265: Managing Your Team Effectively   

Michele Williams: Hello, my name is Michele, and you're listening to Profit is a Choice. Today's podcast is a conversation with Shelly Warren. Shelly is a women's leadership advisor, and she's the host of the “Stacking Your Team” podcast. Her expertise is in helping small business owners develop and nurture a leadership team so that they can take over the day-to-day operations, giving you, the owner, more time for growth, conversations, and decision-making. I hope you enjoy the podcast.

Every day, empowered entrepreneurs are taking ownership of their company financial health and enjoying the rewards of reduced stress and more creativity. With my background as a financial software developer, owner of multiple businesses in the interior design industry, educator, and speaker, I coach women in the interior design industry to increase their profits, regain ownership of their bottom line, and to have fun again in their business. Welcome to Profit is a Choice. Hi, Shelli. Welcome to the podcast.

Shelli Warren: Hello, Michele. I'm so happy to be here.

Michele Williams: Me, too. We've already had a lot of fun pre-conversation, talking, and just getting to know each other a little better so that was good. I can't wait to hear about all that you have to offer with regard to keeping our people, engaging our employees, and building a career path. Before we jump into that, Shelli, share a little bit with our listeners about your trajectory in business and what brought you to do this work today.

Shelli Warren: Well, I've been leading teams forever. I've led teams in retail, in a Fortune 50 company where I led large teams, where we worked on multimillion-dollar projects for those billion-dollar brands that were part of that portfolio. I've also led a lot of teams within the not-for-profit sector with particular board work that I've done and then flipped over to serving people online. And so, what I do now is I teach women who own a service-based business how to really find, keep, and lead the teams that they have so that they can get out of the day-to-day operation.

Michele Williams: Oh, get out of the day-to-day operation. Let me ask you this. What do you see as the number one challenge to doing that? Is it the hiring? Is it the retaining? Is it the onboarding? What is it that you would say to that particular goal, that you have that mission, what's the number one challenge that you see to that?

Shelli Warren: Well, it has a starting point and endpoint. So, the first problem is that we don't always select our best candidates. We'll select people who we think we can afford. We'll also select people who have been served up to us by a trusted friend or colleague who we know are not a right fit for a role, but we feel obligated to the person who served them up to us. We'll say to ourselves, well, we'll give them a shot, we'll see how this works out. And then the other problem on the end of it, once you have the individual working with you alongside you on the team, is it's a control situation. So, you know, you've built this business from nothing into what it is now. And even though you know that you need to get out of the day-to-day operations, you're so over it. You're done over handholding, over coaching, you're done with the oversight. You really want to get out of that day-to-day operation so that you can build the business out further. You know this. Intellectually, you know this, but in your heart, you're finding it very difficult to trust someone else with your brand, with your clients, with your customers, and with your other team members.

Michele Williams: It's so funny that you say that. We are just finishing up a book study, It's Okay to Be the Boss. It's so interesting because one of the points that he makes is that one to 5 million in revenue, they call it the black hole of business. And in the black hole of business, it is that you know that you're scaling up, you know that you're growing, but the money hasn't reached the part where you can hire the A players. Or you have waited so long to hire that then you're hiring, and then you don't have either the time and resources to get them onboarded and set up properly, or you don't have the money yet, but, you know, if you hire them, the money will come. It's just this little vicious cycle until you can get yourself out of it so really planning in advance and being aware of when you need to hire and actually hiring almost before you need them, not after. We've talked about it on the podcast multiple times, not after the fact that you're so overdone, you're toasted, you're out, you're tapped out, you have zero energy resources because then you're working out of depletion. Honestly, I call it getting graspy. You get graspy, but you're like, I want a warm body. Just put somebody in that position and then you realize that's really not what you wanted. And when the somebody gets in the position and they can't do the things that you ask them to do, or they can't read your mind, because you don't have time to share anything, no SOPs, all of that, then there's frustration on your side that they're not doing your job and I'm paying you, and there's frustration on their side, but you're not telling me how to do it, and I'm showing up and I don't know what to do. There's like, it feels like there's no way out of it and really all of it is about not planning properly.

Shelli Warren: Everything you said is the reality of being a business owner and I like to encourage my clients to hire for the future. We hire for the future. We hire people into a role where they can come in and hit the ground running immediately and add value to the business. At the same time, they're bringing skill sets, curiosity, and a sense of urgency, and a willingness to move alongside at the pace that the company's growing. So, we can look at this individual and already in our mind's eye, picture them taking on, more responsibility, shifting their work plan somewhat to take on bigger responsibilities and bigger outcomes.

Michele Williams: I love that. We certainly talk about hiring because it's part of the financial process, but I really like to work with people on understanding how money works in their business. Money is part of every decision that you make. How much am I going to put into marketing? How much am I going to use to build a website? How much am I going to pay my people? All the things, and I encourage them to have three to six months of a salary set up in advance, ready to go, so that you can onboard with ease. In the same way, you've got to know where your company is going. I help them price for the future company. Now, we're not talking ten years out because you're not going to do pricing today for ten years out. But we are thinking about what it is we're trying to do because if we're pricing for yesterday, we have no profits to build into tomorrow. It's the same way with the hire of the person. If we are hiring somebody who has a skill set that we needed last year, but not a skill set that is going to take us into the next year, they're stunting our growth the minute they come in because they can't go with us probably as much, if not better than I do. Not every person that we hire is going to be in it for the long run. They're not going to be there. Not because sometimes they don't want to, sometimes they can't, they can't keep up, or they don't have an evolving skill set. They are not going to be a part of it. I've moved and worked with different people in my own business just because of the capacity of what they either wanted to do or had the ability to do at any given time. And so some of this, well, I would say the majority of this probably falls back on the owner of the company to ideate and vision out what is it that we're trying to do. Where are we trying to go? Not just for your ideal client, but for your ideal employee? What do I want to hand off? What would I want them to be able to do without me? What do I want them to do that brings stress relief for me? And then start to look at that for sure.

Shelli Warren: Every single new episode that I launch of the "Stacking Your Team" podcast, every single episode, I remind my listeners that the team that got you here may not be the team that will get you there. And that's exactly summing up what you're saying. It's the whole idea of, as a business owner, you are going to evolve personally, and the company is going to evolve. The clientele and the customers are going to evolve, and so is your marketplace. If you don't have people working alongside you who can stay agile and be ready for your next best move, they will always be like a boat anchor around your ankle. As women in leadership roles, we can tell ourselves a story that we're obligated to this individual. And, you know, I hear things all the time, like, well, you know, she's been with me from the minute I opened up my doors, and I'll say to her, you know, that's lovely. Like, it's lovely that you've been able to have someone who's been with you all these years. However, we know that she's not ready to move alongside you any longer. And that's okay because she added value up to this point. She helped you get to where you are, and now you've recognized that you need a different person in that role. Or that role has evolved so much that it's barely unrecognizable. You know that you're tolerating a lot of gaps in terms of results because this individual who's currently in the role is just not ready, capable, willing, or has a level of curiosity or desire to want to do anything different within their role. That's the sign that they need to go.

Michele Williams: At the beginning of this year, we did a book club on the book Necessary Endings.

Shelli Warren: Oh, I love him. Doctor Henry Cloud. Oh, gosh, he's wonderful, isn't he?

Michele Williams: And that book, Shelley's so good because it talks about just that challenge, right? Sometimes the thing that is keeping us from our future is not being willing to end something that is keeping us in the today or in the past. And I do think that perhaps it is more difficult for women as relationship builders. We are nurturers. We are relationship builders. And now we're having to say to somebody, I don't think there is a place for you. But you know what, he describes it towards the end of the book, we just finished it a bit ago, but he describes the end of the book the way that he kind of says it. And it was so refreshing for the team that was doing the book club together because he made the comment about not just coming in and going, hey, Shelli, thank you so much, like, it's been an honor to work with you for these last 20 years. I'm so glad you have been here, but you're not in the plan for the future. So, peace out, have a great life. That's not what we're doing. Right? But I love how he phrased it. What he did was he would go in and he would say, you know, Shelli, I'm so thankful for the work that you've done that got to see all the same things that you said. And then he says, as we're looking into this position for the future, this is the skill set needed for this position. This is the requirement of this position. This is the ABC and XYZ that are going to be needed to move forward and I am going to ask you if you're that person, and then it gives them the chance to even maybe. Maybe they had a curiosity that we're not aware of, they can raise their hand and go, oh, my gosh, I would love that opportunity. I've been waiting for something like that and then you can at least have the discussion of, could they move into it? Or they could go, oh, God, that's not me. I don't even want to do that. But it was so refreshing to find the words and a framework, if you will, for how you could bring that conversation up without feeling like a jerk. Because I think we already feel so labeled in so many aspects of business, the last thing we want to do is feel like a jerk. But I think you would agree, being the owner and being the manager and being an entrepreneur and having to be the visionary and the leader of a firm, it does require us to do really.

Shelli Warren: Hard things every single day, all day. Which is why I am on a mission to help more of these business owners build out their leadership teams so that there's a shared sense of leadership on the team so that she's no longer doing all the heavy lifting alone, that she has trusted team members that are highly capable, highly competent, and have a longstanding commitment to her and the business and the niche that they serve. And they are raising their hand, wanting to provide her with some ease of that decision fatigue. Because you can just feel so weary at the end of the day.

Michele Williams: I was just having a conversation with another business owner about bringing others into leadership. A lot of these companies start off very flat. They are the designer, they are the owner of a service-based company, and then they have all these employees, and they are running, running, running, running, running. It's a tree without a lot of branches, or it's like one little tree with 5000 branches and they just cannot keep up. How often are we told to spend 15 minutes a week with each employee and they're like, there's no way. It's just not even possible. 15 minutes a month and they're struggling. They're not thinking about building that leadership down so that they don't have to be in every decision that needs to be made. They've trained people, to your point, who are capable. They know what they're equipped, they are educated, they're experienced. They know what to do. They would make a very similar decision as their management team would make because they're thinking that way. They're thinking with the same long-term goals in mind, but that doesn't just happen by accident. That happens, I say that that's my tagline, profit doesn't happen by accident, I don't think any of that happens. There's very much an intentionality that comes with that work. I know what I've seen the hesitation be with that, but I'd be curious, before I share, to hear what you think the hesitation is with being able to give away the leadership reins and hand some things over.

Shelli Warren: Well, usually it comes down to just the worry. They're so worried that the business is going to implode if they're not there with their fingers on the pulse of everything that's happening. Unfortunately, when we have a business owner who believes that and is having difficulty letting go of control, what she's really saying to her high-performing team members is that you're not good enough.

Michele Williams: I don't trust you.

Shelli Warren: I don't. You're not good enough. You'll never be as good as me. I don't trust you enough. You don't know enough. You're simply not ready for this. You're not. You're not good enough for me to give you the full reins. And that's where you'll find high-performing people who have been very dedicated and have added a ton of value to your business, that's when you find those individuals leaving. And they're leaving not because they don't love the brand, not because they don't love the clients and the customers or what you're doing, or even you. Why they're leaving is because they don't feel connected to you or the work any longer because of this compounded conversation where they just seem to be reminded over and over again that you're not willing to hand the reins over to them within their particular area of expertise. It's not that they want you to hand over the keys to the cookie jar, you know, and have full access to your budget and full access to all your numbers. It's not that they're asking for that, but when they see that they've been leading a profit center for you, or they've become the expert for a particular niche or a particular region or a particular style of type of client that you serve when they see that you're not fully trusting their capabilities, they're going to walk.

Michele Williams: Yeah, it's stifling, isn't it? You know what it makes me think of to hear you express that, Shelley, and thank you for that. But it makes me feel like my child, like my kids when they grew up and I didn't give them age-appropriate ability to make decisions on their own behalf so that they could eventually one day launch and be able to make their own decisions. I think some of the fear that I see primarily in the interior design industry is a big fear that if I train them too well, they'll leave me and become a competitor. I hear that over and over and over again. But the truth is that if people really sometimes understood all that it takes to run a business, there are many that don't want all that. But because they don't see it, we hide it from them, they don't share in the pain of it. They're getting all of the design work. They're not managing the other pieces and parts. They don't even know it's there. And then they go out on their own, and they think, what the heck did I do? Or this is not as easy as it looked when I was there and it's because they didn't even see it. The load of just having somebody share it with you. I was laughing, I told a couple of my friends the other day that I was overwhelmed. I'd had one of those days where it feels like everything's coming at you and talk about decision fatigue. I had had it. I did not think I could make another decision. And I knew it. I could feel it. And my husband walked in, and he's like, are you okay? He's like, you don't look okay. I'm like, no, I'm really not okay. I'm trying to hold myself together. I've got a thousand decisions to make, but I cannot make any more decisions. And I said to him, I just need you to plan dinner. He's like, fine. Whatever you want, I'll do it. I'm like, fine. If you'll just plan dinner. I just don't want to have to think about it. I just want to get through my day. If you'll plan dinner, I'm good. Do you know what that man said to me? You like beef, chicken, or pork? I looked at him, and I said, I love you, but that's the wrong question. I said, the question is, am I going to eat or am I not going to eat? I can answer that one. If you put food in front of me, I will eat. If you don't put food in front of me, I won't eat. I'm good with either one of those. I cannot make another decision. I don't think he realized I was quite at that point. And then he was like, fine. And when work was over, I said, okay, am I eating or am I not? He's like, yep, we're going to Mexican. I think you could use a margarita. But he finally got it. But he would have helped earlier if I had asked him. He would have said that morning if I had thought ahead to say, today is an extremely stressful day, I would love it if you could help plan dinner tonight. I just don't think I can get around to that. Can you help with that? He would have said, then either, do you want to go out or do you want to eat in? He might have asked one or two clarifying questions. He'd have been off to the races. You know, he could have said, do you want me to just plan the whole thing? Do you want input? Do you not want input? Something. But I never handed it off. I held it. I held it along with everything else that I was holding as if it was something that I was the only one who could do or the one who needed to do it. You know, not as a badge of honor. I honestly didn't even think about it. And I think some of what you're saying is going to require us to have some forethought to be able to hand off the work. I'm constantly saying to the women I serve, write down something that if you could take it off your list, what is something you're willing to give up? What is something that somebody else can help you with? Because if you tell me that you need help and you're not willing to take anything off your list, it's not going to do you any good to hire anybody.

Shelli Warren: It's so true. And I want to give all of your listeners their permission to sit with that fear of if I train them if I show them all of my secrets and all of my magic, the risk is that they will leave, and they'll open up their own design firm and they will become my competitor. Well, I'm here to tell you that that happens in every industry, not just in the creative sector. Every single business owner has, at one point or another, been fearful that everything she's pouring into these high-performing individuals may lead them to consider, hey, I should go out on my own. I'm here to also remind you that, so what? So, what if they go out on their own? Because in the bigger picture of things, that means that there are more people being served. Whatever sector that you're in, whatever your secret sauce is, whatever your expertise area is, more people are being able to have highly qualified individuals walk them through and guide them through your really wonderful design experience. Most high-performing people who have been under your care and guidance acknowledge the expertise that you helped develop with them and within them over the years. They're the first people, the first person to say, I learned everything I know from Michele. They will continue to honor you. And that's a good thing. People don't forget their roots. They don't forget who taught them and who helped them become the individual that they're going to be. So, I want you to stop worrying about developing competitors on your own team and start thinking about how wonderful that would be to be able to have an even broader reach into the niche that you want to serve and trust the fact that those individuals are so appreciative of everything that you've taught them that they will give you kudos over and over and over again. They'll never stop giving you the spotlight for helping them become the people that they're going to be.

Michele Williams: I love that. And it changes the conversation because then you're looking at them again, not as competitors, but as even if you do go do that, number one, we're elevating all of our niches because you will have learned from somebody who's really trying to elevate and be professional and do it well. I trust that you'll do the same thing, and, you know, that is encouraging. All right, so let me ask this, Shelley. If we have an employee that we want to keep and they seem engaged and we think they're going to be able to move into the future with us and all of those things, there are multiple ways to reward people. There's money and bonuses and things tied to that. There are gifts, there are words of affirmation there, all these things. What do you see as a good, I'm just going to say in general, I want to say what is, like, a good, well-rounded way to recognize our people and carry them forward with us. And then I want to dig into some of those ways and how people ask for, like, I want more money, or I need more time off, or whatever it is. But what is a good kind of general package, if you will, or offering that makes us look like great employers, and that we care for our team and we want to grow them forward with us?

Shelli Warren: Well, one of the simplest things that you do to help, I call that tether someone to you like to help with your own retention strategy is to always defer to them. Defer to them as the export. And it can start right when you're in their own team meeting. When someone brings up a dilemma, you can always turn and say, Stephanie, you're really the expert on this, can you share some insight with us? It's really being confident enough in who you are to shine the spotlight on someone else that you're developing. And so over time, what you're really saying is, I appreciate your level of expertise so much that anytime a broad question comes up from the team about this, I will always defer to you because you really do know more about this than I do, and I want you to help ease my decision fatigue within this particular decision space by reminding the team that you are the expert with this. So, over time, as I reinforce that, they'll stop asking me questions about that, and they will, in turn, go directly to Stephanie, because I've been positioning Stephanie as the expert, and we do it every day in our team meetings. It's as simple as that. Defer to your experts, ask them for their point of view, and then you can take that one step further by making sure that you showcase that individual to your clients and your customers. You can do that in person. You can do that online. You can have them run meetings for you. You can have them on-site. You bring them with you to the conferences. If you get asked to be a speaker at a conference, step aside. Give that opportunity to your team member or tag team. The opportunity where you're coming together to take that speaker spotlight and really double up on that shared spotlight instead of being the one that's always out front. Look for opportunities to really make sure that you're showcasing to everyone on your team how valuable this person is to you. And, you know, it's those individuals who will likely not depart and leave and decide they're going to open up their own business because they'll feel so connected to you and feel so worthwhile in everything that they do every day that there really isn't any need for them. There are no gaps, there's no emptiness where they think it's going to get filled up by going and starting their own business.

Michele Williams: You know, I heard this years ago, and I believe it to be true, it says, we don't leave bad companies, we leave bad managers. The company could be terrible, and the manager could be great. We're going to stay because we are somewhat tethered to that manager. They're watching out for us, they're caring for us, they're leading us, they're growing us, but they're acting like a coach for us, and they're moving us around. They're not afraid. You hear all the time about the bad managers, the ones from the corporate world that if something went wrong, it's all your fault. If something goes great, it was all their idea. They don't. They don't want to share the spotlight with anybody else. And it really is. I mean, I've got, you know, somebody on my team, Courtney, and I'll say to her, Courtney, look, you are so much better at this than I am. I'm not going to. I told her, I'm not going to get in front of you. I'm going to stay behind you on this. What I want you to do is tell me the way that you think it should be done. I'll look at it and give it my blessing, but I'm not lead. I want to be behind on this because I think you know more in this area than I do, and I want to follow. I hired you to use your expertise. I didn't hire you to diminish it, to step it behind mine. That's not, that’s not the reason I brought you on. It's nice to be able to do that. It takes trust. I don't think we give that out blindly, and I know you're not saying that either. It's not like we hire him and then give them the keys to the kingdom. We don't do the whole thing at the very beginning, but after trust has been built up and you're starting to see the area where they excel, we do want to mention it because one of the things that most people say when they leave is I was never appreciated. They didn't know how great I could do this. They didn't even ask my opinion. They just told me what to do. You know, I never got to grow, I never got to do anything different. Same, same boring, boring, all those things. That's a beautiful framework to kind of get out of that before you get into it. All right, so let's go a little further. I've got two clients. We have two different issues going on. I'd throw them out, and see how you would answer them. One of them is they have the employee that constantly, over the years, keeps asking for more money, keeps asking for more money. And, you know, like I do, smaller businesses don't have money to just throw at everything, you know? And if we did, it would almost feel weird. I mean, I've always been the type that if you have to ask me for more money and it's not something that we'd already had been talking about coming, then maybe I'm not paying you and positioning you properly in the first place, or you have really high expectations and we're not going to meet them. There's usually something else going on when they're asking for money. Tell me what your thoughts are on that.

Shelli Warren: well, a lot of times people ask for money because they've asked for money before and they've received it. So, it's learned. It's a learned strategy. If I keep asking for a raise and she keeps giving it to me, I'm going to keep coming back and asking for it until I get a no. Another thing that can happen is that we really do have the salary or the hourly rate off the mark and this individual truly believes that they've been adding more value within their role so they keep asking for a role. But there are two things that I want you to remember when someone comes and asks you. Well, three things I didn't want you to remember when someone asked for something. One, just because someone asked for something doesn't mean the answer is going to be yes. Number two, when someone asks you for a raise, instead of coming up with the answer of yes or no, what your response really should be is, tell me why you think I should consider increasing your compensation. Those individuals need to come up with some sort of rationale around why they think a raise is warranted and it has nothing to do with how long they've been with you. Absolutely nothing. So, what we don't want to hear is someone come and say, well, hey, next month, it's my next anniversary date, so let's talk about a raise. No. Compensation is one activity in a business. Performance reviews are a separate activity in a business. Too often small business owners combine the two, and what they're really teaching their team members is every time we do a performance review, you're going to get a raise. Or every time we do a performance review, the discussion of getting a raise is going to be on the table. And that's what you're really your own worst enemy if you set your business up that way. And then the third thing that I want to remind people when people keep coming to ask you for raises, it's really about making sure that you remind yourself that it's not you personally that's giving the raise. This response is the business is not prepared to make any changes to anyone's compensation this year. And let me walk you through why that is. You would never say to someone, I can't afford that because it's not your money, it's the business's money. But what happens with team members is they really still believe that everyone, like, they really believe you're all millionaires. They really do. They believe you're all millionaires. And even if you have a multi-seven or an eight-figure business, because many people do, as many of my clients do, it doesn't mean that she's taking home a million dollars as salary every year. And there is the disconnect. That's the trouble right there. So, when she says, I can't afford it, those team members immediately ratchet to things like, well, you're driving a pretty nice car. Didn't you just renovate your kitchen? Didn't you just take that vacation with the family to Miami? No. They start to kind of go through this inventory in their head as to why they think you're profitable and why you really could afford this. You just don't want to give me a raise.

Michele Williams: You're absolutely right.

Shelli Warren: So, watch what you're saying. It's the business is not prepared to make any changes to compensation this year for anyone.

Michele Williams: Right. I love that because it is the separation. I'm also a fan of some version of open-book management. An open-book management is we teach our employees how money flows through the company. Because if they think that sales equal what you walk home with, they do, they have this inflated idea that everybody's walking out with all of this money. I'm telling you; I have seen thousands of profit and loss statements. And I am here to tell you that there are a fair number of business owners who pay employees more than they make themselves, even when they're running high six and seven-figure companies. So, the employees don't always realize what's going on. Not only that, but that owner has so much risk hanging out there. They are constantly trying, and they carry the weight of saying, I'm trying to provide. They see themselves, the good ones see themselves as a provider of business and of income for all these families and all of their kids and anybody else that's living in their household. They take that very seriously. I mean, that's why they're coming to me on the financial piece. Help me find a way to pay for this. Help me make sure I know when the next job should come in. Help me make sure I'm pricing it appropriately so I can pay my people appropriately. You know, the best managers are doing the studies to figure out what are the years of service that these, or, years of experience, rather, and what are the price ranges that these people should make in our current market and what is the rate of inflation. I mean, they're doing this work. So then to come into question it for some other reason, it does feel very personal. I get a lot of hurt feelings from the designers that I work with or the business owners that I work with because they feel like now that there's a broken trust because their employees ask them and they're like, do they not see that we're struggling? Like, I didn't even take a paycheck last month, and all they see is the money coming in in such a luxury market as interiors, but they're not seeing all the work that goes into the building. They don't understand that when they used a pen and threw the next pen away and took the post-it notes home, the company's paying for these things. Like, they don't understand the other costs associated with it. And so sometimes just doing that open book management, hey, let's just talk about this is how things happen. And just because there's a profit, at the end of the day, guess what? We get to pay like 40% of that to the government for taxes. It's not like there's just this big bucket of money that everybody can stick their hand into. So, I'm a big proponent of trying to make sure that when those things, when those questions come up, I love your statement. The business is not prepared. But let me tell you what we are prepared for. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Here's our strategic plan. Here's where the money is being spent. Here's where the money is coming in. If we want to earn more, make more, and have higher profits, this is what we can do. So, then we're kind of inviting them into the solution of what they can do to help be a part of the trajectory forward where profits are going to be created.

Shelli Warren: Yeah, it's so true.

Michele Williams: I'm like you,  the minute they ask, they're going to ask again. And they're going to ask again. And they're going to ask again. I think another great question is, what's prompting this? What's prompting this in the middle of the year or before your next review or whenever you have set up to do pay increases? Like, what's prompting this now?

Shelli Warren: Well, a lot of it comes because there is no structure for these team activities. So, people really do feel that at a whim, they can come in and ask for time off, ask for a raise, ask for a promotion, ask for anything, because there's no set, I like to call these drumbeats, there's no set drumbeat within your business that calls people forward to know, oh, this is the activity that we're focused on this month. Oh, those happen in Q1. That particular activity happens in Q3. Every year. We're not educating our team on how we're literally running our operations. They know their role and the tasks associated with their role, but beyond that, they really aren't looking deeper into the business. They don't know how the business actually runs.

Michele Williams: Yes. I'm just sitting here thinking my brain is ping-ponging with some of the different questions that I've been asked and working through lately. Let me ask you this, what are some of the foundational tools, or what are some things we can put in place to be able to manage our people, manage them coming in, and then their career path to build some longevity, you know, as appropriate with our company?

Shelli Warren: Well, the first thing that I like to help my clients with is really getting really clear on, every single person on your team. They should know what they're getting paid to do. What are you getting paid to do?

Michele Williams: Doesn't that seem so elementary? But it really is not something that is talked about and explained thoroughly.

Shelli Warren: Now, there's a lot of gray zones within people's roles, and so I have a tool, it's called the five-hour work plan. And what it really does is it really breaks every single role. Whether you're a receptionist, whether you're an installer, whether you're a window treatment specialist who's on the field measuring windows, or, whether you're the CFO for the company, every single person knows what they're getting paid to do, and how that rolls up into the overall strategic plan. And then that work plan is their success map. It's reviewed every single one-on-one. We're talking about it. We're making it very normal to talk about results. We don't just talk about results at the end of the quarter. We don't just talk about results when we have a leadership team off-site. We don't just talk about results when we kick the year off, we talk about results all the time. We make it normal to talk about results, cost restrictions, constraints, profitability, and productivity. Once your team members at every level start to get familiar with that vocabulary, they start to learn, what does that really mean in terms of what I do here every day. Then they start making better decisions, and before you know it, you're building leaders on your team. You've got people that are not here for a job, they're here for a career. Then we kick in other tools that I have to help people literally build out a career with you. And so, they stop thinking that they can jump out and launch their own business. They're more inclined to stay with you and build a really worthwhile, long-standing career with you, where they feel seen and heard every single day and where they're building mastery within the company.

Michele Williams: That's so important because I think that when a hire comes in, when somebody comes in, they want to know kind of what we talked about earlier on, they want to know that they fit in. They want to know that their job matters, and that if they don't show up to do their job, there is going to be some type of ripple effect. I mean, the worst case is people that think, well, if I don't show up, nobody will notice, nobody will care. And if that's the case, we need to rethink that job. I mean, we really need to rethink that position. That's a fluff position. None of us are really in a place where I think that we want to be paying for that. But when people know that and they know that, how their job rolls up, they know how their job fits in, it brings a sense of responsibility. It breeds a sense of teamwork. It matters. I want to be here. I love your point about being able to talk about productivity, and this is the expected outcome and the results. I think what's so bad is we do a lot of inoculation into these words, which means that, for example, at a team meeting, we're going to say we expect ABC results, and we want this productivity and I want this ROI, and then we never show back up and check it, or we come back and we go, you know, we had 3%. We were shooting for 5%. So frustrated. But we don't stop and say, what happened? Did we even build a plan to make it to 5%, or did our plan fall off at 3%? And that's why we hit it. Like, we don't dig in. We're so busy running and rushing off to the next thing that we're not taking the time to stop and really dig into some of these things. Why did it not work? Should we celebrate that we made it to three? Like, was five a stretch? You know, all of the things that we can look at. I'm really big into empirical data and not just gut feeling. I do believe that there are many businesses that are just constantly running and fueled by what their guts telling them, not fueled by numbers. I'm not saying it's got to be so crushing with the numbers that you're like, I'm sorry, you were 0.326 off the mark. I'm not saying that, but there is a reason that data exists, and that data can be looked at and then different decisions can be made. And when people know, as you said, their job and mastery within a particular role, they want to get better at it. And the ones that want to get better at it usually want to even expand it out to the next great big thing. I'm ready to take on more. Oh, I see that you're struggling. Could I learn that? Could I back you up on that? Like, they're reaching, you know what I mean? They're looking for those things, A players are anyway. And the more we hire A players, the more other B's and C's are going to start seeing that a player and they're either going to move on or they're going to up their game a little bit.

Shelli Warren: Yeah. You know, being a leader in your business, it's all-encompassing and it's a lot of work. And you're learning how to create messaging for people on your team where you're telling stories where they literally see the role that they're playing in the story. So, to come out and share spreadsheets and throw numbers around for the majority of the people on your team, that means nothing to them. You have to find a way to match a number or result to an outcome that has a story where they literally know the role they're going to play in that story. And for a lot of business owners, that's very exhausting. It's not their own mastery area. This is why we need to have leadership team members on our team to help with that, to really be that person that's one step closer to the day-to-day operations, who they can quickly think on their feet and tell stories about. Remember last summer when we did the big job for the Hobson family? Remember we ran into that situation. Let's think back on how we resolved that and let's dig into the numbers on that particular project and why that project we thought was going to be awash and ended up being a win. And then you walk them through that story and have them go back and think about what role did each of those individuals play and how can we repeat that. How can we do that? More so than throwing the numbers around, it's really about how do I teach my team members the importance of what they do every day can be so meaningful to what we're all doing here. If I just take a moment and tell more stories instead of sharing spreadsheets.

Michele Williams: That's right. I always talk about it, the story of your numbers. You have to do numbers and tell it as a story. It's funny. That's the whole reason that we even built Metrique Solutions, was to visualize the numbers so that you could look at them and they meant something to you instead of a flat spreadsheet, because it's not how we look at data for most of us that are not accountants or, you know, financial analysts, we're not used to looking at data like that. We're looking for the story that it's telling. I love that idea. Let me mention this and just see. I'd love to get your feedback on it. So, I'll speak for myself. I'm aging. I'm not getting young.

Shelli Warren: So am I.

Michele Williams: You're what?

Shelli Warren: Yeah, I'm 62.

Michele Williams: Okay. 56. So up there. In a business way. And a lot of the people that we're hiring these days, like I'm hiring people that are the age of my children, right? And there, there's a difference about every generation with how people integrate with their work, how they show up, what's important to them, what's not important to them, how they see things. I was reading something the other day, talking about how, I mean, I started work back in the eighties, before that, you know, during that whole .com thing, and, and then where everything changed. And back in the day, I mean, you literally, you were told what to do and we didn't, you didn't even hear that you did a good job until you had a review. And then you heard whether you earned your bonus or not, that you didn't even know what you were in line for or how to earn it. Like, you weren't given a lot of that stuff. You just showed up and you just worked and kept your head down and tried to do the best that you could do. It was just not the same as what we see today. And the generation before me, my dad's generation, they very much where you go to work and wherever you start, you're probably going to get a pension and you're going to retire after 30 years of active service at that company. That's why they were all retiring in their fifties. They started in their twenties. They all retired at 50 to 55 because they were going to probably die in their sixties or seventies, but they got their 30 years in, but they would have never thought of job hopping. Today, if you look at the markets, they're telling that people are usually hopping about every two to three years and some at five. If you stay somewhere for five years today. That's a big deal. I think a lot of it is because of what you even talked about, Shelli, that we're not growing our people. We're not giving them the ability. And they think that their only method of learning more and growing is to leave. And most people, I hear a lot of people say, especially from people that I've coached, if I had just known they wanted that, if I had just, I could have given them that, I could have offered the opportunity for them to learn that and bring that into my firm. But the conversations weren't happening to ever give the opportunity for the discussion to come up. I'm curious to hear what you are seeing in the employment market right now, and what people are wanting. What are they wanting in a job these days? 

Shelli Warren: Well, what I see with my clients, in terms of individuals that apply to work at their small business, what I'm seeing is those individuals are definitely looking to build a career. They want to start some sort of a career. Sometimes they're skewed in their thinking, though, because they're getting all different data points thrown at them. They're hearing their parents tell them what a career is. They hear their professors tell them what a career is. They've got their own friendship groups telling them what a career is. And so, they often come in with this pie-in-the-sky idea of what a career is in the world of small business, and they're ill-informed. The biggest thing that I'm also seeing is a lot of people who have had traditional roles in corporate have now decided they don't want that, but they stay stuck there because they don't think that they could have a career in a small business when in reality, that's just not true. So, as a small business owner, you need to keep reminding, all of your candidates, and it goes right down to your role postings, you want to position your roles in your small business as career opportunities. And then you need to back that up, though. So, in that story that you were saying, where individuals have said to you, dang, if I had known that he wanted that, I would have made that happen. Well, the reason why that happens is because, in the one-to-ones that you're hosting with your team members, you're just delegate, delegate, delegate, delegate, delegate, delegate, delegate. You're not making that one-to-one about them. You're making the one-to-one about you. And believe me, people are not stupid. They catch up on that. They catch up on that. So, we need to make those one-to-one conversations all about the team member, and included in those discussions are, hey, let's talk about your career. Let's talk about whether, you know, you feel like you're on track. Are you off track? Let's talk about any curiosities, is there any angle that you want to go on? Is there some value-added skill out there you're thinking you might like to learn and bring into the business?

You want to have those conversations with them because what you're saying to them is, I'm interested in you. And at the same time, that's your moment to be able to give them those adult conversations, that strong feedback about when you see that a young person, you know, these young professionals that are joining the world of work, they often have trouble meeting standards, following through on expectations. That's just the truth. Not all of them, but the majority of them have trouble there. And so that's in those one-to-ones where you need to say to them, here's how we do work here. Here's how we behave. Here's how we interact with our clients. Here's what I will not tolerate. Here's how you move ahead in your career with us here at the design firm, it's black and white. Stop doing this, start doing this, stop doing this, start doing this. And individuals who are not prepared for that kind of feedback, and many of our young professionals are not, it will be very disruptive for them. But it's also an opportunity for you to be able to really see if they're open to feedback. Are they open to growth? Are they open to stretch, or are they not? And if they're not, that's fine, too, right? We just need to make a decision as to how long we really want to continue to pour into them or not. But people who do decide that they're open to that feedback, and they do start to show you that they're listening and they're taking action. Those are the people that you're just going to keep pouring into over and over again. And even if they do stay for two years, even if they do only stay for three years, and you were really hoping that they were going to be someone who would stay with you for, like, ten years, what you can do is congratulate yourself on the time that they were with you. You poured into them in the right way. You helped develop that person. And even if they've got it in their head that the only way for them to reach a six-figure salary is to leapfrog, come to you, learn as much as they can about the design industry or the window treatment industry through you, and then they're going to take those skills and expertise and they're going to leapfrog over to another firm. So, what if that's what they do? Because it's all there in black and white on their resume and the application that they started with you. So that second business owner who's potentially going to bring them onto her team, she can look, she knows where this individual came from. She's not stupid either. She's going to look and say, oh my gosh, I think I might have a winner here. If they came up through the mentorship of Michele, oh my gosh, this is a gift. Now I will take this individual and see how much I can pour into them. Hopefully, they'll stay with me. But if they don't, so what? They'll go on to the next position that they want to go after, but the goal really is to offer people careers with you so that they will stay with you longer.

Michele Williams: I think to your point, it takes confidence to be a leader. And the same way if a young person is hearing some of this for the first time, it can be disruptive. It can be disruptive to the business owner who's having to have conversations for the first time. There's definitely a need. Role-play it, write it out, get help. There are plenty of books, coaching, and all types of opportunities to learn to do it better. Not coaching or not encouraging your team isn’t an option. You know, that's kind of the thing I love about It's Okay to Be the Boss is it's that conversation that it's okay to have this most of the time. I think people are so fearful now of what they cannot do. I can't say this, and I can't say this, that they don't know what they can say and so they say nothing. You know, they undermanage. They don't overmanage. They just stop managing because they don't know how to do it.

If you don't expect people to show up late to work, we don't tolerate people showing up late to work. We expect if your day starts at nine, we expect you at your desk to start work at nine. Not rolling in consistently at 930 without letting us know that is considered, especially if your salary, stealing from the company. You're stealing 30 minutes of time from the company. Not, not cool. And we're not doing that. But they won't say anything. And you mentioned earlier about learned behaviors. So, the learned behavior of, I need to make more money. I need to make more. Can you pay me more? Can you pay me more? There is a learned behavior. It's just like children. And I'm not trying to call our teams kids. That's not what I'm saying. Maybe I would rather say it's human nature. We're going to push the boundary to see if the boundaries hold. And so, when they push the boundary of coming in late, when they push the boundary of misuse of PTO, meaning they've used it all by February, now they want to know what's going to happen the rest of the year. There are things that they do to push the boundaries to see if they can get more, more, more. Not everybody. The pendulum swings to the people who barely use their PTO and show up early and stay late and team all the way. They really need to be encouraged to swing in the other direction. Our job, I believe, as managers, is to watch the pendulum. But if there are hard things that we need to put some boundaries around, we have to have the courage for our company to put the boundaries. Because I've seen team members leave, because the manager would not put boundaries around an employee, another employee who was misusing company funds, company time, or whatever it is they were doing, and the manager did not correct the behaviors, and so the A players wouldn't stay when they saw it. Right, or they see what's going on and what's happening. And so, it just takes courage to really step into this role. I love that you're inviting us to step in, and it's accessible, isn't it, Shelli?

Shelli Warren: Absolutely. A players want to work with other A players, and they want to work alongside an A player leader. So, if you're not addressing these performance issues on your team, you're essentially demonstrating to your A players that you're not worth following, that you're not worth staying with long term, because you're not having the bravery and the confidence to protect what you've built. And that includes all of these A and B players that you've brought on. If you're not protecting your A and your B players, as the business continues to grow, the risk is that everyone morphs into a C player or a D player, and you just have this crushing team turnover that is just, it hits your profit so hard, and it hits your heart really hard because it just adds to that weariness that you can have already as a business owner. I want to encourage all of you to stop thinking that you're a leader and start acting like one.

Michele Williams: Yeah, so true. Shelli, tell people where they can learn more about you, your business, and what you do.

Shelli Warren: You can come on over to stackingyourteam.com/listener and there you'll be able to get direct links to the podcast. And I have a ton of really cool freebies that you can take to really help you be on the more productive side, the more effective side, and definitely over on the more confident side on how to lead your team.

Michele Williams: I love it. Thank you for such an amazing conversation. You know, when we talk about profitability, my whole point in all of this is every decision we make leads us towards it or away from it. And who we hire and how we onboard them and how we manage their career and how we manage their work and how we build our teams really does affect our profitability. These things are not separate, and I think sometimes we like to separate them, on what we think is important. And every bit of this, you know, who we work with, how we work with them, our clients, or to any two people really matters. I'm just thankful for the conversation today to highlight that.

Shelli Warren: I'm happy to be here and connect with your listeners, Michele, and I hear so many wonderful things about you. You are renowned in your space and it's lovely to meet you in person.

Michele Williams: Well, thank you so much, Shelley. I just hope you have a beautiful day.

Shelli Warren: You too. Take care.

Michele Williams: Wow. Owning a business is so much more than just doing the work. It's managing the people, managing the finances, managing the marketing, all the things. So much management involved. Make sure that you check out "Stacking Your Team" podcast by Shelli, go to her website, and see what other great things you can find. As you're looking to grow your team and looking at the impact on your business, understanding your financials is really important. If you go to the scarletthreadconsulting.com website, you're going to be able to find financial plans and other downloads that you can use. You also can look at the story of your numbers by going to Metriquesolutions.com. Managing your team well leads to profitability and profit doesn't happen by accident. Profit is a Choice is proud to be part of the designnetwork.org where you can discover more design media reaching creative listeners thanks for listening and stay creative and business minded.