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Lessons for Elite Teams

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Your team’s success is your business’ success. Because your people are what separates you from the crowd.

Maximising their impact starts with unlocking their leadership potential. You need to help them discover their own voices. So they can inject their brilliance into your business and make it luminous.

This is the main principle behind Martin Murphy’s training. Using it, he helped us develop leaders within our teams to create a high-performing culture. This has had an astronomical impact on every aspect of our business (we’ve just had our best year ever).


Adam Asks: What Does it Take to Lead People?


Martin Murphy is a former special forces soldier, international adviser and coach to leaders and high-performance teams.

Previously, he has worked in the middle east, training the special forces to combat terrorism and narcotics.

He also works with commercial businesses using the same tactics. As he puts it, “like lieutenants in the forces, business owners must also have commitment, courage and a sense of humility to lead people”.

Martin joined us in our latest podcast to discuss the key challenges faced by his clients - leaders of fast growth businesses. He also gave us valuable insight from his new book 'From Mercenaries to Missionaries'.

Here are our key takeaways from the interview (which you can listen to in full here).

Why Do You Need More Leaders in Your Business?

Amazing achievements are collaborative. To be able to develop new ideas and explore exciting opportunities, you need autonomous teams to run the business for you - this is what Martin defines as an elite team.
To build an elite team, you need to understand what it takes to become a great leader.

What Makes a Leader?

As a business owner, you already have the qualities needed to lead:

  1. Commitment

  2. Courage

  3. Humility

These traits carry you through the leadership life-cycle:

The entrepreneur - you use your courage to start a new business from scratch

The mentor - you become committed to others and their personal development

The leader - you learn how to be vulnerable and open to new ideas, attracting others to follow you

Once you can identify these strengths within yourself, you can begin to spot them in others - people who have the potential to help lead your business alongside you.

How to Pick the Right People


Martin says you should avoid relying on personality profiles when looking for future leaders. While it’s useful to understand how people think and feel, there’s a risk that you’ll end up with a bunch of ‘yes’ people.


To truly assess how well a person can perform, look at their behaviour and see if you can spot the leadership qualities we discussed above. Ask yourself:

  • Are they hard-working?

  • Do they have a sense of humility and empathy?

  • Have they got a growth mindset?

  • Will they fit in with the team?

The last point is crucial. Your elite team must be comprised of people who live and breath your business’ DNA. If there’s a piece of the puzzle that doesn’t fit, your team’s identity will become confused and their ability to lead will suffer.

You can assess a new team member by getting them to work with your existing people. Let your current employees decide their viability - they will know better than anyone if they fit the bill.

Harness Their Creativity and Collaborate Powerfully

People who evolve into leaders are highly-creative problem solvers. Challenge them with big responsibilities that test their intelligence - this will motivate and inspire them to maximise their output and commit themselves to your business’ future.

And of course, elite teams must be master collaborators. You can enable powerful collaboration through your leadership skills - play the role of connector, set the tone by being an effective team player yourself and enable them by supplying the right tools and technology.

Listen to Our Full Podcast

Hungry for more golden insights on building elite teams? You can access the full interview with Martin here. You might also want to check out our blog for more info on how to create high-performance leadership teams.