𝗜𝗳 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗗𝗼𝗻'𝘁 𝗗𝗼 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗪𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗘𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗼𝘆𝗲𝗲𝘀, 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗠𝗮𝘆 𝗕𝗲 𝗨𝗻𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗹𝘆 𝗛𝘂𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗕𝗶𝘇

​
If you run a martial arts school, and you want to either grow your team of instructors, or you want to create a better, well functioning team that works together like a well oiled machine, this newsletter post is for you. 
​
​
Whether you have a team of homegrown instructors, or people you have recruited from the outside, this is one of the most overlooked strategies for team building, and you can implement it this month. 
​
​
I came up in my brother’s martial arts organization, which now has 34 locations. I watched it grow from the sidelines since as long as I can remember. 
​
​
​
Imagine how much you would learn by being personally mentored by Steve Jobs while he is growing Apple. 
​
​
That’s basically the experience I got, but the martial art version. I got to see the great times, bad times, and the dramatic times.
​
​
 I was basically gifted a lifelong masterclass on how to run a successful martial arts organization. 
​
​
Though strategy can change over the years, there’s one thing I noticed that remained consistent throughout the years, and that’s how my brother recruited and trained his staff. 
​
​
No matter how many times we changed curriculum or adjusted our employee training methods, this one thing never changed. 
​
​
He made it a routine to “break bread” with the team. 
​
​
You may spend a lot of time together on the mat, but sharing a meal creates a different type of bonding. 
​
​
A study at Cornell in 2015 showed that firefighters who ate their meals together, instead of alone, had much higher performance rates, and had greater satisfaction in their job. 
​
​
“Over the course of 15 months, they conducted interviews and surveys in a large city’s fire department, which included more than 50 firehouses. 
​
​
The researchers asked the department’s 395 supervisors to rate on a scale of zero to 10 the performance of their platoon compared to other fire companies in which they’ve served. 
​
​
The supervisors were also asked how often the platoon eats together in a typical four-day work week. 
​
​
The platoons who ate together most often also got higher marks for their team performance. Conversely, the platoons that did not eat together got lower performance ratings.”
​
​
One of the professors concluded… 
​
​
“From an evolutionary anthropology perspective, eating together has a long, primal tradition as a kind of social glue. That seems to continue in today’s workplaces.”
​
​
No wonder why you see big companies like Google and Apple ditching work from home, and getting people back in the office and using their cafeterias.
 
​
I know what you’re thinking, I can’t create a cafeteria for my staff in the school or eat every meal together. 
​
​
It’s not practical. 
​
​
But you can plan meals together once or twice a month. It doesn’t have to be an expensive fancy steakhouse. 
​
​
You can order some pizzas, or grab some burritos, as long as you are sharing a meal and hanging out. It’s the small stuff like this that creates strong bonds and school loyalty. 
​
​
​
Simple, and easy to implement. 
​
​
We also like to plan team building activities (I recommend doing this quarterly), like laser tag, ax throwing, go karting, heck we’ve even done dance classes and improv comedy together. 
​
​
Make the workplace more than JUST teaching martial arts. If you want to attract the younger generation, you need to make your company fun to work at. 
​
​
That’s obvious, but sometimes we get lost in KPI’s and the pressure to keep up. 
​
​
BTW- if you are a martial arts school owner, and you’re visiting or anywhere near Fort Lauderdale, I would happily meet up to break bread with you too! 

​
​