Choose Your Team Wisely

What the Coast Guard Taught Me About Teamwork And Building a Team That Runs

Before I ever balanced a budget or built a filing system, I learned what a good team looks like in the Coast Guard. Even though I wasn’t always the best “team player”, it stuck with me, and over the years, I started noticing a trend.

It is a bit like a well tuned engine. Every part has a job, every part depends on the part next to it, and when it is running right, it just hums along.

Here is the thing about engines though. Even the best ones hiccup sometimes. That is normal. What separates a well maintained engine from a neglected one is not whether it has problems. It is how fast those problems get caught and fixed. A well maintained engine sputters, someone notices, and it gets sorted out before it causes real damage.

Most engines, in real life, do not get that kind of attention. A little hiccup gets ignored. Then it turns into a bigger problem. Then that problem causes another one somewhere else in the system. Before you know it, you are not troubleshooting one issue anymore. You are chasing five.

Teams work the exact same way.

In my time in the military, and in a few other jobs where the teamwork really clicked, I noticed the same four things showing up again and again. Regular training. Good communication. Documentation. Respect. None of these are flashy. None of them will show up on a highlight reel. But pull any one of them out and the whole thing starts to wobble.

Training keeps skills sharp so small mistakes do not turn into big ones. Communication means problems get caught while they are still small and easy to fix. Documentation means nobody has to guess what the plan is or rely on someone’s memory from three weeks ago. And respect is the glue that holds the other three together, because people do not speak up, ask questions, or follow a process they do not respect.

So how do you find people who fit that kind of team?

It starts before you ever hand someone a schedule or a set of keys. Pre-screening applicants is not extra work, it is the work. We have all seen what happens when someone gets hired out of pure desperation because a shift needs covering and nobody else is around. Or when a new hire gets tossed into the deep end with little training, or training that was thrown together on the fly between appointments.

That combination sets everyone up to fail. The employer gets someone who cannot do the job the way it needs to be done, or worst yet, just doesn’t care. The employee gets thrown into a role they were never really prepared for which causes anxiety and low morale for them. Both sides end up anxious, mistakes start piling up, and eventually the whole thing falls apart. Nobody meant for it to go that way. It just happens when the groundwork never got laid.

The good news is this is fixable, and it does not require a giant overhaul. A little structure up front, a screening process that actually screens, and training that is planned instead of improvised, goes a long way toward keeping your engine running smooth. And when the inevitable hiccup does happen, and it will, you will catch it fast instead of watching it spiral.

Building that kind of foundation takes time most small business owners do not have lying around. If figuring out screening, onboarding, and the paperwork behind it all sounds like one more thing on an already full plate, that is exactly the kind of chaos I like to help sort out. Reach out and I will take a quick, no-pressure look at where your process might have gaps. No clipboard, no lecture, just a real conversation about what is working and what could use a little more calm.

Want to talk about this? No pitch, no pressure, just conversation.