Creating Your High-Level Team
One of the toughest aspects of running your business is wearing the many hats it takes to run your company.
However, to get yourself out of the spin cycle of your days, investing in building a high-performing team can elevate not only the space you can gain in your business to focus on strategy and goals, but to elevate your company’s results.
Through my work with my clients who are successful business owners and founders, we’ve been able to elevate their impact and overall company performance by embracing three core steps in building high-level support in their businesses:
The amazing truth of where you’ve been and where you’re going
When I graduated from University, I was incredibly fortunate to go back-packing across Europe, travelling through several countries.
For a time, I was with a friend, but then we went our planned separate ways and I travelled solo for a few weeks.
I remember one leg of the trip I was arriving in Prague, via train, with an hour to find my way to the hostel to check in before the front desk closed for the day. I had to navigate through a strange city and language to find the hostel where I was staying for a few days - all arranged over the phone.
This was a time of pay phones and phonebooks….and very limited internet!
I remember nervously studying my travel book in anticipation of the train’s arrival, mapping out my route in my mind, trying to picture and plan each step.
I had to take the street car from the train station, get off at the correct stop, find the correct street, turn at the next correct street and then the next to find my way. Finding the landmarks and proper streets each step of the way.
There’s one thing in business we’ll never get to practice
As we build our businesses, we get to practice and gain proficiency in the details of running of it.
Details like hiring: some of us may have hired a few employees over time and each time we do it, we will get a little bit better at it; finding what works and what doesn’t.
When it comes to managing your people: I suspect that you’ve made some mistakes (like we all have) and had some wins, and have attained a decent level of competency in managing your team through the years.
I also bet that how you serve your customers has improved in some way over time as you do this over and over again. There may be still room for improvement, but you practice this day-in and day-out and it’s my observation that your company is very good at serving it's customers.
So what don’t we get to practice?
Back to Fundamentals: What you really should know about decision-making
An unhappy employee, a negotiation, hiring, deciding which product line to build out and grow...
We can be faced with these types of situations and decisions in a given month, week or even day!
So when we feel the intensity heighten and the stakes get higher in our decision-making, there’s one fundamental exercise that I know can be helpful in these situations.
This reminds me about a recent appointment where I was taking one of my children to a physiotherapy session. The physiotherapist spoke about the benefits of working from the ground up to strengthen their legs and base so they can perform higher and get stronger at the sport they are playing. But the exercises were working some of the smallest muscles in the body to do so.
It was so fundamental to higher performance that’s where we started.
So, when faced with challenging business situations or decisions, a similar approach can help you go from uncertainty to assuredness in knowing how to proceed.
Looking for more 'Time' in your Business
If you were to take a survey of Business Owners and ask them why they went into business, many would say one of their top reasons was for flexibility and freedom.
However, when the business gets going and you are juggling all the different roles, it feels like you have everything BUT flexibility and freedom.