but remember that in the absence of rules, people play by their own rules. The biggest collisions in life occur because people play by different sets of rules.

The funny thing is that, even in the face of those collisions, both parties will always feel that they are completely justified in their position and that they have done nothing wrong. Why? Because they were playing by their rules. Disgruntled employees complain that their boss was too demanding and they end up quitting their jobs because of it. Their rules said, “We do whatever it takes to complete the tasks as long we get paid for everything we do from nine to five and after that it’s overtime.” Their boss’s rules were, “We do whatever it takes to complete the tasks whether we get paid or not.” Neither one is right or wrong. That’s why you create a code to decide what that means in a sane moment.

The mechanics who work for NASCAR are all very talented and experienced. They have to be. But no matter how much experience they start with, when they are hired, their first duty is to stack tires. You know why? Because not only do they need to understand the importance of every single job performed on that team, but they have to understand this new culture that they’re now a part of! As a new team member, they assume a position serving others first ... not of being a star.

When choosing new team players, you have to observe if they are willing to enter the team from a position of serving others and lying low, listening and learning. If they are, you know you have a person who is doing his or her best to earn the right to be a great team member. Every organization has its own set of rules, its own way of doing things. A clear understanding of expectations and rules is critical for anyone joining any kind of team. Without it, I wouldn’t want to be in the car that the new mechanic worked on, and neither would you!

Playing Strengths

We’ve talked about building a team by asking important questions, determining motivation and setting expectations. But the next component is perhaps the most important in knowing who’s on the team. If you remember nothing else from this book, remember this: The key to success is playing to people’s strengths.

When was the last time you were given a “performance evaluation” at work? I’ll bet I can tell you what happened. You were shown a sheet of paper that listed your strengths and your weaknesses. And what were you told to do? Improve your weaknesses.

I am here to tell you, that is a colossal waste of time. It’s hard enough to figure out what you are really good at. Why waste your time trying to fix something that you may be chromosomally programmed not to do? Why on earth would you tell someone to do something he’s lousy at?

A great team is a group of people who all play to their own unique strengths with a Code of Honor holding them tightly together. One of Rich Dad’s core concepts is that when you take on a business partner, you look for someone with a unique ability. Why? Because you complement each other, you fill in each other’s gaps and ultimately increase the value, quality and versatility of your product or service.

Want to create a championship team from scratch? Find out what each member is great at. Not just good or competent at, but great. And when you’re done, you’ve got yourself a team that is great at what they do, but also satisfied and confident. Everyone wins.

Again, the same is true for families. For instance, in the partnership my wife and I share, I work with the business, sales and generating income. That’s my unique ability. But my wife’s unique ability in the business is her eye for detail. She can also spot patterns in an instant. She is also a great