Latest / Ambitious Podcast / EP. 56: Should You Fire Them? Here’s the Conversation You NEED to Have First | The Ambitious Podcast

Transcript

EP. 56: Should You Fire Them? Here’s the Conversation You NEED to Have First | The Ambitious Podcast · Ambitious Podcast

0:08
Hello and welcome back to Ambitious.
0:10
I'm so excited to have you here. I first want to say if you are
0:13
someone who is new to listening to ambitious and maybe this is
0:16
your first episode you've pressed play on, I want to say
0:19
welcome. We are so excited to have you
0:21
part of the ambitious family. And also, if you are one of our
0:24
OG listeners and you know who you are, those who TuneIn every
0:27
single week to our solo our guest episode episodes and
0:31
really are the OG ambitious family.
0:33
I also want to say hello and thank you so, so much for
0:36
listening every single week because this podcast would not
0:39
be what it is without you. So today I'm going to be talking
0:42
about what to do in the event that a team member or someone
0:47
that you've hired you feel like is not working out.
0:50
And I want to give you a little context as to why this kind of
0:53
came as an inspiration or why it was something that I was really
0:56
passionate and frankly excited to talk about.
0:59
Because I had genuinely, in a matter of like 2 weeks, three to
1:05
four people each week who were like this team member, whoever
1:09
that person might have been, is not working out.
1:12
And because of that, I'm thinking about letting them go.
1:15
And in every situation, I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,
1:19
hold the phone. Let's just take a breath.
1:22
I have questions before you just fire somebody off of your team.
1:27
I can tell you out of all 8 conversations or 10
1:31
conversations that I had, of those, 10% of the people that
1:37
came to me actually ended up removing A-Team member.
1:40
And so when I started to sit back and think about how many
1:45
people's jobs could have been impacted and most importantly
1:48
for the CEO, how many businesses could have been impacted that
1:52
didn't need to be changed, that didn't need to have problems.
1:56
It really became super apparent to me how many people don't
2:00
really know how to distinguish whether A-Team member not
2:03
working out is really an issue with them, IE the CEO.
2:09
Is it an issue with the team member and them really just not
2:11
holding their weight? And in an event where we feel
2:15
like there is conflict, whatever it may be, or there's
2:18
expectations that are not being met, what do we do about that?
2:21
So how do we handle it? How do we really know how to
2:24
break a situation down to know what the right next step is?
2:27
And many people come to me in coaching because I coach quite a
2:31
lot of people who have teams or I also coach people who, you
2:35
know, potentially are growing their team and are looking to
2:39
really get insight on like, I don't know what to do here, but
2:42
I just feel like this team member is not working right now.
2:45
Like there's something about the way that they've been operating.
2:47
It's just not working out. So for the context of the team
2:50
member today, by the way, I also want to say that this is not
2:53
just going to apply to full time employees.
2:56
So if you are somebody who maybe has contractors working inside
2:58
of your business, that is also something that will be
3:01
underneath today's umbrella of today's conversation.
3:04
But if there's one thing that I've learned a lot about
3:08
business or the last several years, it actually is around
3:11
team. Because I've realized that, you
3:15
know, first of all, the lid of any business is the lid of its
3:19
leader. And what that means is that the
3:21
first thing I'm going to need you to do before you continue to
3:24
listen to today's episode is to be open minded and to recognize
3:28
that any successful business has a correlation to the leader.
3:32
And also any not successful situation happening in a
3:35
business, IE no successful sales, no successful marketing,
3:39
no successful team member is also a reflection of its leader.
3:43
And I know that you might be in your head because I know how
3:47
many of these conversations I've had with people who say to me,
3:49
no, no, Kate, you don't understand.
3:52
I had a conversation with this person and I trained them this
3:55
way and I did this with them. I'm going to need you to like
3:59
physically think about yourself putting a hat on.
4:02
And I want you to physically like picture yourself putting a
4:05
hat on today of curiosity and seeking to understand.
4:10
Because when you're ACEO of a business, it is your
4:14
responsibility to understand your role when things are
4:19
working and also when they're not working.
4:20
And today is an invitation for you to do that.
4:23
So I am not going to tell you that you're the problem only in
4:27
this situation because you might be thinking I'm not the problem.
4:30
It's my team member. There is definitely equal parts
4:34
on either side, but what I'm going to need you to do is to go
4:36
into today's episode open minded as to curiosity.
4:39
That's what I want you to do. Put on the hat of curiosity
4:42
today and by the end of today's episode, I can assure you that
4:45
you will know what to do with this team member.
4:48
If you are somebody who's like, well, I don't have a team member
4:51
right now that's not quite working out, but I feel like
4:53
it's something I want to learn. If you are not in a place for
4:56
you to make a decision, this is the best time to listen to
4:59
today's episode because that is going to empower you with
5:03
understanding things that you can also do in a preventative
5:06
nature to keep yourself from getting to a place where you
5:09
need to make a decision of. Do I let them go or do we
5:11
continue? So how do we get to this place
5:13
where the team member is on our team and they're not working out
5:16
and we feel like we're at a place where we're potentially
5:20
thinking about letting them go? First thing that I will say that
5:23
I see in almost every single business I've gone into is that
5:28
people really lack documentation.
5:31
And so many people are either they have really, really robust
5:37
documentation where it's like the SO PS that you've got in
5:40
your business and you've got this like encyclopedia of
5:43
instructions for somebody, but it's so meaty and it's so
5:47
lengthy that it's extremely difficult to get through.
5:50
Or you might be part of bucket #2 which is the person who
5:52
basically has no documentation. And what the issue with this is,
5:59
is if you let someone go on your team and you don't have #1
6:04
proper documentation of how to actually train them, but then
6:09
second, documentation of their performance.
6:12
It actually, in some areas of the world is literally illegal
6:16
to let someone go if you don't have documentation of whatever
6:20
the issue may be on an ongoing basis.
6:22
IE say someone is doing something in your business and
6:27
they work in marketing and they're not doing their
6:29
marketing job effectively. You usually want to have
6:32
documentation of calls you've had together that you've voiced
6:35
concern and given feedback of needing to have a change,
6:38
milestones of achievement like we're going to get into today.
6:41
Documentation is essential when you're looking to either train
6:46
someone to be successful on your team or to ultimately, even if
6:51
you're thinking about letting them go, to back up the
6:54
justification or the decision of letting them go.
6:57
But the reason we even end up in a place where somebody can get
7:02
someone on their team where they're finding that they just
7:03
are not covering their bases is often times due to just lack of
7:07
documentation. You don't necessarily.
7:11
And you can have a very real and honest conversation with
7:13
yourself right now. Do you actually have effective
7:17
detailed outlines of your principles in your business?
7:21
Did you bring someone through a training program when they got
7:24
on boarded? Did you outline what are the
7:28
values of the company in the decision making guidelines from
7:30
which you operate? Did you outline you know how to
7:33
audit something to know that's complete or finished?
7:36
Did you have anything resource wise that when this happens,
7:39
this is what we do about it? If you don't have any of those
7:42
things created, what it tells me is that you don't actually have
7:48
any basis from which your team is being trained.
7:51
So instead what happens is you end up just being like, well,
7:54
they shadowed me, They're on calls with me all the time,
7:56
They're around me all the time. They should just know.
7:59
And one of the mistakes that I see all the time is that people
8:03
are assuming. There's a lot of assumptions
8:06
that's happening. You're assuming that the person
8:09
that you're trying to communicate training to is just
8:12
getting it. You say it, they get it, they do
8:14
it. There's this belief that they
8:15
should just know after being in your ecosystem for long enough.
8:20
What we know though, is that people need documentation.
8:24
And I will also share a stat with you as to why this is
8:27
important because 80% of wrongful termination lawsuits
8:31
were actually due to a lack of proper documentation in the
8:35
individual's training or in the documentation of their off
8:40
boarding. 80 percent, 80% of wrongful termination lawsuits
8:46
that happen are because the company that that person worked
8:49
for didn't have adequate documentation.
8:52
So documentation of your business, what you do day in,
8:56
day out, what you do, you know, in each area of your business
9:00
needs to be noted somewhere. So what we do is, and I, you
9:04
know, even as I say this, maybe I should be making this another
9:06
episode. So if you guys feel like you
9:07
would love to learn how to document your business, I can do
9:10
a training absolutely on the podcast about that.
9:12
So you just shoot me a message, let me know that would be
9:14
helpful for you. But I will say what we teach our
9:18
clients is we literally help them to take any process in
9:21
their business and using different stages and filtering
9:25
systems as well as pairing it with AI, we help them to be able
9:29
to document all their core processes.
9:32
Because what I found was there were so many people who are
9:35
having issues with their team members.
9:36
But as soon as I said show me their training, they were like,
9:40
well, you know, like it's kind of like informal.
9:43
I said, OK, here we go. As in, we don't really have
9:47
training. So if we don't have training for
9:49
the individual, how can we be expecting them to follow the
9:52
guidelines that are not even necessarily outlined anywhere?
9:56
So documentation is essential. That's how we end up in a place
10:00
where people are not meeting our standards is because the
10:03
standards are not actually stated anywhere.
10:05
They're not voiced anywhere, and they're not reinforced.
10:09
The second way that we end up getting into this place is
10:13
really in acting on emotion. Often times when someone comes
10:17
to me and they find that a team member is not working out or the
10:20
team member is like they're at, they're at like their wit's end
10:23
and they're like, I just can't anymore with this team member.
10:26
Often times when we get to that place, it's actually from a
10:29
place of frustration, tons of emotion coming up.
10:32
And frankly, just like this resentment that's happened over
10:35
time, they'll say things like, I feel like I've talked to this
10:38
person five times about this, or I feel like by now they should
10:41
just know. And what actually ends up
10:44
happening is that there's a lot of frustration and a lot of
10:47
resistance in the CEO or the person who's running the
10:50
business, and they bring that emotion to the table.
10:54
And So what ends up happening because of that is you are going
10:58
to create a massive domino in your business.
11:01
I want any person that I work with as ACEO, when they let
11:06
someone go on their team to be completely not neutral to the
11:10
point where they're not going to miss that person, not neutral to
11:12
the fact that they don't care about letting them go.
11:14
That's not what we're talking about.
11:16
I'm talking about you're not bringing in built up resentment
11:19
into that meeting. Well, you should have done this.
11:22
And this is what we were looking for.
11:23
And we talked this endless amount of times.
11:25
We are looking and anytime we want to let somebody out of a
11:28
business or we feel that we want to move on from a relationship
11:31
with someone in our business, we want to feel like we have data
11:35
and we want to feel like we have the information we need to feel
11:39
good about parting ways. We want to feel like we remove.
11:44
And you guys hear me talk to us all the time.
11:45
But a great quote passed along to me from a mentor.
11:48
It's all data, no drama. You just need to say, listen,
11:52
there was this deadline. It wasn't hit.
11:54
So because of that, here's where we are.
11:57
We had this instance where you were behind or had had to have
12:00
six revisions of feedback when typically we only allocate 2.
12:04
And in being with the company for four, for three years or
12:06
four years, this is not something that we can continue
12:09
to move forward with. That's the kind of conversation
12:13
that we need to be having. Again, you'll realize this goes
12:16
back to having documentation of not only what you're doing in
12:19
your business, but also things along the way as they progress.
12:22
And it's also asking you as the CEO to say, listen, I get you're
12:26
frustrated. I get that you might be at your
12:29
wit's end with somebody on your team, or you might be feeling
12:31
like by now things should be easier, flow more, be simpler to
12:35
operate in. But I also want to share that
12:40
60% of managers, this is a Harvard Business Review stat.
12:46
The Harvard, Harvard Business Review stat showed that 60% of
12:49
managers report hiring and firing decisions, often times
12:54
happening in the heat of the moment without considering the
12:57
actual data or information as factors for their decision.
13:01
OK, 60 percent, 60% of managers have actively voiced in this
13:07
study that they have hired and fired people strictly in the
13:10
heat of the moment. And so we want to look at this,
13:14
obviously, it's a, it's an astounding stat of 60%.
13:18
So what it tells us is our emotions are playing more of a
13:21
role in this often times than we even maybe want to actively
13:24
acknowledge, which is why things like we talked about of, of self
13:28
regulation and emotional regulation are so important.
13:31
Because if we're not regulated, we can't always necessarily
13:34
decipher between what is emotion and frustration of pent up
13:39
energy and what is actual fact that this person is not a good
13:42
asset to the team. And So what I try to do with
13:46
people is help them when they bring something like this to me
13:49
and they feel like a team member is not working out.
13:51
What I try to do is help them to distinguish what their
13:54
frustrations are, what their emotions are, what their
13:56
resistances are, and then look at.
13:59
But what did the facts tell us? And so that's something I will
14:03
see a lot is that people will be so upset, so frustrated with a
14:09
team member that they're like, oh, I just, I so and so has to
14:12
go. And I want to invite you to
14:15
think about, OK, I know how you're obviously emotionally
14:18
feeling right now. However, what I want to see is,
14:22
is there information or data to back up the drama or what you're
14:27
feeling in this current moment? Again, back to data versus
14:31
drama. The other thing that I also see
14:34
is that people are not giving their team members intentional.
14:39
I'm use that word specifically intentional feedback.
14:43
I talked to several business owners during the span of when
14:46
people were bringing these these team issues to me.
14:49
And they had said to me, well, you know, this person, I, I've
14:53
given them so much feedback and I was like, OK, well, the
14:57
feedback that you're giving, have you seen improvement from
15:00
the feedback? And they were like, well, no,
15:02
but like, I just have been giving tons of feedback.
15:05
I'm always telling them, you know, that what they need to
15:08
change, what they need to change.
15:09
So 1st I want to say that I want to look at whether they're doing
15:15
positive and negative feedback or just what the person's doing
15:18
wrong. That's one thing we want to
15:19
acknowledge, but The thing is kind of back to our
15:22
documentation. Your feedback cannot just be a
15:26
good job. It needs to be good job on what
15:29
you did in blank because here's what worked really well about
15:32
it. That helps us with XYZ.
15:35
Our framework documentation, which was the first one that we
15:39
noted today is important because without documentation, you're
15:43
giving feedback with no basis for it.
15:45
So I want to give you an example.
15:47
If I am a fitness trainer and you're squatting and I just say
15:51
good squat, right? Like, so I'm your trainer,
15:54
you're doing a workout, you decide to squat, you come back
15:56
up and I say, oh, that's amazing, great squat.
16:00
What's our first curiosity as we hear that?
16:02
Well, why was it a good squat? Did I go low enough for my were
16:06
my knees wide enough? Did my stance look OK?
16:08
Was my back in the right way? Did I do it at the right tempo?
16:12
Like what about it was good? So what I see is people who are
16:16
giving feedback to people are often doing so in a very blanket
16:21
generalized way that doesn't reinforce the initial training
16:26
they had. So because of that, the person
16:28
just like, OK, I, I guess it was a good squat and they don't
16:31
really know why. So feedback without it being
16:34
connected to any of your training or feedback that's not
16:37
connected to a why is basically feedback that falls flat.
16:42
It doesn't really download for anyone because it doesn't latch
16:45
on to anything. And so one of the things that I
16:47
see is either that people give non structured feedback.
16:51
So it doesn't really have any intention, any root or any why
16:54
to it or they genuinely just don't give enough feedback.
16:58
They will not give enough praise and they won't give enough
17:01
acknowledgement. And they also don't give enough
17:04
feedback on where the person could refine or do better for
17:06
them to continue to improve. And there was literally a stat
17:11
that showed in a Gallup study that 43% of employees say that
17:16
they don't get enough feedback to be able to increase their
17:19
performance at their job. 43 percent, 43% of employees have
17:24
noted that they don't get enough feedback to even do their job
17:28
better. So this is an invitation for you
17:31
to also say, like, have I actually given this person #1
17:35
consistent feedback? But then #2 have you given that
17:39
feedback in a way that is structured around what the
17:42
training covered and how that person's really doing a good job
17:45
of integrating the training? Or have you given the the
17:49
feedback in a lens that really impacts what they did and either
17:53
why it was really impactful in a good way or why it is a negative
17:57
domino in the business if it should continue or what it would
18:00
impact? So it when it comes to feedback
18:04
is a key thing that I see because if we don't give either
18:07
enough feedback or the right kind of feedback, we're really
18:10
missing the mark on even having the potential to help somebody
18:13
to grow. And back to what I said about
18:16
documentation and training is also looking at do you even have
18:20
training? And I'm going to be really
18:21
honest, I, I had, I had hired somebody recently to work with
18:27
us who's absolutely amazing. And she came into the business
18:31
at a time and there's a lot of things that were changing and I
18:34
didn't have my formal typical training that I would want to
18:37
have for somebody like that, that I would envision.
18:39
And so I thought, OK, well, how do I make sure that she gets
18:42
really good training and like gets like a good understanding
18:45
of what we're doing and why we're doing it and all of our
18:48
principals if I don't have it built into my portal specific to
18:51
her role? And So what I decided to do is I
18:55
basically to ensure that she got the training she needed, even
18:58
though I didn't have it fully all prepped out.
19:01
We blocked off one week at a Co workspace and I had her meet me
19:03
there and I took that week to basically teach her every
19:08
principle and framework that she was going to be using.
19:11
And then had part of that also be integration time, which is
19:14
where I would give her scenarios and she would kind of plan those
19:17
out and outline them. And so it was interesting
19:20
because her and I had a conversation and I remember
19:22
saying in passing to her, you know, I just, I'm really so
19:25
sorry that your training wasn't more formal.
19:28
And she said, Kate, that was in this all the small businesses
19:30
that I've worked with, that was the most structured training
19:33
that I've had in comparison to what I had elsewhere.
19:36
And obviously for me that was shocking because I wish I could
19:39
have made it 10 times even more better for her than it was.
19:43
But what it also symbolized to me was that, you know, similar
19:47
to what I see in business consulting and in business
19:49
coaching of other businesses, agencies coaching businesses,
19:52
consulting businesses in person services, all of it.
19:56
There is just this lack of training.
19:58
There's kind of this, you know, sink or swim, They come into the
20:02
business and and they start to work in the business and you're
20:04
just kind of like 321 go. And it's not to say that the 321
20:08
go is bad because you as a growing business are going to
20:12
need to hire quickly. You're going to need to bring
20:16
people in fast. And you may not always have
20:18
adequate time to make this perfectly outlined training per
20:22
person, but even kind of to my example that that.
20:26
Didn't mean we just don't make training and Shadow Me is their
20:28
only training. You can also find ways to get
20:32
creative to give the person the resources that they need, even
20:35
if it's not in some formal databank just yet.
20:38
And so for me, one of the things that I really look at is I
20:43
anytime someone wants to let someone on their team go, I
20:46
really grill them on the onboarding of that person.
20:50
I said, show me what their onboarding training was like.
20:53
Well, you know, we got on some calls like great, show me the
20:56
recordings. Did you teach them a framework?
20:57
Did you teach them steps? Did you give them like a, a
21:00
click up space that they're supposed to manage their job
21:02
from? Did you give them trainings on
21:03
how to use click up? Like does this person even have
21:08
the toolbox to succeed? Or are you mad that they're not
21:12
building anything when they literally don't have a hammer?
21:15
Like that's really what we're at That.
21:18
And this is the reason I you'll probably know it's from my tone
21:20
today. I'm very, I'm very passionate
21:23
about this topic. And the reason I'm passionate
21:26
about it is because we as CEOs need to realize that our lack of
21:32
management and our lack of integration of some of the
21:36
things we're talking about today is the difference of whether
21:38
some people have a job or not. Some people can pay their bills
21:41
or not. Some people can continue within
21:43
our business. And this again, is not to say
21:45
that we're not going to potentially still end up letting
21:48
this person go. But what I'm hoping is as we're
21:51
talking about this today, you're checking in with yourself and
21:54
saying, OK, I'm eating a piece of humble pie over here because
21:57
I'm realizing I don't have very good onboarding and I don't have
22:00
very good training. And it is very clunky and very
22:03
complicated and not easy understand.
22:05
So maybe that's why people are not easily able to follow it.
22:08
This is just an invitation for us to have an awareness.
22:11
And so when it comes to training, it's interesting
22:15
because about 70% of employees in actually a LinkedIn learning
22:19
study that just came out was that 70% of employees say that
22:24
they don't have the skills that they need to actually
22:26
effectively do their current job and ultimately suggested that it
22:30
was due to gaps in training as well as their onboarding 70%.
22:36
So again, I'm saying this in the sense of showing you that if you
22:40
are feeling a little bit called out or a little bit tickled
22:43
today, that's the point. And that I also wanted to show
22:47
70% because it tells you that you're not alone.
22:50
But what we know is as ambitious women, which is why we're all
22:53
here, is that we're not looking to be the masses.
22:56
We are not looking to have all the team members that are being
23:00
fired because of emotion. We are not looking to be the
23:03
team where people are coming in and they have no training and no
23:07
onboarding. We are not looking to be part of
23:09
the typical business. We are looking to be part of
23:12
that one to 3% of how people operate at the highest level.
23:16
So I'm inviting this to be an opportunity for us to consider
23:19
some elements we need to create. And the other thing that I also
23:23
asked someone is I said, OK, well, this person you're
23:28
thinking about firing, you told me all the reasons they're not
23:31
good at their job. What about them as a person?
23:34
And like, what do you mean? And I'm like the value they
23:36
bring to your business. Are they a hard worker?
23:39
Are they open minded? Are they a good collaborator of
23:42
ideas? Are they somebody who is
23:44
persistent? Are they somebody who goes above
23:46
and beyond? Are they somebody who has
23:48
qualities outside of this tactical 1 issue that you have
23:53
with them, which typically is rooted in emotion or typically
23:56
rooted in lack of training and feedback?
23:58
And when I asked that question, so I said, well, she's she's
24:02
great. Yeah, she's great.
24:03
Her personality is great. She's a great person.
24:06
She this, she that, but and they go on to something else.
24:10
And So what then I then ask is if she could do her job
24:15
effectively in the aspect of what you're looking for, would
24:19
you be OK with her personality and the other cultural aspects
24:23
that she brings to the team? And someone said, oh, yeah,
24:26
well, she did her job properly. Her personality and all that
24:28
stuff is amazing. Like she's a great asset to the
24:30
team. I said, great, Now we look at
24:33
the training and onboarding because I see people who have
24:37
let go of team members who were incredible assets to the team
24:43
strictly frankly based off of something that was a
24:46
technicality that they didn't even have proper documentation
24:49
and training or feedback for. And they want to let this person
24:52
go. Even though that person as a
24:55
value of their business for how much they support the business,
24:59
the ideas they have, the things they contribute.
25:02
They want to let this person go just off those little pieces
25:05
alone when they could have literally lost the biggest asset
25:08
sitting right underneath their nose.
25:10
And so the thing I explained to clients is we can train a lot
25:17
around skills, like many, many, many skills can be, can be
25:21
trained. You can't train someone to care
25:23
about their job. You can't train somebody to go
25:27
above and beyond. You can't train somebody to be
25:30
empathetic. You can't train somebody to be
25:32
driven. It's a, it's an innate value.
25:35
It's an innate perspective, belief, operating system, if you
25:40
will, that that person has. And so for me, what I asked
25:44
myself is, OK, well, say I'm dissatisfied with something that
25:48
someone's doing. I, I look at the values that
25:51
they have and saying, am I having an issue with the
25:54
tactical thing or the strategic thing that they're doing inside
25:58
their job? Or do I have actually more of an
26:01
issue with their values that they align with?
26:05
Are they not a hard worker or they don't communicate well or
26:08
they're not consistent? Those are larger issues for me
26:12
than the tactical training piece because what I found in my own
26:15
team as well as other teams that I I train and that I work inside
26:18
of is that I have found that those pieces are often due to a
26:24
lot of ownership on the company itself.
26:26
There's things that if someone's not doing their job properly,
26:29
often times need to be refined inside the actual business.
26:33
Whereas if there's a value discrepancy, IE if your values
26:37
don't align, that's a little bit different because that again is
26:40
something that's very difficult to teach somebody if especially
26:43
they don't desire to want to embrace those values that you
26:46
and your company possess. So that I wanted to kind of go
26:50
through some common mistakes because I wanted to 1st
26:53
acknowledge that we didn't get here, IE considering thinking
26:58
about letting A-Team member go by accident.
27:00
This is something that has happened over time. 9 times out
27:04
of 10 that I want to kind of give us a pulse check first, ask
27:08
ourselves some of those tough questions.
27:10
And those honestly are the questions that I would ask you
27:11
if you were my client. If you were my client, I would
27:14
ask you those exact same questions because I would want
27:17
to know that you are not letting someone go within their within
27:21
your business or within their role strictly just based off of
27:24
you feeling heated about one specific mistake or situation
27:27
that happened. So now comes, well, what do we
27:31
do about it, right? So if we have this awareness, we
27:34
know this person is not necessarily working out and
27:37
we're trying to kind of analyze the situation, what do we do
27:40
about it? So first, massive, massive
27:43
radical ownership. Step one is you have to take
27:47
responsibility as the leader of the company and you have to take
27:51
responsibility as the leader of the situation.
27:55
You have to ask yourself, what role did you play in this team
27:58
member and the how things progressed with them?
28:01
Because one of the things that I don't exactly know word for word
28:04
what it was, but it was a quote by Gary Vee and he was talking
28:07
about the fact that you cannot be upset with a manager because
28:11
you hired the manager. The manager can't be upset with
28:13
the staff member that they have underneath them because they
28:15
actually were the one who hired, managed and trained that staff.
28:19
So this idea of pointing fingers needs to be immediately off
28:25
table because every at you might be thinking your body, but Kate
28:29
and you start to think of all these things of but this, but
28:32
that I will tell you right now, that voice in you that's wanting
28:37
to point fingers and to frankly place blame is part of the
28:41
reason your business is not going to be successful.
28:44
Every single business owner that I work with who has a massive
28:48
business that is very aligned, great values, amazing team, very
28:52
successful is a leader and ACEO who takes radical ownership on
28:56
not just the wins, but also the losses, IE the feedback.
29:01
That's something you've done thus far has obviously not
29:04
worked to the way that it needs to because if it did, your team
29:07
member would be succeeding most likely.
29:10
So what we want to look at is where was our role?
29:14
Where did we play within this? Where was our responsibility
29:17
within it? And what role did I play in this
29:21
situation? Did I communicate the
29:25
expectations fairly? Did I have proper training?
29:28
Did I manage their performance and help them to understand
29:32
milestones of their progress? Did I talk to them enough or did
29:37
I just say, here's your stuff, like go do your job right?
29:39
Or they should just know like we don't need to constantly be
29:41
talking about things all the time.
29:42
Like did I really support in the way that I needed to, to have
29:47
that person win? And this is an opportunity for
29:51
you to reflect. And it really is a way for you
29:54
to say, are you really giving people on your team the
29:57
resources that they need to be successful underneath your
30:01
company? And it's what we consider to be
30:02
the mirror test because someone who's having an issue with a
30:06
team or with a team member has to be able to.
30:09
If you are going to grill that person and you work with me, you
30:13
got to grill yourself first. You should always be first on
30:17
the chopping block in any situation because you take
30:20
radical ownership. So anytime that someone comes to
30:24
me about a team member, the first question I'm going to ask
30:25
you about is yourself. What did you do to lead this
30:28
person well? Where do you think you could
30:30
have led them better? What kind of training did they
30:32
have? What training do you feel like
30:34
they didn't have, but they probably could have afforded to
30:36
have that would have supported them?
30:38
What kind of support did you give along the way?
30:41
Did you give milestones of progress?
30:42
Did you give them feedback on where they could refine?
30:45
These are opportunities for us to reflect.
30:48
It has to, and in no instance we'll ever not start with us.
30:53
It starts with us taking radical ownership, OK?
30:57
2nd. Is to take a step back and to
31:00
pause and allow this to be an opportunity for you to not use
31:04
emotional reasoning or emotional reaction to be the reason that
31:08
you let someone on your team go who could be one of the biggest
31:11
assets you have. I just had a call with someone
31:15
who is restructuring their business and they were, we were
31:17
talking with their team because they were going to be letting
31:19
some of their team go as part of the restructuring.
31:22
And I started to go through each person and they were like, Oh
31:24
well, like so and so this or so and so that, I think they got to
31:26
go for the following reasons. And I said to them, you know,
31:30
that's how your emotion feels. Tell me factually, give me
31:34
information about them. Why do you want to keep them?
31:37
Like why specifically other than I like them or I don't like
31:39
them? Why do you want to keep them?
31:41
And when we actually started unpacking it, the person she
31:44
thought she was going to let go ended up not being the person
31:47
she let go based off asking these critical questions.
31:50
So. I mention this because.
31:53
When we don't take that pause, it can impact the decision you
31:58
make and most importantly, it can impact your team because if
32:02
you have other team members who are seeing you make emotional
32:06
based decisions, think about how they feel about their job.
32:10
Think about how they feel about how they're going to be
32:12
considered come time for them to potentially either continue on
32:16
your team or to not continue or be evaluated.
32:19
They want to know that you as a leader are not somebody who just
32:23
has an emotion and gets, you know, upset about something and
32:26
takes an action. They want to know that you are
32:29
critically thinking through the steps that you're executing or
32:32
decisions that you're making and you're thinking those through to
32:35
make an intentional next step or decision.
32:38
So you want to look at things like, OK, well what would be the
32:42
long term impact to our business if I let this person go?
32:47
You also want to say. This issue that I'm, I'm having
32:50
an issue with, right? So like if I'm looking at a team
32:52
member, the thing that I'm struggling with when it comes to
32:54
this team member, is this an ongoing problem or is this kind
32:57
of a temporary problem that you're having?
32:59
Could you see this problem going away?
33:01
Is this a short term or a short timeline based situation or is
33:05
this something that has been an ongoing issue from the day you
33:09
met the person or for the last two years you've been explaining
33:12
the same thing, right? And again, even if This is why
33:16
it's important for us to have this conversation, even if it's
33:18
been 2 years, my question becomes in those two years, did
33:23
you provide good training, feedback, milestones of progress
33:26
and check insurance along the way?
33:27
Because just the fact that it's been 2 years, but you didn't do
33:30
any of those things in between makes those two years not valid
33:34
and not a real reason to let that person go.
33:36
And so if you are somebody who let someone go out of emotion
33:42
and you let someone go out of just like this heightened, like,
33:44
oh, this is frustrating me. That will hurt your team morale.
33:50
It will hurt the team environment.
33:52
And you have to also think about how will this disrupt the
33:56
business, right? So if it's just like 321, this
33:59
person goes, how does the loss of that person impact the
34:03
business? And if you say to me, well,
34:05
Kate, the loss of that person doesn't impact the business,
34:09
that tells me something else because every team member on
34:12
your team should be a loss. It's not to say.
34:17
You can't replace that person. But if letting someone on your
34:21
team go makes no waves at all within the business, even on a
34:26
micro or a macro scale, it means that the person that was there
34:30
wasn't really solving a big problem.
34:33
Because if the person is solving a big problem, you're going to
34:35
have a big imprint on that person being gone.
34:39
So it's again, not to say you can't replace them, but it's to
34:41
say that they added a lot of value because with the thought
34:45
of removing them, you feel like you are truly losing something
34:49
by losing that individual. Hi, we are briefly interrupting
34:53
today's episode. And no, I am not here to sell
34:56
you anything. I am actually here to let you
34:58
know about something that is really exciting and entirely
35:00
free to support you. In the next week, we are going
35:04
to be launching our Ambitious network.
35:06
This is a new community that I have created that is designed to
35:09
be a place for you to be able to get all of the things that
35:12
you're loving about the Ambitious Podcast and so much
35:15
more for yourself as a person, but also professionally for your
35:18
business. So in this network that we're
35:21
going to be launching in one week, we're going to be allowing
35:23
you to really connect yourself with like minded individuals and
35:26
women who are also going for big things in every area of their
35:29
life. So what can you expect inside?
35:32
Inside, I am doing things like live hot seat coaching on Zoom,
35:36
me and you diving into your business.
35:38
We're going to have exclusive giveaways that are only going to
35:41
be available inside of this community.
35:43
We have trainings and resources and different types of things
35:46
that you can dive into that will help you to level up in your
35:49
business. We have guest expert resources
35:51
where I have my peers and my network who have provided things
35:55
that will only be available inside this community.
35:57
And of course, you're going to have the ability to also be
36:00
surrounded with other people like yourself, to share wins, to
36:03
chat about business and to talk about different things that are
36:06
working or not working in today's current market.
36:09
And most importantly, you'll have the ability to ask
36:11
questions to me, to be able to get feedback from me and support
36:14
from me when it comes to you and your business.
36:17
So listen, this is not a membership that is a graveyard
36:21
of resources that I don't know what to do with.
36:23
This is also not a free Facebook group where you end up joining
36:27
and you kind of sit with all these notifications coming in,
36:30
but you're not really getting anything out of it.
36:32
This is really where a high level networking community meets
36:37
the place of coaching and development all wrapped into
36:40
one. And so if you are someone who
36:41
loves the ambitious podcast, you are not going to want to miss
36:44
out on the opportunity to join. And as part of our exciting
36:47
launch, we are you're going to be doing something that is one
36:49
of our biggest giveaways yet. I do this giveaway once a year
36:53
and it is actually a giveaway of probably the equivalent of about
36:57
50 to $60,000 worth of coaching. So you're not going to want to
37:00
miss it. Stay tuned to our socials next
37:03
week where you can get all the instructions on how to enter.
37:06
And all that being said, let's get back into today's episode.
37:09
So step three, I want you to again, so just kind of
37:13
summarize. Step one, I want you to take
37:15
massive responsibility and I want you to reflect on yourself
37:17
first before anything about the team member.
37:19
Second, I want you to take a pause and get emotionally
37:22
regulated. I want you to step back and say,
37:24
OK, emotions aside, what are we looking at here?
37:27
And ask yourself some of those critical questions.
37:29
Step 3 is you need to look at this person and ask yourself the
37:33
questions of what do they bring to the business, to the team, to
37:38
the culture outside of their role and just the tactics of
37:42
what they do. Do they have a strong work
37:44
ethic? Do they over deliver?
37:46
Are they willing to collaborate with the team?
37:48
I will say there actually is such a thing as people who are
37:53
personality hires. And here's what I mean by that.
37:58
You can have someone on your team who is not considered the
38:03
most like. Badass.
38:06
Go getter just kicking ass and taking names type of person when
38:10
it comes to their role and yet their presence, even though they
38:15
don't have all the technical skills of something that you
38:17
would want of like the highest, highest person.
38:20
The person that they are, the person that they bring as
38:25
themselves to the role, not the tasks, not the position, but the
38:28
person they are is such an insanely valuable asset to your
38:35
business that losing the person they are would be something that
38:39
would be a loss to you. Even more so sometimes in the
38:41
position. There is something to be said
38:45
for those who bring an impact to the team.
38:48
They can bring a culture to the team.
38:49
They can bring a positivity and energy, a problem solving skill
38:52
set that maybe isn't a technical thing, but they've just got this
38:59
personality and this value set with them as an individual that
39:03
is just kind of irreplaceable. There is still value in that.
39:07
Because here's the thing, many CE OS that look at their team
39:11
will look at just what people can do.
39:13
But I'm also saying here that we need to look at not just what
39:16
your team can do, but also who they are.
39:20
And even on our team, you know, I have someone, I'm thinking in
39:23
my head that there's been times where like she even has
39:26
acknowledged that she was not like the best at the thing that
39:29
she did. But we said to her, like, we
39:32
will literally have you around in like some shape, form,
39:35
capacity in these different buckets.
39:37
Because like just of who you are, like the energy that you
39:40
bring to the team is indescribable in the sense of
39:44
the impact and the lightness and, and the yeah, just like the
39:47
energy and the goodness and the positivity that she brings to
39:50
everybody that she surrounds. Like it is just, you cannot
39:54
replace it. So is she the the top tier of
39:57
specifically the area that she's in?
39:59
No. And she knows that, but she's
40:02
also recognized the other areas that she brings value to the
40:06
team. And So what we want to ask
40:07
ourselves is, is this person bringing good team camaraderie?
40:13
Are they somebody who maybe. Even if their product
40:17
productivity or even if their position isn't as high level as
40:20
as we might expect it to be, are there softer qualities that will
40:24
have this person being a asset to our team long term?
40:29
And that's again, just something you want to be asking yourself
40:31
before you ever think about going into letting somebody go
40:34
or removing them from your team. Now here.
40:37
Comes the hard question. Your training and your support
40:40
and the structure that you provided for them to succeed.
40:44
Ask yourself, was this person and be honest?
40:48
You know, and this is a conversation between you and you
40:51
right now, You know, did the person that you hired actually
40:56
were they given the true resources, training and the
40:58
guidance they needed to be successful to really succeed?
41:02
And also asking yourself, did you throw this person into a
41:06
role without any proper training or onboarding and then ask them
41:12
to really excel in this role that they had?
41:16
And again, this is. Not me placing blame.
41:19
This is not me trying to make you feel guilty.
41:21
It's not me trying to make you feel anyway.
41:24
I'm trying to, if anything, show you the opportunity.
41:27
If this person's got a great personality and brings a lot of
41:30
energy and good team camaraderie to the team, but they happen to
41:33
be falling a little short when it comes to their role, think
41:36
about how valuable it might be to keep them on the team and
41:41
allow them, with proper training and documentation, to advance in
41:45
their skill set, to have both of those things be able to make
41:48
them a top A-Team player. Did you take the time to equip
41:52
them with the tools that they need?
41:54
Did you actually give them true mentorship, IE helping them each
41:58
part of the way and helping them to learn and develop?
42:00
Did you set clear expectations? Did you provide ongoing support
42:04
to them? Did you do the sink or swim
42:06
approach where you throw them in the deep end you kind of expect
42:08
them to swim? Was the failure of anything that
42:13
they did potentially connected and in some way, shape or form
42:17
to lack of proper support and documentation and training from
42:20
you? Is there a sliver?
42:23
Of possibility that it's from that.
42:25
Now you might say, Kate, no, there's not.
42:27
I, I had tons of training, I had tons of onboarding.
42:30
I had lots of structures, resources, videos, all these
42:33
things that they could watch about their role.
42:35
OK, great. Well then maybe you actually did
42:38
have adequate training. Again, this is not to say that
42:41
the person you're thinking about letting go or the person that
42:44
you're having issues with is in fact not someone who's causing
42:47
issues. They may still be actually
42:49
making issues in the team, but we just have to ask the hard
42:52
questions before we figure out what we want to do next.
42:55
We then want to ask ourselves, which is Step 5, the feedback.
42:59
And we want to again look at the consistency and the schedule and
43:02
the cadence of how often we gave them feedback.
43:04
And then we want to look at what was the structure of that
43:06
feedback and how did we do it in such a way that allowed them to
43:11
get in a timely manner, but also in an effective, helpful and
43:14
supportive manner as well. Regular.
43:17
Feedback is essential for any single team member that you have
43:22
to be able to consistently grow and progress and develop within
43:25
your team. If it is rare or if it is
43:28
inconsistent or frankly if the feedback is not timely and it's
43:31
too late, it ends up really being a disservice to a team
43:36
member and it ends up being something that hinders their
43:38
ability to support you in the business and ultimately to grow
43:41
within their role. And so.
43:45
If we want. To give feedback, we need people
43:49
to be able to be clear about what needs to change and why
43:52
does it need to change. Like I want to say, for example,
43:55
OK, so we, for example, were working with somebody in our
43:59
business and she was fantastic. She was fantastic.
44:02
There was a part that we were giving her on feedback and it
44:04
came around the topic of design. So we had given her design
44:07
feedback and we had said, hey, when it comes to some of the
44:11
things we're creating, we want to make sure there's a real
44:13
emphasis on what's considered the punch word or the punch
44:16
phrase that we look at in the design.
44:19
And we had to explain to her that when someone is skimming
44:23
through social media and the wrong punch phrase is
44:27
accentuated, it means they don't get the essence of the message
44:30
we want them to get as they're scrolling.
44:32
They might if we accentuate. Because instead of 10 reasons
44:36
why, right, if we accentuate the wrong words or phrase, people
44:40
are not getting the emphasis of why they need to open that post
44:43
or why they need to consume it. And what that does is if they
44:46
don't consume the post, they don't nurture.
44:48
And if they don't nurture, they don't convert.
44:49
So what we did was we said, listen, it's not just like, oh,
44:52
you're accentuating the wrong word.
44:53
Like, no, it's that word that's bad feedback, OK, It's not.
44:59
That's not supposed to be the word.
45:00
This is the word. So can you please make it with
45:01
this word that's bad feedback or feedback with that needs
45:05
improvement, OK, Good feedback or intentional feedback is to
45:08
say here's what you did. Here's what I would have loved
45:11
to have it be instead. Here's why I would have loved to
45:14
have it be that way. And most importantly for us,
45:17
this is a really important thing for us to get nailed down and
45:19
for us to see happen. Because if we don't see that
45:22
happen, here's how that impacts the business and creates a
45:25
domino effect in other areas. Does that make sense?
45:28
And I would really help somebody to get educated on the feedback
45:32
that I'm making and the domino effect it has in the business,
45:34
both positively or negatively, IE when we master this, here's
45:38
how it's going to help us. And if we don't master this,
45:41
here's how it's going to hinder us.
45:42
So we want to look at giving them context because people that
45:47
get again, feedback, but maybe not structured feedback are
45:51
often not getting an understanding of the context or
45:54
the impact of their work, again, both positive or negative.
45:57
So what it means when you give feedback, there's no depth to
46:00
it. It's very surface level.
46:02
And often times, if I'm going to be honest, I see this is a, a
46:04
number one mistake. People are giving situational
46:08
feedback, not actual structure or system feedback.
46:12
What I mean by this is you're giving some feedback about a
46:15
client, for example. So say you have a an agency and
46:18
this person, you give them feedback on how to interface
46:20
with your clients. It shouldn't be about client
46:23
Tom. It shouldn't be about client
46:24
Sarah. It should be about in general.
46:27
When clients come to us with a conflict like this, here's how
46:30
we want to de escalate it or here's how we want to navigate
46:33
it. Or here's the steps we go
46:35
through for any client complaint or inquiry.
46:38
That's the training. It's not OK with Tom.
46:41
Here's what you want to say. It's not about that.
46:43
Because when you train on a situation, guess what?
46:46
The next situation that comes? They don't have a structure or
46:49
system from which to take the next step without you.
46:52
So what ends up happening is you end up in this loop of giving
46:55
the same feedback over and over and over and over.
46:58
Why? Because the context you gave was
47:01
not based on a structure, it was based on a situation.
47:04
So what happens when the next situation comes up is they don't
47:06
know what to do because they have no structure or system to
47:09
look at to help to guide them. When you use the first instance
47:13
of a situation happening and you give somebody a structure or
47:16
system to operate from, that helps to be something for them
47:20
to root into so they know what to do with full confidence the
47:23
next time as like their backbone that they're operating from.
47:27
So we want to give feedback. But here's the thing with
47:30
feedback. Step 6 is.
47:33
Milestones and milestones are important because when it comes
47:37
to your feedback, the feedback you give cannot be to the person
47:41
who feels like I've been giving this person feedback for three
47:43
years. We can't be giving someone
47:45
feedback on and on and on and on and on.
47:47
And it just kind of like never having a destination or a finish
47:49
date or like an an end time. And so instead we want to say,
47:53
OK, this is what I need to see happen.
47:56
OK, so I have a conversation about this is what I need to see
47:59
happen. This is what success feels like.
48:02
This is the goal we need to work for together.
48:05
I want to see this happen in the next three months.
48:08
So what I'd like to do is meet every two weeks and each two
48:12
weeks or each month, whatever the cadence feels right for you,
48:15
this is what we're going to evaluate.
48:18
And what you will do is you will set milestones toward a goal.
48:23
Because what happens often times with team members, people have a
48:26
really hardcore conversation. They're like, if it happens
48:29
again, you're gone. Or like if this happens again,
48:32
you tell yourself maybe you don't vocalize to the team
48:34
member, but you're like, if this happens again with this person,
48:37
like I'm done. What I would want to?
48:40
Ensure is that you have milestones that actually help
48:44
someone to have checkpoints along the way of feedback.
48:47
So when someone is at a place where you're thinking about
48:50
letting them go, you need to have ongoing milestones
48:54
documented and you need to have things that you're looking to
48:57
see them do in a certain timeline.
49:00
Feedback or success of changing someone's training is not, they
49:03
used to do this, Now they do this like they didn't do it this
49:06
way, Now they do it this way. What I'd like to see, let's just
49:10
say if I go back to like a social media manager, they're
49:13
trying to give feedback to a team member.
49:15
They feel like they're having to fix every single post.
49:17
OK, You would say, listen, right now I'm fixing every single post
49:21
in the next two weeks with these changes.
49:23
I don't want to be fixing any more than three posts a week
49:27
Max. Two weeks after that, I do not
49:30
want to be fixing more than one post a week.
49:32
Long term. I don't want to get looped into
49:35
this for more than two posts a month.
49:38
So I'm going to need. To see progress over the next 90
49:42
days as we work together and I give you feedback and I'm happy
49:45
to make any trainings or resources or anything that you
49:47
need that will be supportive for you.
49:49
But over these next milestones I need to see progress and how
49:52
much I as ACEO needing to get involved.
49:55
Does that make sense? Is there anything that I could
49:57
create that would help you to be able to do that?
50:01
By creating the. Milestones.
50:02
What you're doing is you're having a shared agreement with a
50:05
team member. You're having a hey, we're both
50:07
acknowledging that whatever's happening right now is not
50:09
working. We make a plan of action
50:11
together. We set out milestones of change
50:14
we want to see happen or like that, the milestones of
50:17
development that we're going to be looking for.
50:19
And then once we have those, we then say, OK, great, we're going
50:23
to evaluate those. So what are specific actions
50:26
that someone should do for each of those milestones?
50:27
What are specific improvements that you want to see that are
50:30
assigned to you that that person is making change in an impactful
50:34
way? You've set realistic,
50:37
measurable, and intentional timely goals like you've set
50:42
indirectly what's considered to be a SMART goal.
50:44
You've set milestones for achievement.
50:47
And so if someone you know lacks, for example, productivity
50:51
or movement on something, you can have a way that is very easy
50:56
for you to track how they're progressing.
50:59
But progress is not. They used to not do well at it.
51:02
They do well at it now. Progress is seeing the change
51:05
incrementally over time of how their actions or behavior or
51:09
perspective or productivity are shifting as a result of the
51:12
training that you're giving them.
51:14
That's what we want, but they used to be bad.
51:17
Now they're good is not training.
51:19
That's just basically slapping a label on their behavior without
51:22
really giving them increments on knowing how they can succeed.
51:26
So we also want to set a timeline.
51:30
So if after a set period, right? Like I'm not saying in in
51:34
today's episode that you are to just let any and everything go
51:37
with the team member, OK. This is not just like people get
51:40
to do whatever they want and it's only us that's the problem.
51:42
That's not what I'm saying. I am saying if you've done
51:47
everything, if you've got good on boarding, you set clear
51:50
expectations. You thought as much about who
51:52
they were as a person and their personality in the higher as
51:54
much as you did their their understanding of their position
51:57
training. If you've been giving feedback,
51:59
if you've been, you know, establishing milestones that you
52:02
need to see of development, if you've been basing the feedback
52:05
on structures that you gave in documentation and training.
52:09
If you have done all these things, the idea is not that
52:13
you're doing this for two years, OK?
52:16
If you know that someone has has had all those things and they're
52:20
not working out, you set a timeline to say, hey, listen, I
52:24
need to see this change in the next 30 days.
52:25
If it's not going to change, we won't be able to move forward
52:28
together. And sometimes if.
52:31
You've already done that. You may be at a place where
52:33
you've, you say, Kate, everything you covered today.
52:35
I feel better about my decision and I know for a fact that I've
52:37
done all this stuff and it means I feel confident to take the
52:41
step moving forward, IE to let them go.
52:44
Then you should feel confident to do that because it means
52:46
you've covered all your bases. You should feel confident to not
52:51
continue with this person because it means that you've
52:53
done everything in your power as a leader, as ACEO, as the head
52:58
of a business, to do what you could to see this person
53:00
succeed. If they didn't succeed outside
53:02
of those things, it may just not be a good fit.
53:04
It may not be a good fit between you and them.
53:07
It may not be a good fit for them to necessarily be inside
53:10
your business, the skill sets that they have.
53:12
You can also use this as a check in to verify that you should be
53:17
1000% within right to say this is not working out and I'm not
53:21
going to move forward, right? That's OK.
53:24
And so the timeline for progress means you need to set a timeline
53:27
of expectation of when you want to see this person you don't
53:31
have change. Like what is the expectation we
53:33
have of seeing change within this individual and how they're
53:36
operating? And if the change doesn't
53:38
happen, what will happen after that?
53:41
And so I want to kind of quickly summarize the steps here for you
53:45
so that you have a snapshot of them.
53:47
Again, something on your team not working out, team member not
53:50
working out. Here's what I want you to do.
53:52
Take massive responsibility as a leader and ask those reflective
53:55
questions and run the mirror test on yourself.
53:58
Second, I want you to pause. I want you to avoid being
54:00
emotional because at the end of the day, your emotions cannot be
54:04
the reason that this person gets let go.
54:06
There has to be a basis or grounds for this person being
54:10
removed from the business, not only for yourself and for them,
54:13
but also for the greater team environment.
54:15
Three, I want you to look beyond their role in position.
54:18
Look at the person's overall value of the company in
54:21
personality as well as the values they bring to the team,
54:24
not just the position that they fill. 4th, I want you to
54:28
evaluate your training and support that you've provided.
54:30
Go back and look at your trainings.
54:32
Are they up to date? Do you have trainings?
54:34
Have you been helping them to have the resources they need to
54:36
be successful? 5 Reflect on the fact that you
54:40
have given feedback, yes or no. Have you given consistent
54:44
feedback, yes or no? And have you given structured
54:47
feedback, IE not situational system based feedback or
54:52
structured based feedback? 6 is to outline the milestones
54:55
and next steps together. If we're going to see progress
54:57
of this person with their role, what are the milestones that
55:00
we're going to establish and what are they expected to learn,
55:03
do or achieve by those milestones to help you to know
55:07
that they are making progress to continue within your team.
55:10
And most importantly, what is the deadline?
55:13
What is the progress date? What is the, the date of
55:16
achievement that we ultimately want to see, to say this is the
55:20
point where we make a decision because you don't necessarily,
55:24
if you feel like someone's not working out, need to drag it on
55:27
by any means for say, I don't know, six months, a year, a year
55:32
and a half, right? Like this is not about hanging
55:36
on forever. It's about ensuring that when we
55:39
run a team. One of the best quotes I ever.
55:43
Heard was like, your team does not work for you.
55:45
You work for your team because your team being happy and
55:50
supported and acknowledged and developed underneath you is the
55:56
reason your business will be successful.
55:59
So the first thought when something isn't working with
56:02
your team cannot be like, Oh well, like this happened, so I'm
56:05
going to let them go. The amount of.
56:07
People that get rid of team members or people on their team
56:11
without a second thought to the impact that that has on the rest
56:15
of the team, culture that that has on the business that that
56:18
has on the individual is mind boggling.
56:21
And the craziest part is, and 70% of the businesses that I go
56:25
into, the main reason people are being let go is actually due to
56:30
a lack of something on the CEO or the company's behalf.
56:34
Because when I end up going in and auditing it, sometimes I get
56:37
in there after someone's been let go.
56:38
So there's nothing I can do about it.
56:40
But my goal is to go in when I see the opportunity for
56:43
development and say, listen, you may feel like you need to get
56:47
rid of this person. But that person, to me, we can't
56:49
even fairly assess them because we don't have any of the things
56:52
we need to have as grounds to let that person go for us to
56:55
even know if they're really not working because they don't have
56:58
any of the things that they need from you.
56:59
The feedback, the milestones, the documentation, the
57:01
trainings, they don't have any of those.
57:04
So without it, we have no basis to know if this person should be
57:06
let go or not. So the intention today was
57:11
really, I'm going to be honest, to give you the conversation
57:13
that I give with my clients. And it's not always a fun one
57:16
because we have to look at ourselves, hence the mirror
57:18
test. We have to look at ourselves in
57:20
the mirror and say, are we part of the problem?
57:23
Is there ways that I can be better, to have a better team?
57:28
And again, we started today's episode with the quote of your
57:32
business is never going to surpass the lid of its
57:35
leadership, meaning that you are the lid of your company.
57:38
So the invitation today is to acknowledge your role and
57:42
recognize if you want your team to be better, you have to be
57:45
better. If you want your team to be
57:48
better, your documentation has to be better.
57:50
If you want your team to be better, your feedback has to be
57:53
better. If you want your team to be
57:55
better, your training and onboarding needs to be better.
58:00
If you want your team to. Be better.
58:01
You have to operate differently and not fire someone at the
58:04
first time that something's not working out without asking
58:08
yourself these tough questions and running through this process
58:11
every single time. So use this, use this as a guide
58:14
for yourself that when you're something is not working with a
58:16
team member, you can come back to this episode.
58:19
You can save it, download it, flag it for yourself so that you
58:22
have questions to ask yourself when it comes to understanding.
58:27
OK, do I feel like this is the right move or do I have some
58:31
tough analysis and reflection that I need to be doing?
58:35
So all about to say, my friends, if you have questions about
58:38
team, by the way, and you would love some more team episodes,
58:41
just shoot me a message on Instagram.
58:42
I always love knowing what's kind of coming up in your
58:45
business. What are you experiencing right
58:47
now? What are you navigating as a
58:48
leader? Maybe it's, you know, something
58:51
around leadership and being the CEO.
58:53
Maybe it is about your marketing or your sales.
58:56
What is coming up for you? And I would just love to have
58:59
you reach out to me in the DMS and literally say, hey, Kate,
59:01
you'll be really helpful for me for me to have an episode that
59:04
talks about ABC. And I also want to invite you on
59:08
kateparkovic.com. You will literally see our
59:10
podcast link. It is literally a place there
59:12
for you to submit questions. So if you have a question that
59:16
you want to submit to myself to have featured on the show,
59:18
either anonymously or if you want to have it with your name,
59:21
either or, you can submit your questions through Kate
59:24
perkovic.com/podcast. And if you go to that URL,
59:28
you'll also be able to apply to be a guest or submit your
59:31
questions that you'd like to have featured on the show.
59:33
So all about to say, my friends, thank you so, so much for
59:36
listening. Today was an episode that I
59:38
think was really needed as business owners and that I hope
59:41
that you take very seriously when it comes to your team
59:44
because as you scale and grow, your team is going to be the
59:47
bread and butter of how you create all the impacts that you
59:49
do. And so This is why conversations
59:51
like today are very, very important.
59:52
So I will see you on next week's episode.
59:55
And until then, as always, stay ambitious.