The Chinese New Year holiday season begins this month. Traditionally, Chinese New Year – or Spring Festival as it’s often called – is a holiday that focuses on home and family. Many of the rituals carried out during Chinese New Year are meant to get rid of inauspicious energies in the home and bring luck and prosperity to the household.

This year, the Chinese New Year kicks off on February 19, a date that marks the beginning of the Year of the Goat/Sheep in the Chinese zodiac calendar. In this Year of the Goat/Sheep, business leaders can glean some valuable lessons from these Chinese New Year traditions.

1. Strengthen ties with your team.

Good leaders work hard to ensure they have a strong, cohesive team. To develop a top-performing team, it’s important to build trust.

Trust is the foundation for any truly effective relationship, whether between family members or team members.  In structuring and strengthening relationships among team members, business leaders can ensure that employees are comfortable communicating with one another and capable of working together to consistently deliver exceptional results.

2. Ensure growth by knowing what your team members are capable of – both as individuals and as a group.

It’s critical for leaders to understand the “chemistry” of their teams – they need to know how to play to their team members’ strengths and limitations. By leveraging individuals’ skills, styles, and preferences, business leaders can create a high-performing team that regularly meets or exceeds goals.

To produce lasting benefits, it is important to use a scientific, validated, and reliable instrument that measures your team members’ unique qualities. An in-depth personality assessment, such as the Caliper Profile, generates a much deeper and more detailed conversation about how each member of a team would tend to behave and interact, as well as how they are likely to influence or potentially conflict with others on the team.

Armed with this information, leaders can structure teams and delegate tasks in a way that capitalizes on people’s strengths and minimizes their weaknesses, leading to ongoing growth.

3. Spread positive energy.

Team leaders have a key role in creating expectations and setting the tone for the group. While it is often important for leaders to take an assertive, firm approach, it’s critical to balance these strengths with other interpersonal qualities. When leaders strive to be empathetic and flexible, they can create an open, collaborative, and collegial environment for their team members.

When the entire team operates from this balanced perspective, leaders will no longer have to focus on trying to change employees or forcing them to do things that make them uncomfortable, instead concentrating their time and energy on big-picture strategies and long-term goals.

Just as families will be coming together this Chinese New Year to strengthen bonds and carry out rites to bring prosperity to their homes, leaders must take measures to  build strong, cohesive teams to ensure that the Year of the Goat/Sheep is a prosperous one for their companies.