By MollyandLaney
So often we see bosses refer to themselves as “the jerk in the corner office”.
They are so used to getting ‘beat up’ in conversations from employees who are upset with them, clients who are complaining or trying to justify fees, and referral sources who aren’t delivering on their promises. Many have accepted, or even embraced, an “I’m just the jerk in the corner office” persona and often fall into a good cop- bad cop interaction with others…with them always being the bad cop. They become the excuse for someone being told “No” or held accountable. BIG, BIG MISTAKE. You might as well not even show up in the office because you just cut your own legs out from under you and undermined any authority you had, rendering yourself completely ineffective.
First, and absolutely foremost, you are not the jerk in the corner office. You are a part of the team and more importantly the leader. You provide vision, confidence and direction for your intrapreneurs. By interacting with yourself as the jerk in the corner office, you are creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. It steals your personal power. You will witness the team as they begin to ignore any corrections or requests you make of them. Not out of disrespect, but because you yourself have thrown your hands up for the “good of the team”. They will assume you are just having a bad day and that whatever complaint you are bringing to them will blow over by tomorrow. Instead, they need to take your corrections and requests as essential teaching moments.
Second, usually the mindset “just the jerk in the corner office” is followed with “so don’t mind me”. With all due respect, no. As stated above, you and your opinions should be minded. Your impact on the team can’t be ignored and if you are, in fact, coming off like a jerk it IS impacting your business and can’t be overlooked. Yelling, hairsplitting and surly behavior shouldn’t be something you expect the team to let roll off their backs. It creates an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty which paralyzes your team. You can’t expect them to have initiative and ‘step up’ when they aren’t certain which day you are going to greet them with a growl. They have no way to know if your mood is in response to despondency with their work or if you are just grumpy that day. And since they don’t know, 1 out of 2 team members will assume you are disappointed with them. They will become tentative, unsure and this puts them back ‘in the box’ you worked so hard to get them out of. They will begin to walk around on eggshells, never confident in their decision-making capabilities. If you have a complaint or correction for your team, by all means, it’s important so share it. But don’t hide out behind “being a jerk” because the conversation makes you uncomfortable. It’s disempowering to you AND your team.
One of the most productive and courageous things you can do is learn the skills to have an “Empowering Conversation” with your team; taking those too often awkward or tough conversations and transcending all involved to move forward in an impactful way. For a free copy of our web-recording “Keys to an Empowering Conversation”, including a written copy of the 8 Keys, email us today at info@yeschick.com.
Champions For Your Continued Success,
Molly and Laney
By MollyandLaney
Our hope with this blog series is to allow you an inside look into the thought process and voices of support team so you can better understand and communicate with yours.
In our last two blogs in this series, we shared what team members had to say about what their biggest joy in their job was and what their biggest frustration working for an entrepreneur was. In this final blog of this series, we are sharing what team answered to the question “If you could change one thing in your business, what would it be?” We hope you see, in these responses, what valuable insight your team has.
Team members who are intrapreneurs, team members who feel, act and are committed to a business as if it were their own, though they have no financial ownership of it, will help a business owner see their blind spots. Together, your insight and perspective can invite powerful change in your business.
If You Could Change One Thing In Your Business, What Would It Be?
1. More dedicated focus. We always have a backlog of cases/files to tend to. The person that is supposed to support me keeps getting pulled off of helping me “clean up” backlog. It is never-ending because the focus is always trumped by the emergency of the day.
2. My boss wants to grow and wants to keep pulling me into marketing and I can’t get my “work” done. We don’t have the infrastructure and capacity to grow so we are stuck in this fanatical cycle. If we could stop for a moment and put some intentionality behind what we are doing, we could go such much further without all the pain and panic.
3. Eliminate the fear of success. Right now we can’t handle any new business. We don’t have the right team in place and systems in place to grow and we are crippling ourselves.
4. If they would just get out of my way, I can do my job and help them grow.
5. Detox the program junky. He will travel around the country to get the new shiny system/product to “help” us get more (insert the key word: organized/more money/systems). It would make my year if there was a way that I could “unplug” my boss from buying any new system and just do nothing but implement what we have and commit to one thing. (EVERYONE on the group said “here, here” and agreed to this.)
6. A way to get my boss to focus and delegate more because he is a perfectionist. He constantly changes everything before we even try it the first time.
7. My boss is very, very creative and very smart but every time something gets back on his desk for the final stamp of approval he will recreate—always wants to recreate—maybe fear of the failure or fear of success and never can pull the trigger to put anything out there.
8. We never finish anything before we really try it in our marketplace or internally before we change it again.
9. Get the little nonsense things out of the way so the new stuff can blossom, keep life simple. It doesn’t have to be this difficult.
10. I would love a constant alignment on the priorities of the business. The business owner and team priorities never match up which is a shame because we have a common goal.
11. Meaningful priority alignment. Days, weeks, months go by before we ever get back to a meaningful priority alignment, so we just react to whatever is thrown at us day in and day out.
12. Stop the “Meeting Amnesia” – we meeting to death and everyone leaves excited but then nobody ever remembers what we met about and nothing ever gets implemented.
13. Stop stepping over the constant “little” things that pop up and not addressing them until they are a big issue. Then we have to drop everything and recreate to tend to these emergencies.
14. Stop always playing catching up!!!
15. Stop operating by the amount of fires we have to put out “right now”.
16. Stop having to always have to chase/ride my boss because we never have time to meet.
17. Outsource the stuff we are not good at and eating the entrepreneurs’ time, teams’ time, creating unnecessary stress that ends in breaking promises.
If you have a team that is empowered to be honest, while respectful, with you we challenge you to ask your team this question, and listen, really listen to the commitment in their answers.
If you have a team you want to be honest, while respectful, with you about what isn’t working in your business consider enrolling them in the Don’t Be a Yes Chick tele-training series to participate in conversations such as these. Next series begins September 4th – contact info@yeschick.com to register or with questions.
By MollyandLaney
What Are Your Biggest Frustrations Working for an Entrepreneur?
Our previous blog shared part of the results of a focus group we held for support team across the country in a giant attempt to figure out where the disconnect lies between the boss and the team when trying to reach a common goal within a small business. We shared in this blog what team member’s greatest joy was in their job. Many business owners were surprised to see what really meant the most and connected to their support team.
In this blog, we are sharing with you the greatest frustration team shared. We want to share our findings with you, not to scare you, but to inspire you. We are hopeful you will hear the commitment of team with an honest, while respectful, cry for you to allow them to help you grow your business with joy and ease. Team members and bosses speak two distinctly different languages, which often leads to disconnect even though both sides want to achieve the same goal. Our hope with this blog series is to allow you an inside look into the thought process and voices of support team so you can better understand and communicate with yours.
Are you surprised when you hear what team members think? What we hope you notice is the massive about of “CARING” for the business, and your success, behind each of these frustrations. Team members who are just collecting a paycheck typically don’t care if clients are mad or things aren’t done. These team members care – intrapreneurs in an entrepreneur’s world.
What is Your Greatest Frustration Working for an Entrepreneur?
a. When I stop believing in my boss because I don’t have faith/trust that they will get it done. I would not hire my own boss as a client. And I don’t like feeling that way, it is disheartening.
b. The entrepreneur won’t just let go and trust the key people in the company. If he would I think things would run much smoother. I realize it’s his baby and hard to do that, but crucial at some point in time for the best of the business. That’s my biggest frustration.
c. The business owner won’t get out of my way. I expressed my frustrations to him in the moment and received encouragement … then all downhill from there…things go back to the same. I really am at a loss to get his attention and I really don’t think he would miss me if I left. I can’t seem to communicate that to him without sounding “entitled” or risk being told “I’m a less than stellar performer”. I say these words as a tear rolls down my cheek and I hate myself for that. Those contradicting words from how I felt 6 months ago to now haunt me on a daily basis, every time I open the door here. I am working a “job” right now because I’ve told myself I’m doing this for my family and to get my daughter through college. It’s the only thing that eases the pain. But, when she’s done with college and the BIGGEST reason is gone….. I’m afraid my heart will be more broken than usable as I look for the spark of passion every day.
d. We are known as the “Last Minute Larry’s” and now we’ve all gotten in the “HABIT” of making that the standard/norm.
e. Letting the boss hire family; when the boss hires the wife, kids, extended family, etc. and there is no accountability in the business. The team doesn’t respect them and will never say anything because they are afraid they will be out of a job. And it sucks for the spouse because they become the buffer because people will go “WHINE” to them hoping they will do something about it at home. Then the circular cycle begins.
f. Getting interrupted. I am preparing documents, answering phones and keeping the calendar and everything else. I will be in middle of drafting and the boss is always “shouting” out things to me and I lose track and mistakes happen. I don’t have 4 walls or a door around me so I am in the constant firing line and if something comes into his mind he has to interrupt me to tell me at that very moment, and everything goes downhill.
g. Lack of responsibility on entrepreneur’s part.
h. Getting my boss to focus on the top pressing cases. I present the TOP 3 Gotta’s for the day, he will agree to it but then he will go hide out in email and not do what he said he would. Then sometimes things will linger out there for 2-3 weeks and the clients will be frustrated and screaming at me. At first I was hopeful that things would happen and now I just feel blown off, disrespected and don’t ever believe that he is going to follow through. Then I have to lie and make excuses for clients. I don’t lie. It is not o.k. with me to lie.
i. False Agreement. No matter how many times we remind them that they have priorities and they agree they have absolutely no commitment to it. They are just “YESSING” us to get us out of their office but they are going to go and do what they want anyways.
j. The Hero Complex. I am so excited at the start of the week when we have our TOP things identified that we are going to knock out of the ballpark this week. Then we have a sick or emergency client. We will over care for them and over compensate to help them and drop all the other things, and everything else goes out the window. It’s a new distraction for the entrepreneur so they get to come out as a hero without any understanding of how they just wrecked the world of the assistants and other clients. Not to say we are not going to tend to our clients in need but the business owner will make it into a big social worker ordeal to do so they don’t have to “work” on the things they don’t like, They thrive in chaos and crisis.
k. Nothing is ever as easy as the entrepreneur thinks when they initially commit, and it is insulting to our intelligence. I feel like she thinks what I do and the value I bring is tasks that are simply “quick and easy”.
l. Trying to manage my schedule but I feel like I always need to go back to my boss to get stuff from them and I have to stand there until they finish it because I have no faith that he will ever complete it unless I hound and pounce, or eventually break down in tears. Then I am appearing emotionally unstable vs. committed to the business.
m. They destroy their weekly calendar which in fact destroys ours.
n. Time management with the boss. They are very unorganized and it’s very frustrating when they throw a curve ball into everyone else’s day.
o. Trying to close the loop on open items. When you are trying to pin down the business owner and I have a deadlines. I submitted the same thing four times and it keeps getting “lost” in her priorities and now I am in the red and can’t move this off my list and it looks like I am not getting MY job done. I don’t like feeling like I am not doing my job.
Are you surprised at what team members think? What we hope you noticed is the massive about of “CARING” for the business behind each of these frustrations. Team members who are just collecting a paycheck don’t care if clients are mad or things aren’t done. These team members care – and that is invaluable.
Stay tuned for the 3rd, and final, series of this blog, “If there is one thing you could change in your business, what would it be?”
If you have a team you want to be honest, while respectful, with you about what isn’t working in your business consider enrolling them in the Don’t Be a Yes Chick tele-training series to participate in conversations such as these. Next series begins September 4th – contact info@yeschick.com to register or with questions.
To read Part 1 of this series – click here.
Champions of your continued success,
Molly and Laney
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
(by Laney Lyons)
Have you ever found yourself listening to a speaker and getting chills because its as if they were sitting smack dab in the middle of what’s going on in your life? But they are more articulate than you could possibly find the words to be, providing powerful insight on why we make certain decisions. That happened to me this morning. While getting ready for work, my husband and I were listening to a sermon* and I literally got chills as I heard him explain exactly why my husband was heading to work this morning to turn in his resignation at a job he has worked at for over 14 years, so we can move from our hometown of Tampa, Florida to Detroit…just in time for winter!
The theme of the message was “The Danger of Not Moving Forward”. When the speaker described how people who aren’t moving forward become stagnant, critical and bitter it resonated. Two years ago, while writing “Don’t be a Yes Chick!”, Molly and I wrote this:
Nurturing and growing your team is a never-ending process. And if it does end, you’re in trouble because it means that your team is no longer growing. That’s the beginning of stagnation. Like sitting water, your team doesn’t just stop growing and stay in place; they start to rot and eat away at all the standards, training, and culture that you’ve built. If a team isn’t motivated by growth, they’ll focus on other things that are negative and unproductive. A team that doesn’t have goals becomes wrought with gossip, cattiness, blame, and complaining; hence, your work as a team leader is never done. You can either devote time to leading your team, or spend time reprimanding them. The choice is yours. We don’t know about you, but we have very little patience for reprimanding.
This morning, I heard this message spoken to me with stunning clarity. The danger of not moving forward is that you become stagnant. And when you are stagnant you are not in the mindset to attract opportunity or to recognize possibility. Not moving forward doesn’t have to mean physically relocating, but it does absolutely mean being in a place and a mindset where you can grow. When you align yourself with your purpose, a commitment to happiness and a place you can grow-all wrapped up in your integrity-it’s amazing how doors begin to fly open. Paradoxically, they open when you were just getting “comfortable”.
Two and a half years ago I left my job of 12 years to start my own business. I began the process of creating relationships in my life that are meaningful, supportive, and healthy; which allow all parties a space to grow and flourish. Some relationships were reinvented and some didn’t make the transition. Every day since, I’ve been moving forward. Sometimes with excitement, sometimes with fear, but moving forward nonetheless. At 12:10am, January 1st I became engaged to a wonderful man who brings me joy and happiness. A month later I returned to Cambodia for a second time to volunteer with orphans and friends we met two years prior. A few months later the “Don’t be a Yes Chick!” book launched, after two years of hard, exhausting work. Two weeks after that I was married. In the meantime my company’s revenues before the end of the third quarter exceeded our total revenues of 2010 while we were training yet another team member to support our growth. And now, Anwar (my husband) receives a completely unexpected offer to become lead beat writer covering the Detroit Lions for MLive.com and The Booth newspapers. All of the above is a result of staying committed to moving forward in my life.
Chapter Nine, of “Don’t Be a Yes Chick!”, is ironically titled “Growing Chick”. The premise of the chapter is Why Becoming a Leader is So Important, which discusses how bosses and team leaders can provide the leadership their team needs to be able to grow and flourish. Sitting here just two years after writing that chapter, I have my own team in the Don’t Be a Yes Chick! Virtual Book Club because if these amazing things can happen to me once I committed to moving forward I have to continue to share the same possibilities with my team. And I understand the importance of my role as a leader is so critical, personally and professionally.
Why am I packing my bags, my dogs and my laptop and moving from sunny Florida to Detroit just in time for winter? Because I understand The Danger of Not Moving Forward and the endless possibilities that are waiting around the corner that I’ll never know if I’m not willing to make the move to turn the corner.
* The sermon I was listening to is “The Danger of Not Moving Forward” by T.D. Jakes.
Champions of your continued success,
Molly and Laney
By MollyandLaney
I remember the exact day I stopped being a yes chick. It was completely by accident, but the decision to leave yes’ing my boss behind and actually provide insight, well thought out answers and information so he could make more of an informed decision about growing his business was completely on purpose! Not only was it the best thing for the company, but being completely honest, I liked how it felt to be truly heard, to have my opinions considered, even if they weren’t ultimately agreed with and the feeling that I was a part of something bigger, something we were growing, something exciting. It sure was more empowering and interesting than drinking coffee and watching the clock tick towards 5:00pm.
When I started at the firm, I was hired as a temporary receptionist through a staffing agency. It was exactly one week after my 21st birthday and my first “office” job. Let’s just say my sense of dress code and office etiquette was a little on the rough side. However, my boss and his team saw through my inexperience and saw a smart, hard working girl – in need of a little direction. They decided to hire me on and things were going well for about 7 months. Let’s be honest, I had a job where I wasn’t flipping burgers and didn’t have to work nights or weekends, and everyone was fairly supportive of me… except the boss. He was neither nice nor mean to me – he was just pretty much invisible. He was the guy who passed me in the morning and went into his office where he met with people all day and said good bye at the end of the day, if he wasn’t still in a meeting when I left. Then one day, it all changed.
Apparently, unbeknownst to me a few people had mentioned to my boss that it was maddening to be screened by the receptionist when calling for him. While I was only doing as instructed, something about it was not working because people felt more like I was keeping them away from my boss than helping them solve the reason for their call. All I knew was that my boss asked me to attend the team Monday Morning meeting so we could talk about the firm phone procedures. I’d never attended a team meeting. All I knew about team meetings was that everyone entered the conference room and closed the door while I took messages. Now, back in those days, I used to love to go out on Sunday nights to a local hang out spot and celebrate the end of the weekend. (Hey, remember I was 21!) I remember distinctly that Sunday evening. I remember thinking that I had to make sure I was on time the next morning for the team meeting and I didn’t want to be tired and sound silly when my boss asked me a question. I decided to stay home instead and go to bed at a reasonable hour…not knowing this would literally change my life.
The next morning in the team meeting, I had the most unusual experience of being shown how something I was doing didn’t work in a way that empowered and excited me about how to do it differently, rather than making me feel defensive and like I was being scolded. Rather than tell me what I was doing wrong, my boss explained how our firm helped people after the loss of a loved one or helped family members deal with an elderly or ill loved one. He explained how I was the first person these grieving people or those suffering over a decision to put their parent in a nursing home had contact with. This was a scary, intimidating call for them to make and they were hiring us to alleviate their pain, even just a little. Now at 21, I knew nothing about estate planning. But I had a grandmother I loved dearly and I completely understood what it was like to have questions you needed answers in effort to help someone you love so much. Now that I ‘got it’; together my boss and I created a tracking system for tracking the most common reasons people called and at the end of the week we would review it. Together, we worked through each of those situations and came up with a plan of how I could respond so that the person felt heard and that they were being taking care of. I learned how to do a basic intake, I learned about information packages I could mail a client and several things I could do to help someone start getting the information they needed while waiting for my boss to return the call.
After that, I took my role so seriously of being the “first impression” of our firm that I looked at everything from the perspective of “how can I improve this for our clients’ expierence”? I brought ideas weekly to the team meeting, which I asked if I could attend every week. Some ideas were great. Some didn’t make sense to my boss but even in his explaining why my suggestion didn’t make good business sense, I learned. I learned A LOT. And learned each week.
Deciding to get some sleep and show up to a meeting with my head in the game was pretty much accidental. My decision was based on being a little intimidated by my boss and not wanting to look stupid. Deciding to keep my head in the game, pay attention to the value I could create rather than paying attention to the clock, and speaking up with ideas and feedback my boss could use to make our firm better was absolutely intentional. And what a difference it made in my life. I stopped being the “good enough” receptionist and eventually grew to be the marketing director for our firm.
Most importantly, I realized what a boss, partner or co-worker needs is someone who will take ownership of their role, the value they can create and can speak up and realize they are important enough to be included as part of the team. They need people to stop “keeping their head down and giving the easiest answer possible”. And what a powerful way to work and to live, for that matter, knowing we are heard, we are collaborating to build something great together and that by not being a Yes Chick you can create endless value for your boss, your team, your clients, and YOURSELF!
Are you not sure if you have slipped into Yes Chick mode? Take the self-exam in Don’t Be a Yes Chick! Now available at www.yeschick.com.
Stay tuned next week for Molly’s story of when she left yes’ing her boss behind and the difference it made!
By MollyandLaney
Overwhelm is a state-of-mind and a way of being. It is NOT a set of circumstances. It is resistance to what is. It is NOT loving what is going on. The distinct difference of how to stop overwhelm is what you are willing to do about it and taking the responsibility for it.
Lingering in a state of overwhelm can
• Increase your risk of burnout
• Reduce productivity and effectiveness
• Add unnecessary stress on your team and staff
• Decrease your overall happiness and well-being
• Increase your work hours and
• Cloud focus, clarity, insight, and ability to make critical decisions
So how can you move from overwhelmed to overjoyed? It requires a little attention and a different mindset.
First recognizing that while you could try to do it all on your own, actually doing everything yourself is practically killing you. Step one is acknowledging all the assets that exist within your team and staff and then utilizing those assets to the fullest. That means you stop delegating your tasks, and start giving out ownership for assignments.
Second, you need to ensure that you have the right people in the right positions. Sure, your office manager knows how to handle just about every thing in the office, but it doesn’t mean she’s the right person to do it.
The next part is trust, training, and team. Working together as a team, and learning to trust and depend on one another for tasks – when the right person has the right assignment – it means the work will get done. And it won’t just get completed, it’ll be done right.
You see it all boils down to people. The people who support you, who are on your team, and who are there to help grow, sustain, and maintain the business for you – so you can work in the role you enjoy and do so well.
If you are curious as to HOW this can happen, it starts here. Molly Hall and Laney Lyons have been team members for business owners who were just like you.
Now, they are sharing all their dirt in how you can:
• Turn Your Key Team Member into a Consistent Star Player
• Create More Value for Your Business with Proactive Employees
• Generate More Profit with Increased Bottom-line Thinking
• Eliminate Time Wasters, Energy Vampires, and Other Destructive Time Thievery
In their book, Don’t Be a Yes Chick!, Molly and Laney teach your employees how to:
• Get Your Team to Love Their Jobs, Feel Respected, and Improve Productivity
• Understand What Your Boss Really Wants & Needs
• Do More of the Work You Love and Are Good At
• Build Your Dream Team of Talented and Proactive Team Members
This book isn’t just for YOU, the business owner to read, this book is for your TEAM to adapt, implement, and finally gain the courage and the skills to lead like you’ve always dreamed they would.
Move out of overwhelm and into overjoyed when you grab your copy of Don’t Be a Yes Chick today at http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Yes-Chick-Babysitting-Transform/dp/0615478956/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1308745801&sr=8-2
By MollyandLaney
That is the million-dollar question that business owners, consultants, and management gurus have been asking since the day that the guy who invented the wheel started hiring people to make and sell wheels.
Business owners pay motivational speakers a handsome sum of money at conference centers all over the world to come in and motivate the troops, even though extensive research has shown that you can’t really motivate another person, at least not for any extended length of time. You can dangle carrots and wield sticks that will have short-term effects or that will appeal to an individual’s susceptibility to greed or fear, and you can even inspire his higher nature, but even these motivators will work less and less effectively as time moves on.
You may not be able to motivate someone else, but you can discover what motivates you. Moreover, you can use that awareness as a key to unlock all the latent creative talents and passion within yourself. Intrinsic motivation that comes from the inside out is the only lasting passion that will be there day after day, and won’t need a constant stream of reminders, nudges, encouragement, threats, and bribes to maintain.
As an intrapreneur™ (a person who works within a small business for a solo entrepreneur but is personally vested in their responsibility for creating a profitable business through assertive risk-taking and innovation) you must find that internal passion, but part of your role is also to help your team find the passion within themselves.
How do you find this hidden motivational switch? What inspires one person to do her job with passion, while another equally gifted person may perform the same task begrudgingly or mechanically, doing only the minimum required “to get by”? Why is one person inspired to do one particular task, but not inspired about another task? How many of us feel happy that it’s Monday and excited about what’s on deck this week? You spend at least eight to nine hours a day at your job—almost 25 to 30 percent of your life. If you’re a clock-watchin’ kind of gal, you’re missing something really important in your work life—passion.
Sadly, many people don’t enjoy their work. Worse still, they have no expectation that they should. They simply show up for work, look busy, and collect a paycheck to pay the bills in order to live–and work. Is it any wonder why most heart attacks and strokes in America take place on Monday mornings, as people begrudgingly ready themselves for another week of unfulfilling labor?
Being passionate about your job is more than the old cliché, “Do what you love.” It’s about looking forward to going to work. It’s looking at the clock at 2 p.m. and realizing that you never took your morning bagel out of the toaster. It’s working past “quitting” time, not because you’re swamped with work, but because you’re so involved that you don’t notice time. Is this the reality of your world?
If you’re not passionate about your work, you may feel like you’re just going through the motions, and wondering if this is all your life has to offer. You may be asking yourself, “What happened to my dreams?” If your life is currently full of passion, Don’t Be a Yes Chick will help you identify the traits that contribute to it so that you’ll always have the tools to mend your confidence when it gets low or when you need a reminder of why you do what you do day in and day out. If your life isn’t driven by your passion now, Don’t Be a Yes Chick will help you learn to identify what you’re passionate about and find some simple ways to restructure the “stuff” in your life so that it feeds your desires.
If “finding your passion” involves running off to Paris, Pisa, or Prague to study art and history, or quitting your job to become a pianist, or something else that may disappoint those around you, rest easy. We’ll help you unleash your passion whether you’re in Des Moines, Detroit, or Dayton. Even if you chucked this life and ran off to something more aligned with your fantasies, chances are that if you don’t know how to identify the key elements of that passion, you’d quickly find yourself exactly where you are now, but without a steady paycheck.
“When work, commitment, and pleasure all become one
and you reach that deep well where passion lives,
nothing is impossible.” Anonymous
You can read more about Finding your Passion and Fulfillment in Don’t Be a Yes Chick, being released Spring 2011.
