The delicious irony of entrepreneurship is that while you might have escaped the hierarchy and politics of a corporate office, there’s a lot to learn from the humble manager who you might assume is an a) waste of overhead spending, b) useless clog in the machine or c) an annoyance you’re glad to be rid of.
Here’s the thing… the second you hire anyone for your business, you become a manager as well as a boss. Which means that even if you hate managers in theory, you’ve got to learn how to be a better one or risk screwing up your company, overpaying for help and much, much worse.
Truthfully, most entrepreneurs don’t view themselves as managers
Michael Gerber lays this out in his fantastic book The E-Myth Revisited, which takes you on the average entrepreneurial journey from that of a worker (doing the thing you know how to do), to a manager (teaching others how to do what you do), to a visionary (mapping the vision for the business while others do what you know how to do).
Now, you might be thinking to yourself, “Kelly… I’m the expert. I’m the one with all the industry experience and degrees and certifications so this doesn’t apply to me!”
You’d be wrong.
Because what you “know how to do” is as much your expertise in your industry as it is “how to make an appointment with a client” and “when does a blog post go live.”
Everything you do in relation to your business falls under your purview when you’re working alone. Everything.
However, the moment you hire someone so you can outsource and clone yourself and achieve that 4 hour work week then you must make the transition into managing.
Why?
Because your employees need guidance
It’s not enough to say, “you’re hired, now book my appointments” or “welcome to the team, I need you to create a new website.”
How you relate to your team will determine their success, your results, and so much more.
[Sidenote: I generally use terms like employee or team member interchangeably – it doesn’t matter to me if someone you hire is full time, part time, as needed, virtual, on site, or temporary. You must do this with everyone who works for your business no matter how they are designated for tax or legal purposes.]
Without guidance, your employees will get a task and attempt to complete it like a confused child, especially if it’s the first time they’ve done such a thing. It does not matter if the person you hire has extensive experience doing the thing you hired them to do – they do not have experience with your business, nor do they understand your preferences.
When you create the right training and manage the process of teaching your team how and when and what exactly you want them to accomplish, you’re not just creating a stronger team but a more valuable business. More on that later.
Unfortunately, most new managers screw up in predictable ways
As I’ve been hired to manage projects and teams, find new employees, or simply work within a business, I have seen some messed up things. Here are the top mistakes that they make:
Mistake #1: Failing to share the big picture
I get it, sometimes you just need to give an assignment and not spend time talking about the big picture and how it all fits into the grand tapestry of your business. But without any context, it can be hard to complete the task and sometimes impossible to do it correctly.
For example, let’s say that you’ve created an agreement with a new business partner and together you’re going to organize, host, and promote retreats for your community. You could just give your assistant pieces of the job (“create signage for event” or “source nearby locations for excursions”), but you’d be much better off first ensuring that your team understands the why behind what they’re doing.
Why do you want signs? Is it for great photos? To tell attendees where to go? To promote the brand? When you plan excursions, are they for bonding? Exploring the area? Adventure?
Sure, most competent people can do the task as assigned, but if you want someone to “read your mind”, then you’ve got to give them a piece of it.
Because there’s a big difference between supporting “an event” and “creating an exciting experience for women in their 40s and 50s traveling solo for the first time while exploring new countries, music, food, and making friends.” The former is vague while the latter gives a picture of what to expect for this event.
Maybe you’re not a big picture person, or it’s difficult for you to make commitments early in the process.
That’s okay.
I totally understand that you might change your mind, but the problem is when you don’t tell your team member what your ideas are in the first place. Because as bad as it is to neglect the big picture, it’s worse if you are…
Mistake #2 Unclear about the result
As small businesses, it’s not often that you’re going to entirely hand off a project and say “go, develop a brand new website and don’t check in until you’re done.” Most of the time you’re going to ask for pieces, projects, tasks, and get it done little by little, often sharing the work. Or assigning research to a team member and then making decisions based on what they bring.
The problem is when you say, “go, do this” and are unclear about what you expect to see. Let’s go back to our retreat example.
For example, let’s assume that you need some research done so you send it to a VA and ask for a list of locations for the upcoming retreat. The VA returns the assignment after a few days in an excel spreadsheet.
Reviewing the work you’re dismayed – all of these locations are in the US and you want an international locale! So you ask the VA to do it again.
The spreadsheet comes back, this time with international locations. Great, except it doesn’t have pricing info or what’s included. You need an all-inclusive that will accommodate up to 30 guests. Back it goes.
Final version is sent over – except you really need it in a Powerpoint presentation comparing options so you can show it to your business partner in tomorrow’s meeting. In the end you’re frustrated, wondering how much all those revisions cost and stay up late trying to create the Powerpoint for the meeting with your partner tomorrow – feeling wholly unprepared to share the research.
Whose fault is this debacle? Clearly there’s a communication problem.
Even if you gave your assistant the big picture, you need to also be clear about the result you want to see when you assign a task.
That might mean taking 5 minutes to say: “I’ll be meeting with my business partner for a retreat in a week and need to show her some options for our upcoming retreat. We want an all-inclusive international location, space for up to 30 guests, within 50 miles of a major international airport and preliminary pricing per guest. Please give me 5-8 options. Please compile this information and create a Powerpoint presentation with all the details I’ve requested, including some pictures of the locations.” Then you’d not only save a lot of back and forth but you’ll also get exactly what you want faster (and cheaper).
[Not sure how to say, “this is what I need” without feeling like a jerk? I’ve got some scripts for you! Read on to get them absolutely free.]
Mistake #3 Neglecting to share the steps
One of the toughest things you have to train yourself to do is notice and write down the steps for any given task. It’s hard because as a one (wo)man shop, you’re used to doing it on your own – you don’t need to think about step 1, 2, 3.
But when you give a task, even with a clear desired outcome, to a team member without teaching them how to do it, then you’re paying them to spend time figuring it out on their own. And your mileage on how fast they pick things up will vary.
I call this becoming the GPS of your business. Because here’s the thing: if you drove to the same office every weekday for 6 years then I bet you could tell me where to get the cheapest gas, what lane slows down during a merge, what time of day I should leave to avoid the worst traffic. But if I’m brand new and don’t know those things, then it might take me 6 months or more to start to figure it out.
When you have the experience on how to get from Point A to Point B then you are the expert on how to get there quickly and it’s in your best interest to show and tell your team how to complete tasks the way you would.
(And again, some people will never observe patterns and make deductions and adjust accordingly. People think differently so don’t be discouraged. Besides, they don’t need to figure it out on their own if you teach them.)
Repeat after me: if their time is my money, I have to make efficiency a priority.
When you create the GPS for your business then you’re not just saying what you need done but how to get it done, essentially the turn-by-turn directions for accomplishing a task or project. Imagine how necessary this is when you’re driving, and consider how much more important it is when you release someone on the internet where the opportunities to get lost are infinite.
Now, you don’t have to start with a system for every single thing, but you’d better cover the major and repeating tasks.
{Note: I’ve got some handy scripts for you on “here’s a faster way to do that” so you don’t sound like a jerk. Promise.}
Also, if you’re not a person who can easily share the step-by-step process, then you need a team member who fills that role for you. Check out the resources at the end of this post for some hiring hacks to find a systems savant for your team.
So, there you have it, the 3 biggest mistakes managers make when giving tasks:
1) Not sharing the big picture,
2) Lack of clarity on the outcome,
3) Vague or missing steps
But there’s something else I want to share and it’s important.
10 things your employee won’t tell you (are going wrong)
Nobody wants to be the last to know about something, especially when that thing is wrong or embarrassing. While it’s never fun to realize you’ve had toilet paper stuck to your shoe or a misspelling on your home page for the last year, it’s always better to find out so you can make amends.
I’ve worked with a lot of teams – a fair share of them dysfunctional in some way or another. And when I work with individuals one of my superpowers is empathetic understanding of where each person is coming from, and the list I’m sharing is culled from those conversations. These are the things real people – good people – are too afraid to share with their bosses.
I want you to read this list, because it’ll help you see and understand where some of your team problems might stem from. I’ll also provide you with some support with what to do once you identify such a problem in your own team.
So here are my top 10 things that your employee is too intimidated, nervous, afraid, or worried to tell you:
- I don’t know how to do that
- I don’t get why this is even important
- You’ve explained this and I still don’t get it
- I can’t work these hours and can’t say why
- I’m bored out of my mind
- When you need something last minute I want to scream
- I’m tired of things changing all the time
- I feel like nothing I do is ever going to be good enough
- As soon as I get another client I’m leaving
- You freak out every time I make a mistake… so I hide them
Truth time: how many of those hit you right in the feels? Do you have a pit in the vicinity of your stomach that’s saying, “oh shit…” right about now?
{In this week’s swipe file, I’ll share 10 more things your VA isn’t telling you, along with how to deal with each of these issues. Way too long to post here so it’s going in the goodie bag!}
Again, knowledge is power and I have some resources to not only identify when this might be happening but also to keep lines of communication wide open so you won’t be blindsided by this type of behavior.
The Golden Rule to Managing
When it comes to relating to an employee, I find entrepreneurs swing in 2 divergent directions. The first person says, “it’s my business and I’ll do what I want – you’re the employee so you’ll get the shit assignments, deal with whatever I dish out and be happy you have a job.” This person gives little to no attention to what their employees want or feel, and it usually results in poor morale, high turnover and hurt feelings.
The second type of entrepreneur is overly empathetic, feeling guilty when assigning a big project or asking for changes. This person often takes a halfway finished or incorrect assignment and does it themselves to avoid a confrontation and almost apologizes when asking the employee to do their work on time.
There’s a middle ground, which is not only much healthier, but also my golden rule of managing.
Treat your employees with kindness and fairness, the way you would want to be treated.
And while it’s not that hard a concept to understand, it’s very hard to implement.
Included in this week’s swipe file are some scripts for you around “do this because it needs to be done (even if it’s difficult)” and “I need you to make changes (even though I could do them myself).”
There are no scripts for “just do this grunt work you minion!”
Say this, not that
To wrap up today’s post I want to share some phrases and scripts to start weaving into your conversations with your team.
Stop saying: “tell me when you’re done with that”
Replace with: “please check in after 3 hours with a progress report”
Stop saying: “work on this when you can”
Replace with: “this is not your top priority, please do A & B first, then work on this before project C”
Stop asking: “can you do this task?”
Replace with: “take a look at the task and email me by tomorrow to let me know what you need to get started.”
Stop promising: “yeah, I’ll look at this later” and promptly archiving the email
Replace with: “I’ll review this by Friday and send you feedback; please check in with me on Friday afternoon if you don’t hear back by then.”
Stop dismissing: “it’s easy; you should know how to do this.”
Replace with: “this should be straightforward, but let me know if you get stuck so I can help you right away.”
Stop saying: “we’ll write this all down later”
Replace with: “please document the steps you take in doing this task and send to me with the finished task.”
3 Steps for Entrepreneurs to Manage their Business Better
A Cure for Boring Systems
You can’t do everything. And you shouldn’t.