Whether you are a leader in your company or work for another, you consciously desire to get the best return on your energy. After all, most people have multiple responsibilities in the workplace. The obvious answer is to harness that power efficiently by multiplying it through the efforts of others.

As a leader in business, you experience the challenge of maintaining value-driven performance in the face of constant pressure, changing technology, changing trends and shifting customer preferences. Several processes can bring solutions to these problems. However, I want to focus on the issue related to developing a team of employees and/or contractors that are involved in the operations of the company.

While you can look at a business as one unit, the truth is that it consists of smaller teams — management, marketing, production, and others — that add up to the whole. The makeup of those teams can vary considerably. A few examples include the full-time employees that you work with daily, employees who operate parts of the company that you have little to do with, or an independent contractor that you work with through the internet or remote access. You might have teams that concentrate on human resources or overall management. Others may deal with direct service to clients. You can bring on team members by hiring directly, using temporary agencies, outsourcing the job or teaming up with independent contractors.

Successful business leaders realize that people are their biggest asset. Becoming excellent at relationships with people means fostering a resonant link between individuals, where the synergy resulting from individuals coming together produces more results than an individual could create alone.

Link Energy With Engagement And Efficiency

Attitudes are contagious. A cynical or a negative view can create a downward spiral within a team, while a positive attitude can uplift it even in the hardest times. When teams do not work together, it affects the entire organization negatively by lowering revenues and morale and creating a negative culture. As a result, innovation, productivity, and profitability of the business or organization are affected.

Attitude leads to success or failure. For example, a leader with a critical approach can cripple a project without actually taking the time to assess a situation. Critical thinking is great and needed in business, but only when performed in conjunction with facts.

When you develop teams based on humanistic values — including purpose, encouragement, real-time feedback and reinforcing structures — they excel. Happy team members play a significant role in each other’s personal, professional and financial success because they help achieve the company’s goals. When you work as a team, everybody is involved in some way in the planning and implementing of those goals. When you achieve the goals, the entire team cheers and celebrates. After all, they were highly involved in making it happen!

When you have a connected team, you experience the contributions and support that enable you to maximize productivity and orchestrate innovation and creativity, leading to the best quality of products and services. The resulting profitability enhances everyone’s life. Your business becomes more than a paycheck to your team.

Encourage Passion And Performance

A leader’s job is to lead: to inspire and encourage employees or contractors. It also includes the responsibilities of hiring, firing, assessing and improving people’s performances. A successful leader can converge both the positive and negative aspects of these duties to create a high-performing and highly productive team. Active teams require people to collaborate efficiently.

As a leader, you are responsible for hiring the right people and bringing out the best in them. Inspiring others is one of the most valuable assets a leader can have. A person working for you can have all the talent in the world, but many times, it needs to be unlocked and nurtured. As a leader, not only do you need to recognize talent, you also have to know what to do with it.

Here is where you can make the difference as a leader. Your job is to help the team distinguish between the task at hand and the possible methods employed to accomplish that task. This simple list contains the steps you can utilize with a team to quickly point your team in the right direction.

• Diagnose the problem or identify the goal.

• Brainstorm possible solutions.

• Prepare checkpoints to chart progress.

• Finalize what solution will work best.

• Implement that solution.

• Critique the final results.

A Cohesive Team Leads To Performance And Profit

Cohesive teams with common goals and purposes make sound decisions and achieve their goals. While it is a challenge to bring together people with different personalities and backgrounds, you can move mountains when you can do it.

A relationship with your team means that you have to check your ego at the door. There is a saying that if you are the smartest person in the room, you are probably not hiring the right people. The actual value of a team is where everybody who is a part of the team, even the leader, can learn from others. When this happens, then you know a team is a cohesive group functioning the way it should.

When you do this, you will see your company reaching higher levels of income and growth. You will have people performing at high levels with a desire to become even better. With this dynamic operating in your business, new endeavors and future growth are at your doorstep. You will never look back.

A version of this article first appeared on Forbes.