Business Mentoring Tip #76 – Your team don’t suck. You do.

Having frustrations with staff seems to be a theme for the small business owners I’ve been working with this month.   Employees under performing, not taking responsibility for their outcomes, having little initiative and being too content to let the owner do the lion share of the income generation.

Does this sound familiar?

It certainly reminds me of my early days in business.   I remember like it were yesterday the mind blowing frustrations of having to take back project after project and do it myself… because no one else seemed to care enough to get it done right and on time.  The resentment ate away at me like a festering wound as once again I was at work before everyone else and working late on jobs I shouldn’t even have had to look at.   And the harder I had to work the grumpier I got with everyone else.  My fuse was short and my tongue sharp.  Mine was not a happy workplace…  for anyone.

It took me a few years and a nasty personal grievance claim to realise where the real problem was.  And it wasn’t with my staff.

It was me.  I was a crap manager.  I’d been so busy expecting everyone to be like me that I’d overlooked a fundamental life truth.  Most people are nothing like me.  I am actually quite unusual.  I am an entrepreneur.  I see the problem, I leap in with the solution, I get it fixed, I charge onto the next problem, seeing opportunities where others see barriers.  I get impatient with other people when they don’t behave the same way.

And this, my friends, is where the real problem with employees lies.

If you have started your own business there is a very good chance that you are not a great people manager.

Ask yourself this:  why are you not an employee?

Because you are a self starter, you want to be in charge of your own destiny, you want to achieve great things and realise your own dreams, in your own way.  You place high expectations on yourself and are willing to push yourself to make it all happen…Right?  You own your own business because you have taken a leap of faith and let go of the pay cheque.

You also have a lot at stake.  You have to make money to survive, to pay bills and grow your team.  Your customers are everything to you and you will bend over backwards to make sure they are happy.  You will do whatever it takes to succeed.

So why don’t your employees feel the same? Why does no one else work as hard as you? Why don’t they care as much? Where is their ambition? Their initiative?  Their drive?

Here’s a newsflash.  If your employees had all the same qualities as you they would not be your employees, they would be your competition!

You simply cannot expect your employees to have the same levels of drive about your business that you do.

But you can create an environment where they find their own sense of empowerment and passion.  Where their own unique skills are recognised and their efforts rewarded.  Where you see their strong points and use them to the company’s advantage, making them feel useful and treasured. They can come to work with a fire in their belly and work harder than you do to achieve amazing results.

As long as you get out of the way!

If you are struggling with your staff right now, take a look at your management skills.  How is the culture of your company?  Are you expecting everyone to behave the way you behave?  Are you behaving like a resentful parent… picking up after your kids then berating them for being messy?

If you are having team problems, it’s time to change your approach.  My world changed the day I realised that I was the problem.  I knew that my strengths lay in other areas, so I hired someone who was an amazing manager.  She took over the hiring and the management of people and left me to do what I was excellent at… being the leader, the visionary and the inspiration.

Maybe you should do the same.  If you are not ready to hire a General Manager as I did, bring in an HR expert on contract.  Get them to help you re-engineer your culture and your management style so that you get to empower more and work a whole lot less.

If you’d like the names of some excellent HR experts email me at laura@liber8yourbusiness.com

From the desk of liber8yourbusiness.  Business mentors and experts in small business exit strategies.

Business Mentoring Tip #75 – Trust your gut

This morning it dawned on me that I haven’t been employed by someone now since 1990, when I left my job as an advertising copy writer.  That’s 22 years of fending for myself!  I realised that not only am I totally unemployable now, but that I’ve also become quite wise in certain areas.

One of these areas is decision making.  I used to agonize over business decisions and lose sleep at night worrying if I’d made the right decision.  Now I make decisions quickly and easily.  And I rarely lose sleep over it.

I’ve learned that when faced with pretty much any choice, you have two things to help you decide the right answer: 1. Facts  2. Your gut

To come to the right conclusion you first need to ensure you have all you need in the first category.  Don’t try to make a decision without all the facts in front of you.  Apply your left brain logic to what the facts are telling you.  For example, if choosing between two potential candidates for a senior position, start with the information you have on each and ensure you carefully consider what the facts are telling you.

Then, armed with logic, switch out of your left brain completely and check in with your gut.  This is where the true wisdom lies. Close your eyes and listen to the inner voice.  If there is a warning coming through, hear it and act on it.

My business partner Lisa and I laugh about this when it comes to hiring new pet carers.  Every single time we’ve had a bad gut feeling on someone and gone ahead an employed them anyway,  they have let us down in some way.  Every single time!  Now if either of us says we have a bad feeling, the other listens and we act on the feeling alone.

Remember this next time you are wrestling with a difficult decision.  Follow the two step process.  Weigh up the facts.  Then trust your gut.

From the desk of liber8yourbusiness.  Business mentors and experts in small business exit strategies.

10 beliefs that will change your life…

Do you believe your beliefs can change the way your life works?  I certainly do. The following 10 beliefs come from an article I just read at inc.com written by Geoffrey James and I was encouraged to see that I subscribe to these pretty much on a daily basis.  What about you?

10 powerful positive beliefs

  1. I always act with a purpose
  2. I take responsibility for my results
  3. I stretch myself past my limits daily
  4. I don’t wait for perfection; instead, I act now
  5. I learn more from failures than successes
  6. I take my job seriously, but do not take myself too seriously
  7. I use rejection to renew my humility and sharpen my objectivity
  8. I use both negative and positive feedback to keep on target
  9. I am careful about what I put into my mind and body
  10. I seek out people who are similarly motivated to improve themselves

What are the positive and negative beliefs you carry around with you that influence your behaviour on a daily basis?

You can find the article by Geoffrey James here: http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/positive-thinking-how-to-change-your-future.html

From the desk of liber8yourbusiness.  Business mentors and experts in small business exit strategies.  Based in Wellington, New Zealand.

An important lesson on truth from the Bollywood Dentist…

I had a big shock last week on my way back from Tonga.  Upon the recommendation of a client I called into see a dentist for a second opinion on my troublesome tooth.  The dentist was Dr Loy at the Caring4smiles practice in Epsom.  After one hour with him I had committed to spending the next two years and over $20,000 with him, travelling from Wellington to Auckland to do so.  When all I had wanted was advice on one dodgy tooth.

How did this happen?

Quite simply, Dr Loy told me the truth.  And was the first dentist in my nearly 50 years of life to do so.  It wasn’t pleasant.  In fact it was quite horrifying.  The truth is a very powerful thing.  There are lessons to be learnt here.

But first let me tell you more about Dr Loy.  His story is worth telling.

Dr Loy graduated ‘cum laude’ in Dentistry in India in 1978 and started his own private practice in Bombay. He told me how he invested 250,00 rupees in this practice and his ‘uncles’ (indian term for all male relatives) told him he was crazy.  The average start up cost for a business was 60,000 rupees.  He went out on a limb from day one, believing that if he built it people would come.  His commitment from the start was to tell people the truth about their teeth.  Within a few years he had so many customers he could no longer drive his own car to work, because people would follow him trying to get an appointment.  He was the dentist to the Bollywood stars and could command any price he wanted.  It seems when it comes to their teeth, the truth is an important factor.

Dr Loy had a wake up call about the importance of family the day his young son asked him where the bed was at work, claiming his father must sleep at work because he’d never seen him sleeping at home.  Soon after Dr Loy moved his practice and his family to Auckland where after some years working part time to spend time with his kids, he began to build his practice from scratch all over.  Again, he spent a fortune on start up – renovating an old villa in Epson, believing that if he built it, the people would come.  And once again, his commitment was to tell people the truth about their teeth.

Now people like me are travelling all over New Zealand to see Dr Loy, turning their backs on the dentist they’ve had for years in their home town.  Why?  Because he tells you the truth.

So why is the truth so powerful?

Let me ask you this.  Have you ever seen a picture of your teeth?  I mean all of your teeth, inside, close up with a powerful camera?  Have you had someone sit with you for half an hour and tell you the history of your teeth and predict the future based on everything they see?  I suspect not.  I certainly had never experienced this.

It was not a pretty sight.  My back teeth are a mess.  A patchwork of fillings made by different dentists over the years, who have been chipping away at my teeth for decades.  There is very little actual tooth left on my major molars, and what is left is a spiderweb of fine cracks spreading all over, just waiting for me to bite on a popcorn kernel and crack them wide open.  This is why I was visiting Dr Loy in the first place.  A big molar cracked when I bit on a chicken bone causing major pain right into my roots.  There is now doubt as to whether this tooth can be saved.

Dr Loy showed me that all of my molars are the same.  A timebomb of cracks waiting to explode.  It’s a matter of when not if.  Teeth should never be repaired in this manner he told me.  There should be a building plan with long term sustainability in mind, not a lifetime of quick fixes with no care for the future.  He likened dentistry to the building trade.  If you keep patching up a house with no plan, eventually it will fall apart and need total gutting and re-building.  But if you get a good engineer and architect in and build with the future in mind, you can keep a house in great shape forever.

In half an hour Dr Loy did two very important things.  He firstly destroyed my faith in my current dentist, who has been patching up my teeth for the last fifteen years and has never once shown me what they look like.  Not once.  And secondly, Dr Loy gave me total faith in himself by showing me the history and future of my teeth and offering me a solution.

We need a plan, he said.  We can re-build your teeth and give you a healthy mouth for the rest of your life.  It will take time and money.  He was completely upfront about the cost and the options.  He didn’t charge me for the photos.  He said he was happy for me to take them somewhere else and get another dentist to do the work if I wanted.  But how could I?  I left angry at all of the dentists who have been chipping away at my teeth for years without a care for the long term impact.  I only trust one dentist now.  And that’s the one who told me the truth.

There are lessons to be learned here for all of us in business.  What is the truth your customers need to hear that your competitors are not willing to tell? 

From the desk of liber8yourbusiness.  Business mentors and experts in small business exit strategies. Based in Wellington, New Zealand.