Are you ready to stop doing all of the things, and start DELEGATING?
Maybe you already were, and it didn’t work out. Or you have a few team members on board but they aren’t performing at the level you’d like them to be. Or, you were burned by employees in the past and are hesitant to make that next hire.
I’m going to share the hard truth with you, friend: most of the time, it’s the most important objectives in our business that get pushed to the side.
Recruiting is one of them.
It’s one of the most important functions of a well-run business, but often times it doesn’t take priority because it doesn’t feel as “urgent” as other things that come up in the day to day of running a business.
But the truth is, not having the right people in the right seats aboard your rocket ship is a recipe for chaos, burnout and stunted growth.
If you want to explode your results with more peace and less stress and strain, I want to share some of the key hiring tips I’ve learned about leadership and team building after almost 20 years building, managing and leading high-performance teams – through economic downturns, hyper-growth, crashes, turbulent markets and more.
Hiring Tip #1: Raise your expectations.
Truth: how you build your team is directly related to your self-worth as a business owner. So, believe that you deserve to link arms with someone brilliant who can help make your dreams come true (because you do!)
What you tolerate in your business is what you perpetuate, so hiring and retaining a team of rockstars starts with your commitment to never settle for anything less than greatness. Tolerating less than will get you mediocre results (and, you’ll end up doing most of the work anyway). I here entrepreneurs say it all the time: “it’s just easier and better if I do it myself.”
No. This is your sign to stop settling.
Ask yourself: what kind of results are you craving in your business? What do you truly believe you deserve? Pinpoint it, and then go out and find the unicorns who will help you drive profitable growth. Trust me — they’re out there.
#2: Always be recruiting.
This is a hard pill to swallow, but as your business evolves (especially through periods of rapid growth) even your top performer won’t always be able to keep up. And that’s OK.
Sometimes, your right-hand at one level is going to struggle to contribute at the next. You may have to move that person into a smaller role within your organization as it grows.
This is an equally strong reason to choose business partners who compliment your current status and future growth potential.
It’s not that they (or you) did anything wrong: but team members can’t always grow at the same rate your business is. And in that case, you have two choices:
1) Slow down
2) Recruit higher-level talent
As the visionary leader of your organization, it’s mission-critical to be constantly looking ahead, and prioritize recruiting as one of the most important parts of the job: and that doesn’t mean YOU have to be the one doing it.
It means leveraging outside resources, allocating money or bandwidth to recruiting on an ongoing basis, and making those opportunities visible.
If you don’t take the time to understand what your business needs and make sure you’ve got the right hiring processes, you will struggle.
I love developing team members from within, but here’s a lesson I learned the hard way: when your business is growing FAST, people sometimes need a little longer to grow than the business is willing to wait.
#3: Follow the rule of 5.
Okay, you’ve got your team in place. And it’s growing…and growing. And suddenly, you start to notice a decrease in productivity and results. Are you following the rule of 5?
You can do a great job at managing, coaching and leading your team — but once you have more than 5 direct reports, things can get messy. And the reason is because you simply can’t give each individual team member the time, attention, feedback they deserve in order to be able to accomplish their goals and hit their KPIs.
I see this all the time with business owners who not only have internal staff, but have 5+ contractor. It’s expensive, overwhelming, and frankly: ineffective.
So, what do you do?
Up-level and consolidate.
Be willing to pay a higher salary to get the right people in the right roles. Consolidate responsibilities and up-level the position so that you can either develop your producers into leadership, or hire someone who can take on more.
People are one of the greatest investments you can make in your business. You don’t want your producers to stunt your growth because you can’t give them the appropriate support.
I hope these 3 hiring tips were helpful as you head into 2022 ready for expansion. For more tips on leadership, team building and scaling your business – be sure to subscribe for weekly content (and, send me a DM if there’s a specific topic you’d like me to cover!).
