The origins of the word 'company' is rooted in the idea of people coming together. So it stands to reason that to build a successful company, you need to bring together the right team. Not only that, they need to respect each other and work together well too. So what's the secret to building the right team and creating high levels of employee satisfaction?It's a subject that Steven Bartlett knows a lot about because he's been living and breathing it for over 11 years as a serial entrepreneur. Born in Botswana to English and Nigerian parents, Steven’s business journey started in 2013 after he dropped out of university and launched an online messaging board for students called Wallpark. By the age of 27, his social media marketing company, Social Chain, was worth more than R7 million. In 2022, he became a household name on the BBC investor show Dragons' Den, and he also hosts The Diary of a CEO podcast. Now 30, Steven chatted to our team for a recent YuLife webinar, and shared a huge number of insights about how to build a successful team. We share some of his best tips below, while you can watch the full webinar for free here.1. Build the right cultureWhen you're making your first hires, you naturally want to focus on skills and experience. But it's also crucial, Steven says, to be thinking about whether they have the right values, so you can forge the right kind of company culture. "This is the most important thing, especially at the start," he stresses. "Because each one of your first 10 people represents 10% of your company culture. And we know from multiple studies and reports that one bad apple can spoil the bunch. So getting it right early on is key. Because it's really hard to unpick when you're at 100 or 200 people." What does he mean by culture? "You should be able to say, 'that is a Coca-Cola person' or 'that is a GymShark person'," he explains. "In the way they speak, the way they conduct themselves, how nice they are to each other, there should be an element of them feeling like disciples of the company."And Steven doesn't just follow this strategy when launching new companies, but also when buying existing ones. "We just announced we've acquired a business this morning," he reveals. "And I'll say to the founders: 'My number one job is not sales or all of these other things; I see them as downstream. My number one thing is getting this big group of people to behave in the right way.'"Nail this, he believes, and everything else will follow. "The first 10 people are going to hire the next 90 people," he points out. "And they hire people with the same values, and so on."2. Adapt your hiring strategy as you buildHiring should not, though, be monolithic. "The way you hire and the type of people you hire will change at different stages of your organisation," Steven explains. "At the first stage, you're looking for people who are all-in, who get it, who breathe the mission, who are disciples." Then, if things go to plan, you enter a second phase where things grow very quickly. "Now, there's a greater requirement for processes and departments like HR, and all those things come into play," Steven continues. "This is quite a difficult phase and sometimes requires a different type of person. Thirdly, you tend to get into an enterprise phase, where processes are in place, growth isn't 100% a year, and you're looking for a different type of leader again."One of the most challenging aspects of team building is that people who are right in a job during one phase may no longer be right in another. And sometimes that might mean letting even very talented people go. That might seem like disloyalty, but Steven argues that, "I think it's actually about fairness. Because if it's not right for the company, it's also not going to be right for them; they're really going to struggle. So it's better to have an honest conversation about: 'This is what the company needs right now. This is what you're able to deliver, and there's a mismatch here.'"Also, Steven believes that what's good for the goose is good for the gander. And so company founders should apply the same logic to themselves . "At the very start, founders will take very high-level roles," he explains. "One will be CEO, another will be CFO. But then the company goes to 5,000 people. And Dave or Brenda, or whoever, has never been a CFO for 5,000 people before; it requires a completely different skillset. I've seen that from so many great founders. They'll say: 'That's not for me. That's not my skillset. So let me get out the way of this.'" 3. Protect the cultureAnother reason you occasionally have to let people go, Steven adds, is because they're not fitting in with the company culture. That might sound harsh, but to add some perspective, he offers up an intriguing thought experiment. "Think about one person in your organisation, and ask yourselves the question: 'If everybody in your organisation had the same cultural values as that individual, would they raise or lower the bar?'" he says. "You can probably think of some people who, if everyone had their cultural values, you might fail as a company. If that's the case, either a conversation or training or some other type of intervention is required, because that person is not right for your business. And if there's a real issue with their cultural values, it'll be contagious."It's a lesson Steven has learned himself through bitter experience. "My biggest mistake in business was procrastinating on this," he recalls. "I knew this individual was wrong for our company in terms of cultural values. But I thought: 'Maybe I'll just move them to another country and make them managing director.' "I knew my gut knew this was not right. But I was a coward, and I paid the price. It had a huge impact on our financial performance, on employee satisfaction and happiness. I should have had the uncomfortable conversation sooner. Because if you don't address it, it doesn't go anywhere. It just grows and the collateral damage increases." 4. Build systems of communicationBuilding the right team isn't a 'one and done', Steven explains. It's something you need to keep course-correcting. And part of that is by creating good systems of communication."One of the key things organisations don't do enough of is teaching people how to communicate with each other," he says. "For example, you'll often see a suggestion box in an office, but when you open it, it's just a bunch of people roasting the CEO. That's not how we should be communicating."In his companies, Steven promotes the Kaizen philosophy, in which you have a Kaizen coach who helps people make constructive suggestions and, crucially, the employee has to see the suggestion through themselves. "So for example, someone might put in a suggestion box, 'I hate the music in the office; I don't like hip-hop,' which isn't particularly helpful. Knowing that you're going to have to fix the issue yourself, though, makes you write: 'I don't like the office music. So I think we should implement Spotify Jukebox, where everyone can add their own music.' And then you'd have to implement that, with the support of your coach. I think this is a good way to help avert conflict, when you can create outlets like this." 5. Promote kindness above all elseWhen it comes to employee retention, there's always going to be focus on pay. But Steven doesn't think that's the only important consideration when it comes to employee satisfaction. Indeed, it may not even be the most important."The organisations that retain people the best, and get the best out of them, provide much more than financial remuneration," he believes. "One of the big things they'll provide is a supportive community. Because all the studies show that having a supportive community around you at work reduces your stress levels." He gives an example from one of his previous companies. "We used to have a KPI on the amount of internal communities within the organisation," he explains. "We had a head of happiness, who'd report to me every month on the number of internal communities: book club, women's football team, men's football team, those kinds of things." Another way they achieved high levels of employee satisfaction was by offering staff in-house therapists.Interestingly, they made this opt-out rather than an opt-in option. "This was really important because some individuals would not have opted in, because there was still a stigma around it," Steven explains. "So we made it opt-out instead, and made sure all the leaders and myself went to the room where the therapists worked. So I think it's really about business leaders setting the attitude towards mental health and wellbeing from the top."Relating this back to team culture, Steven explains that the attribute in employees that matters to him most of all is kindness. "Because that's the glue: the glue of culture, the glue of community. And when you have great communities, you have high employee satisfaction, and people doing the best work of their lives, because they feel like they're part of something. "So I think if I was to write a list of priorities, and what I was willing to compromise on, I definitely wouldn't compromise kindness before talent. And it goes back to what I said earlier: one individual who isn't kind can take down an organisation, because great people will start to leave. It's a bit like a virus. So you definitely shouldn't compromise kindness before talent."Check out the full webinar here.