Once the new



members of your team are on board, it's time for the truly hard part: trusting

them. Your gut will fight you every step of the way. You'll assume your

instructions are clear and misunderstandings are their fault. You'll assume when

you disagree that you're right and they're wrong. But you'll sometimes be wrong.

The key to successful executive relationships is changing what your gut tells

you.

 

Remember how

you interviewed for trust? That's important because once you hire an executive

team, you must let them take their responsibilities and run with them. That

means agreeing with them about what their roles are, what deliverables they're

responsible for and on what timeframe.

It's also

worth deciding in advance how you'll handle disagreements. You hired this person

assuming their judgment was better than yours. So when you disagree, if you did

your job right, chances are that they're right and you're wrong. Discuss early

on about how you'll make the call, so you get the most benefit from constructive

conflict. Just remember: If you agree on everything, one of you is redundant.

 Entrepreneurship is about going for the things that are much bigger than what

you could do alone. Your job isn't to reach the goal; it's to build a team that

will reach the goal. If you really want to reach your goals, you'll need to

bring on others to help, and creating a good executive team means knowing what

you need them to do, finding good candidates, and giving them what they need to

do their jobs. If you choose well, they'll be successful and make you successful

as well.