Latest / Your Money, Your Rules | Financial Mastery, Wealth Mindset, Leadership Principles, Intuitive Decision-Making, Human Design / 190 | Why Hiring More People Isn’t Always The Solution

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190 | Why Hiring More People Isn’t Always The Solution · Your Money, Your Rules | Financial Mastery, Wealth Mindset, Leadership Principles, Intuitive Decision-Making, Human Design

• 0:00
  Erin Gray: Welcome back to Your Money, Your Rules Podcast with me, your host, Erin Gray.
• 0:04
  Erin Gray: Today I want to discuss something that I see founders experience at some point is maybe feeling overwhelmed, wanting to grow.
• 0:13
  Erin Gray: And so the first answer or the solution that they go to is to hire more people.
• 0:18
  Erin Gray: And I know that it might sound like the next logical step because obviously more work means you need more manpower.
• 0:27
  Erin Gray: But what I have found is that hiring more people isn't always the next step.
• 0:31
  Erin Gray: And it can actually amplify some of the things that are already occurring in your business.
• 0:36
  Erin Gray: It's just going to make them even bigger.
• 0:38
  Erin Gray: So let's dive in.
• 0:40
  Erin Gray: When I first came on to my family's construction business, I think we had like 32 employees.
• 0:46
  Erin Gray: It was around there.
• 0:47
  Erin Gray: It definitely was over 30.
• 0:49
  Erin Gray: And when I came in and I started kind of just digging through everything, financials and employees and all the things that we needed to start changing and making some changes on, what I recognized was we had some employees who were all in and wanted to grow with the company.
• 1:08
  Erin Gray: And there were some employees that weren't.
• 1:10
  Erin Gray: And over, I don't know how long it was, but there was some attrition.
• 1:14
  Erin Gray: I think we ended up being getting down to around 25-ish, I think, employees.
• 1:19
  Erin Gray: Obviously, some left.
• 1:21
  Erin Gray: We hired some new, but like we ended up around, I think, 25 employees.
• 1:24
  Erin Gray: And one of the things that I realized over this time is really being like, I'm always looking at it now from the lens of like, how can we be so simple and so efficient?
• 1:34
  Erin Gray: And before we take any action, one thing I'm always asking myself, and I'm asking my clients is what are you thinking?
• 1:41
  Erin Gray: What are you feeling that is creating this action?
• 1:45
  Erin Gray: And if we can get in the habit of, because our actions are always going to come from our thinking and our feelings.
• 1:52
  Erin Gray: And there's not going to be one thought or there's not going to be one feeling, right?
• 1:55
  Erin Gray: But you have to start thinking about like, what am I thinking and what am I feeling that is creating me to want to hire someone?
• 2:01
  Erin Gray: So I like to start with first and foremost, when someone says, Hey, I want to hire someone, I always like to start with the founder first.
• 2:08
  Erin Gray: I always say that like the founder is the endless vessel.
• 2:11
  Erin Gray: Like we can only grow to the level that you are at, whether it be nervous system-wise, emotions where you are in terms of leadership and things of that sort.
• 2:19
  Erin Gray: So what is your emotional system or emotions, your natural state of being right now?
• 2:26
  Erin Gray: Are you one of calm and like directional?
• 2:29
  Erin Gray: And when I mean directional, I it's like you know where you're going, you know what you want to create, you're excited for what's to come, or are you more in that like burnt out, overwhelmed, and thinking that like hiring is going to air quotes, fix an issue, which I don't believe we actually need to be looking at.
• 2:47
  Erin Gray: And I think a lot of business coaches or gurus or experts or whatever you want to call them, look at like, oh, let's find the problems in your business.
• 2:55
  Erin Gray: I don't really subscribe to that because I think when we look at we have problems in our business, then our brain is going to look for the problems versus where do we want to go?
• 3:05
  Erin Gray: What is our vision?
• 3:06
  Erin Gray: What do we want to create and focusing on that?
• 3:09
  Erin Gray: So, first you have to check in with where are you in terms of your mindset?
• 3:15
  Erin Gray: What is your self-concept as a leader?
• 3:18
  Erin Gray: What is your capacity in all areas of your nervous system, your capacity for time, your capacity or like what you have in terms of boundaries, your money mindset, your overall mindset.
• 3:33
  Erin Gray: And when I say mindset, I mean like your brain, your body, all of it, right?
• 3:37
  Erin Gray: Like what are your thoughts and your feelings and what does the body feel as well?
• 3:41
  Erin Gray: Because wherever you are, you're going to take yourself wherever you go, right?
• 3:46
  Erin Gray: So if you are feeling right now overwhelmed and burnt out, then if you haven't actually gotten to the root cause of what that is feeling, because I believe a lot of our burnout, a lot of our overwhelm actually starts in the mind first.
• 4:01
  Erin Gray: And so if you are trying to solve some external thing, you're trying to make the solution some external thing, but you actually haven't created or corrected your thinking, you're going to create more of it just at a bigger level.
• 4:16
  Erin Gray: So if you feel overwhelmed most days, adding more people to the roster and obviously the payroll is going to mean more overwhelm for you, not necessarily less.
• 4:26
  Erin Gray: And so we always have to bring it back to the mind and the body.
• 4:30
  Erin Gray: What are we thinking that is creating this?
• 4:31
  Erin Gray: What are we feeling?
• 4:32
  Erin Gray: And like I already mentioned, our actions come from our self-concept and our thinking and our feelings.
• 4:37
  Erin Gray: And so if we aren't tuned in and tapped in and taking care of ourselves, we're just going to create more stress, not less.
• 4:44
  Erin Gray: Think about like from your money mindset.
• 4:46
  Erin Gray: If you are thinking like in terms of adding more people to the payroll and that stresses you out, then what do you think that that's actually going to do for your nervous system when it comes time for payroll and that, you know, adding that person or whoever else you're thinking of and moving from that place of fear, right?
• 5:04
  Erin Gray: Versus expansion.
• 5:05
  Erin Gray: The other thing that I want to say here is I think a lot of us have, and it's probably a multitude of things, but when you are in this reactionary place, when you haven't slowed down enough yet to recognize that you're trying to do something to stop feeling a certain way, like I always encourage my clients, like, hang on a second, take a seat, take a breath, hang on a hot second, right?
• 5:31
  Erin Gray: Like so many of us are trying to take action to get rid of a feeling.
• 5:35
  Erin Gray: Like we don't like this uncomfortableness in our bodies.
• 5:38
  Erin Gray: We haven't been taught, we haven't practiced feeling this discomfort in our bodies.
• 5:44
  Erin Gray: And I always say, like, if you're trying to make a reactionary or decision, no decision needs to be made.
• 5:50
  Erin Gray: Like if it is coming from a very emotion-heightened place, you just need to chill out for a bit because anything that we enter into, any type of decision that we enter into from that place, it's not like you're gonna, you know, you enter in with overwhelming stress and you're gonna get calm and chill on the other side.
• 6:06
  Erin Gray: Doesn't work like that.
• 6:07
  Erin Gray: So really starting to ask yourself, okay, what am I feeling right now in my body?
• 6:12
  Erin Gray: What am I wanting to feel?
• 6:14
  Erin Gray: And then correcting that first and then moving forward versus I'm feeling stressed on a regular basis.
• 6:20
  Erin Gray: I need to go do X, Y, Z.
• 6:22
  Erin Gray: I want you to come back to, I'm feeling stressed.
• 6:25
  Erin Gray: What do I need to change internally with my thoughts and my feelings?
• 6:29
  Erin Gray: Do I need to allow myself to have more time and space?
• 6:32
  Erin Gray: Do I need to put boundaries on?
• 6:34
  Erin Gray: Like, what are those things I need to change within myself first before I go looking externally?
• 6:38
  Erin Gray: Then what I talk to women about is what about your current employees, right?
• 6:44
  Erin Gray: Like I'll take a look at your organizational chart.
• 6:46
  Erin Gray: Is everyone where they need to be?
• 6:48
  Erin Gray: Are they in the positions that they need to be in?
• 6:50
  Erin Gray: And what I mean by that is, are they at the places where they are best thriving?
• 6:55
  Erin Gray: I remember we had a project manager who didn't need to be in a project manager, right?
• 7:01
  Erin Gray: Like he did not like doing the detailed stuff.
• 7:03
  Erin Gray: He was more of a field manager, if you want to call it that, or superintendent.
• 7:08
  Erin Gray: So there was some mismatch there because we were expecting him to do this detailed project management work and he was more so big picture and talking to the guys.
• 7:17
  Erin Gray: So you really have to start looking at every single employee is are they in the best position for them?
• 7:25
  Erin Gray: Have you, as the leader, as the founder, empowered them to lead and do what they need to do?
• 7:31
  Erin Gray: Or are you trying to micromanage?
• 7:32
  Erin Gray: Are you trying to control?
• 7:33
  Erin Gray: And I know that might sound like a severe word, but like, are you trying to just watch and, you know, make sure every little thing goes just so?
• 7:42
  Erin Gray: And a lot of times when we're doing that, we're the ones that are the bottleneck.
• 7:47
  Erin Gray: You know, do you have systems in place for what is needed?
• 7:51
  Erin Gray: Do they know exactly what their work is and what their work isn't?
• 7:55
  Erin Gray: Sometimes I'll see like duplication in organizations, like not clear boundaries, or one person thinks they're supposed to be doing something, the other person's kind of doing that similar.
• 8:07
  Erin Gray: So we're not working as efficiently as we could, and we don't have clear boundaries, SOPs, job descriptions of what each employee is required to, what is expected of them and what is required of them.
• 8:20
  Erin Gray: I also like to always ask about like what is the mindset of the employee?
• 8:23
  Erin Gray: Are these all a players?
• 8:25
  Erin Gray: I think sometimes we tolerate because we think that we can't get somebody else, or we don't like the feeling of letting someone go, which that's a whole nother topic for another podcast.
• 8:35
  Erin Gray: Like we can let someone go in the most loving space.
• 8:38
  Erin Gray: It doesn't have to be a good guy, bad guy scenario.
• 8:41
  Erin Gray: And so if they're not all A players and you've got some people that are more like B players on your team that they don't actually care, maybe they're just like there to get a paycheck, or it's not really what they want to be doing.
• 8:53
  Erin Gray: Your A players are going to get frustrated because they're gonna feel like they're the ones pulling the cart.
• 8:58
  Erin Gray: And then this ultimately trickles down and affects the morale in the organization.
• 9:02
  Erin Gray: And I think the fastest way to run off an A player is to keep your B players around.
• 9:07
  Erin Gray: And this isn't to say that because they're a B player, they don't have a space in the workforce, right?
• 9:12
  Erin Gray: It's just where you want to go with your organization, what you are expecting, what you expect from your employees and from yourself.
• 9:20
  Erin Gray: When you have people that want to grow and that want to help you and are on board with your vision in your organization, and you have other people that are like, eh, just here for the paycheck.
• 9:31
  Erin Gray: It's very frustrating for your A players.
• 9:34
  Erin Gray: And I think that really recognizing who are my people that are all in and who are my people that are like, mm, and why am I here?
• 9:44
  Erin Gray: You go back to it, doesn't need to be made overnight.
• 9:46
  Erin Gray: The decision doesn't necessarily need to be made overnight.
• 9:49
  Erin Gray: And also know where you're going, right?
• 9:52
  Erin Gray: If you have done everything that you as a leader need to do to cultivate this person and put them where they need to be, and their heart isn't in it, there's nothing that you're gonna do to make their heart be in it.
• 10:05
  Erin Gray: I also want to say here that knowing your own human design, allowing your employees to understand their human design, I think is highly beneficial because you have to know how your energy works, how you make decisions, as well as how the employees do, how they make decisions, how their energy flows.
• 10:23
  Erin Gray: And this is something that I really wish that I would have had.
• 10:26
  Erin Gray: I would have had this tool when I was helping my family in the construction business because I would have been so much of a better leader.
• 10:33
  Erin Gray: I would have been able to help them see why they were doing what they were doing.
• 10:37
  Erin Gray: So if you are curious, you can head over to my website.
• 10:40
  Erin Gray: You can get your human design chart.
• 10:42
  Erin Gray: Your employees can pull their chart too if they want.
• 10:44
  Erin Gray: And I've got a lot of information under foundational resources that they can watch on human design as well as you.
• 10:51
  Erin Gray: Watch on human design, understanding different centers, understanding human design.
• 10:56
  Erin Gray: There's obviously tons of stuff on YouTube.
• 10:58
  Erin Gray: I always just say just look at it, one, as a tool, and two, make sure that whoever's teaching it to you is coming from an empowered place, because I have seen a lot of educators or teachers, whoever you want to call it, like that are not coming from an empowered place.
• 11:11
  Erin Gray: And I only use human design with my clients to help them fan empowered place.
• 11:16
  Erin Gray: So going back to the founder, real quick, I do want to say if we are reactive, if we are hiring because we think that there's a problem that needs fixing, we haven't actually looked at what our systems are like.
• 11:26
  Erin Gray: If we don't have good systems, good workflows in place, there's no amount of hiring that is gonna solve that.
• 11:32
  Erin Gray: If your communication throughout your organization and with you is unclear, it's uncertain, you feel uncertainty.
• 11:39
  Erin Gray: Adding more employees is going to add to the confusion.
• 11:42
  Erin Gray: It's not going to minimize it.
• 11:43
  Erin Gray: So, setting all of that aside, if you are all clear on your mindset, your emotions, your nervous system, all of that, you've also looked at your employees.
• 11:54
  Erin Gray: Everybody's running efficiently, everybody's in their correct places, all of your systems are in place, your SOPs, everybody knows what they need to be doing.
• 12:02
  Erin Gray: And you're like, yep, and I do want to add someone on, then these are the next couple of things I would think about.
• 12:07
  Erin Gray: Number one, training.
• 12:08
  Erin Gray: Who is going to be training this person?
• 12:10
  Erin Gray: And whoever is going to be training this person, have you actually talked to them and are they up for training this person?
• 12:15
  Erin Gray: What systems are you going to develop or have you already developed so that training this person and people following it's going to be as seamless as possible?
• 12:25
  Erin Gray: Like you want to be able to have it duplicatable so that whoever trains this person, if you hire someone else to, you know, be in this person's position, that person can then train the next person, right?
• 12:37
  Erin Gray: Like you want to have systems in place so that you can make it as seamless as possible.
• 12:42
  Erin Gray: What's your onboarding process like?
• 12:44
  Erin Gray: Who are they going to go to when they have questions?
• 12:47
  Erin Gray: Which typically it's that more experienced employee.
• 12:51
  Erin Gray: So sitting down, and this is where I think, like as a leader, empowering that employee and also getting their feelings about it, right?
• 12:59
  Erin Gray: Because if this employee is used to doing stuff on their own, they're totally fine.
• 13:04
  Erin Gray: They just want to go to work, they want to do the thing for you, they want to grow the company, but they're like, uh I don't necessarily know if I want to, you know, spend my time training someone right now.
• 13:13
  Erin Gray: I think that's really good to know up front because then it's going to be like, okay, well, who is going to want to train this person and be in alignment or in congruence with what you are wanting?
• 13:23
  Erin Gray: It's also, if they are on board, obviously, you know, training someone, when I say takes time, it's going to, I don't want to say slow them down.
• 13:32
  Erin Gray: I don't necessarily like that, but like it does take away from what that person is training, what they can actually do in their job because they're going to spend time being involved with the training process.
• 13:44
  Erin Gray: So just having that conversation before you get on board.
• 13:48
  Erin Gray: I think that from the employee side, it really goes a long way when you sit them aside first and say, this is what I'm thinking, this is what I want to do.
• 13:58
  Erin Gray: Give me some of your thoughts and feelings around this so that versus like, oh, well, we just hired this new person and oh, by the way, you're going to train them.
• 14:06
  Erin Gray: I also would look at the communication piece and then the decision making.
• 14:10
  Erin Gray: How clear are you and the person that the new employee is going to receive training from?
• 14:16
  Erin Gray: What is the communication like?
• 14:18
  Erin Gray: What is the decision-making process like?
• 14:20
  Erin Gray: This isn't the place where we just like throw stuff out there and like hope it sticks, right?
• 14:25
  Erin Gray: It's like, oh, we're just learning as we go, which I know I do say that.
• 14:28
  Erin Gray: Like a lot of what we learn is by doing.
• 14:31
  Erin Gray: But I think that like everyone involved needs to understand, like, hey, there's going to be some little ripples in the river for a little bit, but we're going to work together.
• 14:41
  Erin Gray: And what is your decision-making process?
• 14:43
  Erin Gray: What is your person training's decision-making process for following up, for checking in, for seeing how things are going?
• 14:49
  Erin Gray: Like feedback, I think is extremely important from the new employee, from your person that's going to be training, from you, like the whole ecosystem.
• 14:58
  Erin Gray: And I'm always thinking about like, how can we be the most efficient with our time?
• 15:02
  Erin Gray: I think when you're small, it's easy to get away with like, oh, we can just like either text back and forth, or we can like have Slack, or, you know, I can call you.
• 15:11
  Erin Gray: But as you continue to grow, there's not enough time in your day to answer all the text messages that are coming through.
• 15:17
  Erin Gray: So, like I was having a conversation with a client the other day, and I was like, why don't you sit down with her for an hour a week or split it up 30 minutes twice a week?
• 15:25
  Erin Gray: You know, maybe you need more touch points during the week versus this back and forth texting.
• 15:30
  Erin Gray: I think it does a couple of things.
• 15:31
  Erin Gray: One, it tells the employee, hey, you're important to me.
• 15:35
  Erin Gray: I'm giving you some of the time on my calendar to be with you.
• 15:39
  Erin Gray: So phones off, focused.
• 15:41
  Erin Gray: Let's get to work and let's talk about what are the things that we want to talk about in this meeting.
• 15:45
  Erin Gray: Two, they know that they can expect to sit down with you however many, you know, minutes or hours you want to give them a week.
• 15:52
  Erin Gray: That way they know that they can save a lot of the things that aren't like, okay, this actually is a decision that needs to be made today or within the next day.
• 16:00
  Erin Gray: And let's say that, you know, your meeting with them is a couple days down the road, then they know that they can put all of that on the docket to discuss with you at some point, you know, whenever your meeting is, versus this text messaging back and forth.
• 16:12
  Erin Gray: So a 15-minute once or twice a week might be more effective than like Slack or text messages back and forth for however many hours in the week.
• 16:22
  Erin Gray: I mean, if you were to sit down and actually look at how often are you texting everyone versus, okay, I answer my text messages at this time in the morning and I answer them before I go home or whatever it might be, even that is a change or an upgrade to what you might be currently doing.
• 16:37
  Erin Gray: So with everything, you I always like to like start at the end and then work backwards, right?
• 16:42
  Erin Gray: What's the vision for this employee?
• 16:44
  Erin Gray: You know, what do I want them to be able to do?
• 16:48
  Erin Gray: What do I want like the end result and then, you know, coming back from that place versus okay, where I am is feeling frustrated and I have to go and hire somebody to just like take care of the stuff, right?
• 17:00
  Erin Gray: Always be thinking from your vision, from the end goal or end result.
• 17:04
  Erin Gray: Okay, so to recap, so if you are thinking of hiring someone, I always like to ask myself or have clients, I should say, have clients, right?
• 17:12
  Erin Gray: Am I running the most efficient, simple team that I can right now?
• 17:16
  Erin Gray: Is like everything on the up and up, it's all we're like a well-oiled machine.
• 17:22
  Erin Gray: And if the answer is no, then the next question is, okay, how do I get what I currently have working more streamlined and more efficient?
• 17:29
  Erin Gray: So maybe that means I need to put different systems in place or stronger systems, better delegation or automation, or maybe it's just something like, why are we still doing this?
• 17:37
  Erin Gray: Just stop doing that, you know?
• 17:39
  Erin Gray: Like you really have to slow down enough to look at everything and be like, why did I start doing this?
• 17:44
  Erin Gray: Are we doing this from a habit, or is this actually adding value and helping our organization, getting out of your own way, stop being the bottleneck, clear priorities, things of that sort.
• 17:56
  Erin Gray: And if all that is streamlined and on the up and up, then obviously, like I said, go to the hiring place.
• 18:03
  Erin Gray: But I think for a lot of us, we just have gone to, oh, we just hire somebody versus everybody, like I said.
• 18:10
  Erin Gray: I mean, we started with 30-something employees and we went down to 25.
• 18:14
  Erin Gray: Now, I increased everybody's pay, right?
• 18:16
  Erin Gray: So our payroll stayed the same, which was amazing because everybody got a pay raise and they got to have more ownership and I think they felt more empowered and they were able to actually sometimes more isn't always better.
• 18:31
  Erin Gray: So ponder this.
• 18:33
  Erin Gray: Think about okay, if there's urgency and you wanting to hire someone, my advice is always okay, we need to calm the urgency first.
• 18:40
  Erin Gray: We need to look within, and then we need to start like picking through some other things first before we just set out to hire somebody.
• 18:47
  Erin Gray: Okay, as always, thank you for listening, for letting me be in your ear and ponder this, contemplate this, and I'll see you in the next episode.