The last couple of issues of The Positive I have focused on best practices and tips for successful hiring and new employee on-boarding. In resulting discussions with business leaders about their teams and their current challenges a few things came up repeatedly (and predictably).
Hiring and successfully developing your team is a core business competency and is one of the more strategic things you get to do as a leader. When you listen to business leaders that have successfully scaled their companies up, they invariably credit having a great team for the success. You need to care about how you hire, integrate new people (and ideas) and how you lead your team because when you don’t do these well you create roadblocks for scaling up. You are already maxed out, you want to have a life beyond running your business, you cannot keep growing without your team and established processes.
For sure, this can be hard to hear. You have been successful, you’ve grown your team and expanded your business. And yet, lately, everyone is maxed out and over-stressed, you are having team breakdowns even with your “best person”, issues that you thought you fixed when you hired team are feeling broken again, and there is this sense of we’re big (e.g. Im NOT a solopreneur anymore!) but not big enough.
Why did you hit this wall?!
The thing is “dream teams” don’t just happen. And honestly, even teams with the best players don’t always win.
So, do you need to make a change with your team? Is it time to expand your team? Do you have the right people doing the right things? These are all big questions.
When things feel in turmoil or chaotic with your team, these common scenarios can pop up and are roadblocks to growth and getting the most from your team.
Payroll feels like a heavy burden and you are questioning your ROI.
Is your payroll giving you heartburn? You want to invest in your team, you want to be a “good employer” and for the team to feel good about their pay. But margins are down from last year and dang it, “am I really getting a good return on investment?!” Often this moment of frustration comes because you don’t have the right people in the right roles and / or you started delegating functions you don’t want to do vs things that were right for your business .
Both will end up causing more work for you (often it’s the worst kind of work, “re-work”, making you wonder if it's “worth it”.
a) When it’s you and your right hand person there is an all hands on deck mentality, then you add a person and then another. It’s easy for someone to end up with a hodgepodge of responsibilities that don’t match their strengths. Some of this is okay, when it’s the majority of your work it leads to strain, mistakes and burnout. These breakdowns equate to more work, money lost, customers being negatively impacted and frustration all around.
b) Be aware of delegating a function too soon. This leads to frustration when it doesn't go well. Is it the employee? Is it you or the team? Some outside factor? An example I’ve seen with clients is with giving over the sales process too soon. You, as the expert, are often best positioned to promote your business, close sales and add new clients. Your business and clients might not be ready for you to delegate the whole sales function (it takes processes, consistent flow of leads, reporting & tracking systems, not to mention your upfront marketing language and positioning of your company etc.). If this is the case for you, instead look at the what support you can put in place to “set up” sales and what other tasks you can delegate so that you are freed up more to promote your business and increase sales.
2. Questioning the role of a key team member and wondering if it's time to let them go
Likely, you know it’s time to fire or let go of “that person” but you have a whole litany of reasons why you don’t want to even think about it, starting with now isn’t a good time and you’re planning to talk to them. Yes, I hear you, it really does suck! They were so key to getting everything started and you wouldn’t have wanted to do it without them. But yet again this week their performance cost you money and time, plus, even worse, the REST of the team is now in upheaval, which is even more expensive. And of course this happened under pressure of deadlines. This just HAS to stop.
Guess what! They are not happy either. The new routines and demands of the business are now just super stressful for them. They are used to doing it all, doing it well and having all the control because the team was tiny. Well, you're no longer tiny, there are more overlapping projects, more moving parts. It's just not scalable, hence all the frustration.
3. You are having trouble letting go
Do you find it hard to delegate? Are you holding onto control because you can do it faster and easier yourself?? Are you the only one who’s making connections and moving projects forward?
If you are the bottleneck and the go to person for all things in your business you will end up spending ALL of your time working in your business and won’t ever have the time to work on your business. This is costing you - for sure precious time and I’m sure very real money too.
There are real reasons why these type of people management challenges are a pattern for growing small businesses. The skills you need for “start up” are not the same skills you need as you grow and scale and become a CEO and boss to a team, not just the boss of yourself.
If you have a team and these scenarios are familiar - you need to make a change. You are in a new phase of growing your business. This is a real leadership moment.
And guess what?! Your team will thank you. According to Gallup’s poll, people surveyed shared that at work they want more opportunity to do what they are best at; want clearer expectations; more opportunities to learn and grow; and want to feel more connected.
You no longer have to fill "every role" to make your business work or be the bottleneck for every decision. It’s time to work with your team differently.
Do you want help with your team? Need to up-level your hiring process?
Is it time to assess your team structure so you are ready to scale up your business?
Click here to schedule a time to talk.
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