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By MollyandLaney
A client recently vented to me: “Man, getting our Christmas cards out is a nightmare. EVERY year I say I’m going to clean up the list so it’s not a mess next year, then before I know it, December is here and it’s still a mess. But nobody ever has time to work on it.” Chuckling, “You are easily the fifth person we’ve talked with this week who said the same thing.”
So what is it about getting our Christmas card list cleaned up that makes this impossible “task” an enormous “project”? And this applies to many similar messes … streamlining the process of getting new contacts onto our newsletter list, getting our old files scanned in, etc. Those things that don’t happen every day, but are periodic nightmares that we swear we will fix so we don’t have to go through the torture of dealing with them again…but that we never seem to get around to. Why is that?
First, we all respond to the pain and aggravation of the situation, but that has a short shelf life. We quickly move on to more “important” things like producing revenue, marketing and dealing with the client at hand. We don’t stop to calculate, in dollars and cents, what these “messes” are costing us. How many hours are you, or your team, spending to send out Christmas cards in the current, non-systemized, unorganized way? Don’t guess, ask them to track it. You may be shocked to find out that this often shuts down your support team member for easily 3-4 days, most of which is unnecessary time spent sorting lists, finding addresses and figuring out who to send to. How many prospects could your team follow up with during that time? How much billing could they get out the door? It’s literally costing you! Not to mention the cost of lost opportunity, because any unorganized process like this is bound to miss important contacts.
Once you see in dollars and cents how important resolving this mess is, the biggest obstacle we see is not getting out of the way. Fixing it is often made a much larger project than it needs to be with WAY too much involvement from the business owner. Since the team is usually left to execute the task, give them parameters of what you want the end result to look like and let them create a resolution. They can forecast the hiccups, so let them create a plan to solve them.
Don’t over-entangle the project. Often it starts as “we need a better way to update our Christmas card list throughout the year and keep it current” and stalls because you end up at “we need all new software, computers and a new server.” Fix the problem … not ALL your problems.
Lastly, outsource it. If you don’t have time to fix the problem, find a company or person that you can pay to fix it. (And be realistic, if no one has had time to fix it in the past no one is going to “find time” now.) Going back to dollars and cents, the money you spend fixing the problem will likely be nominal compared to what it’s costing you to have your team deal with the same mess every year. Not to mention the increased energy, confidence and tremendous appreciation your team will have for your spending what could easily be as little as a few hundred dollars to take away a huge pain and frustration for them.
What messes do you continually allow to steal your time, energy and opportunities?
Champions for your continued success,
Molly and Laney
By MollyandLaney
Time and time again we see attorneys cross our desk who are frustrated with their production.
They are unable to produce the results that they set out to and they can’t understand why. There are multiple reasons, but the biggest mistake law firms make is trying to cross-train every person on the team. Attorneys like to cross-train because they want to make sure everybody knows how to do everything in case somebody quits, needs to be fired, or has a prolonged absence. The rationale seems like it makes sense, right? But in all honesty, it creates more confusion, causes people to quit, and ultimately diminishes the results you are trying to produce.
So what’s the right way? The breakdown in creating the results you want actually comes about because people are uncertain what their role is. You hire a new employee and you want to be sure she knows all aspects of the business. Then, as you start to add to your team, you seek out new members with similarly broad skills. By the time your third employee comes on board, we see this phenomenon called cross-training. One of the first calls we often conduct is to take law firms through a diagnostic of who’s doing what to reach goals. And we are just floored by how this seemingly one?hour call is turning into three separate one?hour calls. We have such a challenge getting the attorneys to agree to let each member of their team have a designated role. They want to make certain that everybody knows how to do everything, just in case.
But you can’t live your life according to the exceptions. You have to create the rules.
So what are the rules? The rules are that you have defined job descriptions, you have designated people who are working in departments or within their job descriptions, and they understand how 80 percent of their day?to-day life impacts your goals. Then, if you do have to fire someone, if you do have an employee leave, or if, God forbid, your employee does have a tragic accident or illness, your business can still operate. It can operate because you will have job descriptions, you will have a training plan, and you will know who is doing what to reach goals. So if something goes awry, you will have a path and a plan to be able to plug in the person who is going to take up the ball.
So the difference between cross-training and “what’s my role” is simple: cross-training is blunt force trauma day in and day out. Cross-training is reacting. Cross-training is operating by the seat of your pants and crossing your fingers that you hit the bull’s eye. Operating by “what’s my role” is defined job descriptions, defined process, defined system and a path to reach goals. “What’s my role” is very much proactive, with intentionality, and with a process to track, measure, and make certain nothing falls through the cracks.
Because at the end of the day, the mentality and the intentionality of making certain that everybody knows how to do everything really has an underlying current of a lack of trust — not necessarily a lack of trust in the people on your team, but a lack of trust that they know what the hell they’re doing, what you’re striving for, and where the North Star is. The “what’s my role” approach, and how you’re designing that and how you’re getting there, is very, very, very much the path and plan to achieving your goals.
So, with two weeks remaining in the old year, what are you doing differently as you step into the New Year?
Champions of your success,
Molly and Laney
By MollyandLaney
A tricky and common problem business owners deal with is how to handle hiring a new employee who makes more than the team you’ve had for years.
Often when you go to hire a great, new team member the current market may demand a salary higher than what you pay current team members or sometimes the position is just a higher paying position. Either way, once your team finds out (not “if” but when) it can cause an explosion on your team of bitterness and resentment.
Ignoring the issue just allows it to unexpectedly explode in your face one day when a team member announces they are quitting or you can’t put your finger on why she suddenly has an attitude problem or seems to have shut down. Proactively addressing the state of affairs will allow you to take a position of leadership and head off the potential of employees coming to their own conclusions.
We suggest you follow the three steps below to proactively take control of the situation.
1. Written Standards for Employee Reviews – Look at when the last time you gave your team a review and a raise. Be honest with yourself. It is not uncommon to look and see that the current team member hasn’t had a review or a raise for many years, if ever. We know this is the last thing you want to think about when you are already bringing on a new team member, but consider the possibility the current team you depend on may quit if they find out a new person is making more than them without any context.
This happened to me once. I’d hired a new Client Services Coordinator and the market, at the time, required I pay her more than the boss’ strategic assistant, who’d been with us for over three years, was being paid. I was already in conversation with the boss to correct this, but we decided since we were paying out quarterly bonuses the team had earned that month to wait to finalize her raise until the next month. I thought I was doing her a favor by not overwhelming the boss with too many ‘money discussions’ in the same month but instead alerting him to the issue and getting his agreement to handle it the following month. Big mistake on my part. Within two weeks the strategic assistant heard a comment from the new hire revealing her pay rate and was completely offended. I found out when she came into my office a week later and gave me her two week notice. She felt so unappreciated she’d applied for another job, which she got, and quit. And while I wish she’d have discussed the issue with me so I could let her know we were working on it, it was my mistake to not proactive bring up the conversation with her. Instead I let her come to her own conclusions. We lost a good team member and to add insult to the situation, the new hire quit a few weeks later! This was a HUGE learning opportunity for me to proactively address pay conversations.
To avoid this becoming a problem it is best to proactively spark the conversation with existing employees. One quick suggestion is to bring the conversation to your weekly team meeting like this, “Now that we are adding to the team, I think it is an ideal time to start formalizing our Employee Review Process to make certain everyone is on the same track for quarterly and annual reviews. What do you think about taking this on as a top project for this quarter? Let’s schedule a one hour meeting within the next two weeks to brainstorm if raises are automatic, what criteria we want, etc.” You will be amazed at how receptive the team is to this conversation and it eliminates any potential for drama and/or justification on anyone’s part. The act of proactively identifying this area as one of importance and attention up front is authentic. And if it comes up you can honestly say it’s been identified as an area we need to standardize now that the practice is growing.
2. Employee Manuals – If you don’t have an employee manual in place, including a process for team reviews and expectations for raises, this is a great time to put one in place. Start your new employee off right and get your team on the same page. WRITTEN Employee Manuals are a must once the 2nd employee is added to the bus. It is now time to start operating like a real business, including all facets of HR.
3. Create Growth Tracks – We realize that the position you just hired may truly be a higher paying position than the ones your current team fill. This isn’t a matter of who is more important – all team is important – but some positions may carry more pressure to produce revenue and come with a higher salary. Now is the time to have this crucial conversation with your current team members. Set aside the common misconception that team is paid based on seniority or titles. Let them know everyone has the opportunity to grow in the firm including growing into positions that pay more. Create a path and plan with each team member of where they’d like to grow and what it would take to be qualified for that role. Let them know what areas they would need to start learning and stepping into.
You will keep your team members vested in your company as they know how to grow there. You will also allow some team members to realize they want to stay in a certain position and understand why they aren’t making as much as some other team members. For example, I had a phenomenal receptionist once. The best I’ve ever worked with. We had a client services position open up and she asked if she could move up into that position. We agreed. She was fantastic with people, our clients already loved her, and we thought it could be a great fit. She was thrilled with the promotion and the pay raise that came with it. However, after a few weeks she came to me and told me that she honestly wasn’t a fit for the position. The pressure to convert appointments and the increased expectations of hosting evening and weekend workshops was stressed her out, keeping her up at night and interfering with her ability to be there for her young daughter. We talked it out and agreed that she would move back into her role as receptionist. It was a great conversation which she was thankfully brave enough to have with me. We didn’t want her miserable in her new role and she now understood why that position paid more than hers. There was no bitterness when we hired a new person to fill this role and she made more than her. The key is that she was allowed to choose her own growth path. She had a say in the matter versus being ignored.
As long as each team member has a growth track with clear expectations then you can have salary conversations authentically and without fear of team leaving or growing resentful. Team reviews are a great platform to create a growth track for each team member and to check in at least annually on their progress.
Remember, ignoring the issue will only allow it to fester and become unnecessary, uncontrolled problem(s) versus handling it proactively.
If you are ready to implement employee reviews or take yours to the next level, register for our webinar “Empowering Your Team Through an Employee Review System“. November 29th at 4-5pm ET. $45 registration – includes a copy of our Team Member Growth Map™, the tool to support you in preparing and conducting your review. Click here to register.
Champions For Your Continued Success,
Molly and Laney
By MollyandLaney
Today we ran into one of the biggest breakdowns in the hiring process.
We had to stop for a moment and blog about it because we see it SO often and it abolishes all the time, effort and money you’ve invested in your hiring process. We call it the “Quick Start Cluster”. For those of you familiar with Kolbe Action Modes® you know a Quick Start is the person whose modus operandi is to jump in quickly, aim, fire and figure out the rest later. This can be a very valuable trait, particularly in an entrepreneur. However, a Quick Start also tends to have low follow through and love the creative/brainstorming process so much they can carousal there and never get off. They can, in essence, over create where creation isn’t even necessary. Laney is a Quick Start, so we write this with complete understanding and appreciation of how a Quick Start thinks and operates.
In today’s hiring breakdown we have a classic Quick Start Cluster. Through our process, we’ve identified, interviewed and found five phenomenal candidates for a position. We were delighted to hear the business owner declare that he stinks at hiring and that his CEO will take over from here. His CEO will contact the candidates, interview them, and have the best of the best complete an assessment with his DISC™ consultant. Awesome! The Quick Start business owner was in on the initial discussions to outline what he wanted in this position, what worked and didn’t work in the past, and to brainstorm what characteristics would create success in this role. Then he got out of the way! And then…he got back in the middle of it and we have a Quick Start Cluster.
When we did a routine check in with the CEO to see how the interviews were going we got the response “The boss took the candidates’ resumes to brainstorm with a guy in his coaching class he likes to run things by.” Classic example of how a Quick Start can jump back into a process, AFTER the creative phase is over and start re-creating where no creating is needed. The creation has been completed, the brainstorming done, and now it’s time to anchor to process, implement and get it done.
From a hiring perspective, this is why you must have clarity before you ever embark on what you are hiring for and how committed you are to invest in that next hire. Once you put your ad out there, you must move quickly through each step in the process. Otherwise, your most qualified candidates will no longer be available. They go fast. You can’t sit on resumes for weeks and expect talented people to not be snapped up.
From a bigger perspective, the Quick Start Cluster happens in many processes when the Quick Start starts interfering in the implementation part of the process. If something isn’t working right, it’s a great move to pull the Quick Start in and use their ingenious problem solving skills. Otherwise, they need to be focused on other things requiring their creativity and let the process move on. If not they just slow it down when it isn’t necessary. (And again, Laney is a Quick Start and can vouch for admittedly getting ‘creative’ where ‘process’ was all that was needed.)
Dealing with a situation like this requires the technique we talk about in Don’t Be a Yes Chick’s team tele-training program. It’s the ability to have the “honest, while respectful” conversations and let the Quick Start know they are becoming the bottleneck. In addition, understanding The Kolbe Index A™ can really help give your entire team a common vocabulary so you can easily say “We are complete with the Quick Start phase of the process and we are at the point to move on to a Follow Thru part of the process. If we run into a problem, you will be the first person we call for. Otherwise, the process is working so let’s not re-create it.” And if you are a Quick Start, you need people around you that will be honest and let you know when you are causing an interruption where it’s not needed. You want people on your team that will let you know about your blind spots and help you get out of your own way.
Your team can learn how to have the “honest, while respectful” conversations as part of the “Don’t Be a Yes Chick” team tele-training program. Our next 12-week program begins October 10th. Contact us at info@yeschick.com for more information.
Champions of your continued success,
Molly and Laney
By MollyandLaney
Today we ran into one of the biggest breakdowns in the hiring process.
We had to stop for a moment and blog about it because we see it SO often and it abolishes all the time, effort and money you’ve invested in your hiring process. We call it the “Quick Start Cluster”. For those of you familiar withKolbe Action Modes® you know a Quick Start is the person whose modus operandi is to jump in quickly, aim, fire and figure out the rest later. This can be a very valuable trait, particularly in an entrepreneur. However, a Quick Start also tends to have low follow through and love the creative/brainstorming process so much they can carousal there and never get off. They can, in essence, over create where creation isn’t even necessary. Laney is a Quick Start, so we write this with complete understanding and appreciation of how a Quick Start thinks and operates.
In today’s hiring breakdown we have a classic Quick Start Cluster. Through our process, we’ve identified,interviewed and found five phenomenal candidates for a position. We were delighted to hear the business owner declare that he stinks at hiring and that his CEO will take over from here. His CEO will contact the candidates, interview them, and have the best of the best complete an assessment with his DISC™ consultant. Awesome! The Quick Start business owner was in on the initial discussions to outline what he wanted in this position, what worked and didn’t work in the past, and to brainstorm what characteristics would create success in this role. Then he got out of the way! And then…he got back in the middle of it and we have a Quick Start Cluster.
When we did a routine check in with the CEO to see how the interviews were going we got the response “The boss took the candidates’ resumes to brainstorm with a guy in his coaching class he likes to run things by.” Classic example of how a Quick Start can jump back into a process, AFTER the creative phase is over and start re-creating where no creating is needed. The creation has been completed, the brainstorming done, and now it’s time to anchor to process, implement and get it done.
From a hiring perspective, this is why you must have clarity before you ever embark on what you are hiring for and how committed you are to invest in that next hire. Once you put your ad out there, you must move quickly through each step in the process. Otherwise, your most qualified candidates will no longer be available. They go fast. You can’t sit on resumes for weeks and expect talented people to not be snapped up.
From a bigger perspective, the Quick Start Cluster happens in many processes when the Quick Start starts interferingin the implementation part of the process. If something isn’t working right, it’s a great move to pull the Quick Start in and use their ingenious problem solving skills. Otherwise, they need to be focused on other things requiring their creativity and let the process move on. If not they just slow it down when it isn’t necessary. (And again, Laney is a Quick Start and can vouch for admittedly getting ‘creative’ where ‘process’ was all that was needed.)
Dealing with a situation like this requires the technique we talk about in Don’t Be a Yes Chick’s team tele-training program. It’s the ability to have the “honest, while respectful” conversations and let the Quick Start know they are becoming the bottleneck. In addition, understanding The Kolbe Index A™ can really help give your entire team a common vocabulary so you can easily say “We are complete with the Quick Start phase of the process and we are at the point to move on to a Follow Thru part of the process. If we run into a problem, you will be the first person we call for. Otherwise, the process is working so let’s not re-create it.” And if you are a Quick Start, you need people around you that will be honest and let you know when you are causing an interruption where it’s not needed. You want people on your team that will let you know about your blind spots and help you get out of your own way.
Your team can learn how to have the “honest, while respectful” conversations as part of the “Don’t Be a Yes Chick” team tele-training program. Our next 12-week program begins October 10th. Contact us at info@yeschick.com for more information.
Champions of your continued success,
Molly and Laney
By MollyandLaney
Don’t you detest when that happens?! You go through the hassle of hiring a new person…reviewing an overwhelming pile of resumes, conducting interviews, half of which are worthless, and finally make a decision. THEN you spend time training them and just when you are starting to get your new employee to a point they can start freeing you up… they quit!
Champions of your continued success,
Molly and Laney
So why does this happen? We’d bet our bottom dollar that your employee shared some rendition of “It simply isn’t a good fit” or “I’m feeling like this job is more than I anticipated and I’m finding I am unqualified” or our personal favorite “My X (kids, dog, commute, etc.) is in need of more of my time and attention.” So…why does this REALLY happen?
One of our favorite stories about working in a small business is the Hiring of Holly. We hired Holly as the key assistant to our entrepreneur. We decided it would be a great idea to have her start the week he was on vacation. That allowed us a week to get her trained on our client management system and such before starting to actually support our entrepreneur.
At the end of the week we were thrilled – we had found “the one”! Holly was doing fantastic; catching on very quickly with a great attitude to boot! Then Monday came around and we began training Holly to support our entrepreneur. Tuesday she quit. Holly was also rare in her honesty, and told us, “I loved working here until he came back from vacation. He is nice, but I can’t work with him. I have no idea what he is saying or what he wants and I just can’t keep up. This isn’t a good fit.” THIS is what all your great employees that quit right away want to say, but don’t.
Luckily, Holly was honest and we were able to stop and restart her experience in training and working for us. We spent time going over the two key concepts that can support a team member in their immersion into a small business AND keep them from quitting!
Concept One: Kolbe
Everyone who has heard of Kolbe loves Kolbe. It’s fun and helpful to read about your Kolbe and see how you operate. The opportunity most people miss is to use Kolbe as an invaluable tool to help team members, new and old, understand where there point of overwhelm and shut down is and how it leads to missed expectations and miscommunication. In other words, you can have a conversation about how a quick start operates and how a fact finder can handle it. Ninety-nine percent of the time an office communication problem or stress is due to lack of awareness in Kolbe.
Concept Two: The Gap® (The Strategic Coach® concept)
The second concept that can dramatically reduce the possibility of your great new employee walking out the door is having a proactive conversation about The Gap®. This is concept by The Strategic Coach® that does a wonderful job explaining how we get stressed out and discouraged, or stuck in the Gap, between where we are and where we want to be. For a new employee to understand it is a natural part of the process to be overwhelmed and discouraged by the place they are starting (new and untrained) and how far they need to go (to have ESP and read your mind determining your every need) is a huge step in helping them get though the immersion process. There are also specific strategies you can implement to help a new employee work through the Gap in a less overwhelming way. One of these is having a specific training plan with target dates for each task or concept being learned. This lets a team member know where they should be and if they are on track. If they don’t have this, it is completely overwhelming for them because they feel they have to learn everything, now!
We feel these two concepts are crucial. When we support entrepreneurs in hiring a new employee through our Smart Hire™ Process we include a companywide call to review each team member’s and the entrepreneur’s Kolbe, what it means to each person and each role, and how to watch out for potential pitfalls.
If you are tired of going through the time, effort and cost of hiring only to have your new employee quit, implement one of these strategies to support your new team member in their training process.
What other methods do you use to support your new team members?
By MollyandLaney
A common frustration with team is that they just don’t “get it”.
They are good at what they do but they just miss those almost intangible extra steps that are so crucial to make sure clients are taken care of. They don’t realize their tone with clients on a stressful day. They don’t go that extra step to make sure all the bases are covered. They are nice, but how do you make them “get it” and go to the next level?
“Getting it” isn’t a skill set or a task you can be trained on. “Getting it” is awareness that once you experience and see the impact on the other person, you can’t turn off. And to truly be aware, it has to matter and mean something on an emotional level. The hardest working, most qualified team member cannot “get it” if they haven’t experienced a heightened awareness through connection on an emotional level to what you do and what it means to clients.
Laney remembers the EXACT moment she “got it”, fifteen years ago. At the time, she was the receptionist for a small estate planning law firm. She was a 21 years young and very smart and hard working. Her boss saw a lot of potential in her and was trying to support her in defining the necessary skills to grow the firm. Of all the skills, and there are many, she learned, the absolute biggest was her boss allowing her to “get it”.
Early one Monday morning, in late November, she was asked to come into a meeting to discuss their process for answering the phone. She realizes now, after hiring and training tons of receptionists, that this was a nice way of setting up a discussion with her to talk about her lack of phone skills. Rather than scolding her, or giving her a written script for answering the phone, he instead told her what the firm did for clients and why it mattered. He explained that often clients were calling because they had a loved one who had passed away or was ill. He explained that she was the FIRST person they were talking to about this very hard experience and how it might land for the caller if she sounded rushed, or stressed, or was abrupt. He helped paint the picture of a scared, intimidated, alone prospective client calling into the office and being greeted by an abrupt receptionist after just losing her husband of 50 years.
Laney literally lost her breath. She was horrified of the thought of treating someone like that, especially someone like her grandmother. Laney was very close to her grandmother, and in fact was living with her at the time. Laney remembered losing her grandfather and was stunned at the idea that her grandmother could have called a law firm and been dropped into voicemail or talked to by someone who was “busy and just trying to take a message and get off the phone” like she had been on many days.
She got it. Everyone who called the firm was someone’s grandmother or mother, or husband, or child. They were worried, or sad, or overwhelmed, just like her family had been at one time.
And she was the person they were talking to, the very first person they were talking to.
This made such an impression on Laney that her boss never again had to mention how she sounded on the phone. In fact, it made such a lasting impression; she has tears in her eyes as she types this.
After that, of course they created scripts for how to handle certain types of phone calls and systems to make sure the process was followed and the client was served. All very necessary tools, but none of which mean a hill of beans if the team member doesn’t “get it”. Until then, it’s just a to-do item in their busy day and the client loses their humanity and becomes a check list item. After they “get it”, it’s a way of being and your team members will become your biggest advocates of making sure the client is served and honored.
Helping your team members “get it” is very easy. Simply explain to them what you do, how it impacts your clients, who you serve and why they really write you checks. Everyone has a grandmother, a mother, a husband, a child or someone they love and care about that has been or could be impacted by the problems you help clients solve. Once they see your client as their loved one, they “get it”.
And that is the most powerful training you can ever provide your team member.
Champions of Your Continued Success,
Molly and Laney
By MollyandLaney
On last week’s team training tele-class a healthy discussion started brewing around feeling “overwhelmed, undervalued and unheard.”
The conversation started with how to “fit it all in” for the team and for the attorney while still being able to serve the clients each week. It kept coming back to “There’s never enough time!” The interesting thing is this “never enough time” feeling leaves the attorney and the team both feeling overwhelmed, undervalued and unheard. How does this happen?
We began to break down the observations one small piece at a time. The team went from feeling overwhelmed and unheard to leaving the call feeling empowered knowing there is a tool in their toolbox to take them (the team and attorney) out of the mindset that “it is what it is” and a life of reactivity that “it’s just part of being in business.” Well, it doesn’t have to be!
Bottom-line, the most successful solo small practice firms live a life by design vs. default. Everything we’ve heard, read and seen on success shows the common theme is you want to model the belief, values and behaviors of successful people.
Here are three keys to success we’ve seen in successful entrepreneurs who are proactive not reactive to their businesses and their lives:
1. They control their calendars vs. their calendars controlling them.
2. They have proactive weekly communication with their team.
3. They have a process for what you do.
Here is how each of these keys can take away the sense of being overwhelmed, undervalued and unheard.
Overwhelmed: The number one cause of feeling overwhelmed is reacting to whatever the day throws at you. The tool “Time and Money” is the technique that will eliminate overwhelm and replace it with focus, immediately. The folks who spend one hour (as a team) watching the “Time and Money” webinar are the ones who drastically decrease the feeling of overwhelm, of being on a roller-coaster ride of emotions feeling like there is never enough time, and that you can’t get to the important things. Weekly focus is the solution. Time and Money will support you in getting there.
Undervalued: Feeling undervalued stems solely from inconsistent, weekly, proactive communication. Not making the time to carve out weekly team meetings with a pre-set agenda is the core of feeling of “undervalued.” The “typical” way people conduct business is by holding weekly team meetings where the focus is only on current work in progress or by having hallway conversations. Conversations are started but then time is up, and you never get back to them or you start communication ping pong with emails and voice mails to which there is no follow up.
In our experience, the number one reason team feels undervalued is simply because there is no follow-up to things the team brings up and as team it is our job to follow up on the things. Team, we promise you; it is not the attorney blowing you off or intentionally not following up on the things he/she promised. It’s simply a result of not keeping the commitment to your time together each week to handle these matters, no matter what! Weekly team meetings and production meetings are sacred ground and should not be violated. It allows for consistent communication, which is the solution.
Unheard: This nasty offender is due to lack of following process. When we derail from process, due to being “too busy,” the unforeseen chaos this creates is inconceivable. In our experience, the story goes something like this…”we start to get busier, and the attorney gets jammed up…the team is swamped…and we can barely keep our head above water. We start to blow off our weekly team meetings, skip workshop confirmation calls, pass over follow-up calls, ditch proper trust reviews, and next thing you know, team comments, such as “I suggested we X, but she never confirmed if we can do that or not,” “I sent him an email about it last Tuesday and still haven’t received a response,”, “I shared that the client was unhappy and needed a call back but that still hasn’t happened,”, “I know we don’t see clients on Mondays but there is nowhere else to put them, and if I don’t get them in, they will go down the street.” We are agreeing or disagreeing with the validity of the statements, BUT these are clear indications the feeling of being “unheard” is beginning to permeate your team. This happens when everyone begins violating the structures and processes you have in place just to “keep up.” When that happens, all vehicles that were your safety nets (focused calendaring, weekly team meetings and processes) have gone out the window due to survival. Process is the solution. “Skipping things” will never get you “caught up” and will cause everyone, team and attorney, to feel “unheard” which carries even bigger consequences.
In our experience, you can pretty much set the calendar every 90-days for a breakdown of some sort stemming from the feelings of overwhelmed, undervalued and unheard. The reason is things start humming. Business starts coming in, and before you know it you are back saying, “we are so busy” and that is when you abandon systems. None of us ever consciously do this, but the slippery slope of “too busy” is the catalyst that starts the vicious cycle.
To avoid this destructive cycle occurring every 90 days, implement the solutions above for avoiding feeling overwhelm, undervalued and unheard.
To make sure the solutions stick, give your team the support and resources they need to anchor to proactivity and understand how to communicate with you responsibly and effectively. Start your team on the path of a business by design, proactive weekly communication and having a process for what you do. Don’t Be a Yes Chick tele-series is a step by step guide to commit to planning, communication and process. Now accepting registrations for our program beginning April 10th. Email info@yeschick.com to register or for more information.
By MollyandLaney
“If we’re growing, we’re always going to be out of our comfort zone.” ~ John Maxwell
At one point or another in our lives we’ve each lived in a place of ease, security and poise. Welcome to The Comfort Zone; a place where you drive to work and don’t really dream up ways to take that idea mentioned in yesterday’s meeting, create a project manager and put it into action. No for you, you can pretty much predict what each day will bring, and you can deliver and conquer with your eyes closed. You’ve been in your current position for X amount of months or possibly years, and you do it damn well. However, something is “missing.” You meet the days without that butterfly-in-the-belly feeling. There is neither angst nor excitement on how you are possibly going to get “it” moving to produce remarkable results.
Welcome to the doorstep of Growth. Welcome to the commencement of Replacing Yourself.
Are you thinking, “Wait a minute? What does this mean? It sounds kind of scary. I “like” what I do, and I do it better than anyone else in the office. There really is no one to take over what I do. Furthermore, well, then what would I do?”
The greatest mistake we see “great employees with a ton of potential” (what we like to call Intrapreneurs) make is the traditional “continuation” in the workplace. You’re probably saying, “What’s wrong with that”? Well, this acceptable behavior is detrimental when companies are looking for ROI’s (Returns on Investment, including what they invest in employees) or employees are looking for that annual raise to climb the proverbial ladder. The real problem is most employees are not aware of the act of replacing yourself and stepping up out of the comfort zone.
The truth be told, many of us believe if we give up control of what is “ours” we are being reduced in importance. In all honesty, the boss will have no trouble replacing you with someone who accepts and encourages capability, position and resourcefulness. So either get busy growing or stay busy existing, either way you have to choose, and yes, existing in a role without growth, is a choice.
We are not talking about managing up, delegating or giving up control. We are talking about reinventing yourself.
Molly actually found herself standing in this very crossroad just last month with an employee. Every year her company conducts a Year End Planning Retreat where they shut down the business for an entire day to work on revisiting the company organizational chart and designing their Top 10 Intentional Projects for the year to come. We started the day by going through the company “org” chart and outlined all the necessary roles and responsibilities needed to meet our goals, objectives and serve our clients in 2013. After two hours, the exercise was completed and Molly started feeling a bit “empty.” Molly has served the company of three employees in the role of “CEO” for the past three years. Now, if you have ever worked for a small company, you know the CEO role means a little bit of this and a lot bit of that. Her roles ranged from accounting to customer service in any given day but every client loved her, and she did her work tirelessly with compassion, authenticity and most days, with a sense of accomplishment.
In their retreat, when they approached the Finance department someone else stepped up saying, “It makes the most logical sense for me to take that over to free Molly up to work on Relationship Building with Power Partners.” When it came to event planning, Molly would find herself saying, “Actually, that is not the best use of my time if finding new Power Partners is my primary contribution to the company.” After completing the company organization chart on this early December morning Molly realized she just “gave away” over half of her job! She knew enough to know this was a “story” she was creating in her head but, nonetheless, she was feeling a bit “empty.” For so many years Molly took a tremendous amount of pride in the fact that she could “do it all and everyone depended on me.” The company of three had grown to a company of five over the past year. She had to replace herself and grow into new roles to support the growth of the company and to allow other team members a place to grow into.
She now found herself feeling empty, nervous and excited all at the same time. WOW, this is the exact place she needed to be sitting in. Molly had just replaced herself.
NOW WHAT?
After going through the org chart Molly could put herself in one role/department and one only, Marketing. Never in a million, trillion years would Molly have put herself in the role of “Marketing.” In fact, anytime the word marketing came up she would literally get a belly ache. However, finding herself in this place of angst and overwhelm she knew she was simply filling the role of a connector, cultivator and nurturer. Funny how this stuff works, THAT is Molly’s Unique Ability®.
Connecting, cultivating and nurturing…now that, Molly cannot only do and do with pride, but she is already thinking of ways she is going to enhance and grow this role.
Sealing the Deal – The Transition Phase
Often, if we get to this point, we stop and then wonder why our new, great ideas and plans never move forward. Any major change requires a transition plan.
The very next morning the team scheduled a one-hour team meeting to distinguishing all the roles they have each reinvented themselves with. They realized they needed to be responsible and create a Transition Schedule to determine their current activities in their current roles, the time it would take to train the new person and the steps to systematize it. One hour later they had a transition schedule that would take four complete days to implement. They scheduled out an entire week, three weeks from now, to implement the Transition Plan. Then they would each be able to step into their new worlds confident that someone else had stepped into their previous role and was trained and ready to succeed.
This is Replacing Yourself.
Sound interesting? Then stay tuned for The 8 Laws of Replacing Yourself.
By MollyandLaney
On this week’s “Don’t Be a Yes Chick” weekly tele-class a firm was sharing where they were jammed up and at the end of their sharing they paused and said, “Sometimes you ask yourself what’s it all for?”
How many of you have asked yourselves that after a week (or year) of back to back appointments, no time to “get the work done” , no silence or space in your calendar for thinking and at the end of month not earning what you were necessarily hoping for?
But how do you eliminate the “what’s it all for” mindset and feeling? It’s very simple. Not to eliminate the feelings of wonder and worry but to bring you and your team back to EXACTLY what it is all for and squash the hopeless position where there is no room for possibility of growth.
Here are 5 key elements to staying in touch with “what it’s all for”:
1. Intentional team meetings
2. An On Purpose schedule
3. Defined roles and goals
4. Quarterly retreats
5. Annual retreat
It sounds too simple? Maybe you’re saying, who’s got the time? Who can afford all these useless meetings when we’ve got work to do? We say not only can you but you cannot afford not to. In years of coaching over hundreds of law firms, the first step to get these five key elements in place starts with a comprehensive analysis of all resources including how you’ve been operating and communicating as a team. The five areas above are unquestionably involved in the analysis and we can 100% point back to the firms that were barely getting by, not being able to attract, find and keep “good people” and frustrated because whatever national organization, marketing firm, or system they just invested in “is not doing what they promised they would” all answered “No, we are not doing” to the five key elements.
In our experience, if you are actually right on track but you are not operating with the above formula in place, you are likely producing the frustrating, inconsistent results that leave you deflated and living in a world of wonder and worry.
How many of you have asked yourselves what’s it all for?
Let us help you build a support team to help you produce consistant results and keep in touch with “what it’s all for”. Register for our next Don’t Be a Yes Chick team tele-training series beginning April 10. Only 10 companies accepted. Email us for more info or to register – info@yeschick.com.
A client recently vented to me: “Man, getting our Christmas cards out is a nightmare. EVERY year I say I’m going to clean up the list so it’s not a mess next year, then before I know it, December is here and it’s still a mess. But nobody ever has time to work on it.” Chuckling, “You are easily the fifth person we’ve talked with this week who said the same thing.”
