Text or Call: 833-432-6565‍ (4-Dan-Lok)
(Add 1+ for outside of North America)

Facebook-f Instagram Linkedin-in Youtube Twitter
Free Add a Zero Session
Facebook-f Instagram Linkedin-in Youtube Twitter
Free Add a Zero Session

leadership

How To Manage People And Be A Better Leader

by Leave a Comment

“People may hear your words but they feel your attitude.” – John C. Maxwell

When it comes to managing people, the most important lesson I’ve learned is that people are not manageable. If you want to be a strong leader, the best way to lead your team is to give them independence.

In other words, instead of “micromanaging people,” where you are managing all the details of each person’s job, you need something more efficient. Micromanaging is exhausting and you will not be able to do that as your company grows and you have more people on your team.

So, instead of micromanaging, create structure and create systems where you are painting a picture, creating that yellow brick road. Show them the path that you want them to walk on. What I’m going to show you are some tips on how to manage people and be a stronger leader.

Watch this video on how to manage people and be a better leader.

Give Team Members Room To Grow

Your job as a leader is to coach people toward success, however they define it. It could be in terms of finance, status, or their role within a company. That if they follow this path, they’re going to get to the goal that they want.

If you hire the right person, very often, they will find the right role for themselves within the company. You shouldn’t set in stone the position that you hired them for. As time goes on, you may discover other talents that they have.

Within my company, you can have someone starting at a very junior position and they could move up to a very high position because depending on their talent and work ethic, they could grow.

For that reason, I don’t pigeonhole my team members. I don’t hire for a very specific role and then tell them that’s all they are going to do for me. People evolve, so they may develop talents over time.

So to me, I am not as interested in hiring someone for a particular skill set. What matters more are three qualities that cannot be taught.

Loyalty Matters More Than Their Resume

I always communicate to all my team members the three qualities that I look for as the CEO. The first is loyalty to the leader, the brand, and the customers.

I don’t care how talented they are, I don’t care how good their resume is, nor do I care how smart they are. If they are not absolutely loyal, that person is not someone you can have long term in your company. They might leave you for your competitors or steal your customers.

The second quality I look for is harmony.

A Players And Team Players, Not Lone Wolves

You want to have harmony on your team, so you want to find people who work well with other team members. You don’t want a lone wolf. The chemistry between your team members is important.

Even if they are talented A Players, if they don’t work well with other people on the team, they’re not going to last. So harmony is very critical.

It doesn’t mean they have to like everybody or hang out at a company barbecue. But during work time, they have to be able to get along with other people to accomplish certain tasks. Harmony is very critical.

Those are the two things I look for in team members: loyalty and harmony. The third and final quality I look for is results.

High Level Results

I want to know if the team member has the capacity and the experience to perform their tasks at a high level. Can they produce results and not just talk about results? And can they produce results on a consistent basis?

Sometimes you hire people and they may be able to perform results at the beginning, but they’re not consistent over time. Or sometimes, you bring them in for a certain job, and you notice that after three years, the job has outgrown that person.

They could produce results before, but they can no longer produce results. Now here’s what happens if a team member has loyalty, harmony, and results, but not necessarily in equal amounts.

The Right Combination Of Qualities

Phenomenal Results

If you have someone that is phenomenal at producing results, but they are not loyal, they don’t work well with other people on your team. What I usually do is I hire them as independent contractors.

They’re very good at accomplishing a certain task or project and that’s it. They’re not going to work within my company and they’ll never rise up to key leadership positions.

Absolute Loyalty

But if someone is very loyal to the organization and they work well with other team members, but they are not results driven, I have a place for them in my company. It doesn’t matter that their results are only okay.

They probably work in customer service, support, or accounting. I can trust them and I need those roles as well.

Career Driven

Now here’s another combination. If someone is not loyal, but they could produce results and  they work well with other people, we’ve got a problem. It means they have good people skills, but they’re not loyal to me.

That kind of person I keep at a kind of middle management, director level. They might lead a little team, but I will never promote them to the top because loyalty is a problem.

It could turn out that we work together for six months, up to three years, and then they jump ship to work for somebody else. So I don’t want to promote that person to a leadership position.

Perfect Fit

On the other hand, if someone is loyal, works well with other people, and produces results, and they are lifelong learners, then it doesn’t matter where they came in within the organization. I can promote them to the top.

Given time, they will hold an executive position in my company. Their background and their age don’t matter to me. If they have all these three things, they become one of the key people within my global organization.

When you’re hiring and when you’re managing people, ask yourself these questions. Think about where your people are at. Now, if you have some people that aren’t loyal, don’t work well with other people, and don’t produce results for you, guess what you should do?

Fire them! No point hiring them in the first place either. You don’t want them in your organization. What you want is someone with the right amount of loyalty, harmony, and results.

Key Thoughts On How To Become A Better Leader

Running a business is simple. It’s people that are complicated. They don’t want to be managed, and they don’t stay static. They constantly evolve, so when you hire someone for your team, you want to be flexible because as the person grows, their role in your organization may change.

To decide if someone is a good fit for your company, measure them against three key points. Are they loyal to you and your brand? Is there harmony between them and your other team members? And does that person produce results?

Ideally they have a mix of all three traits, but even if they don’t, if they are loyal, you can find a place for them in your company.

Do you think loyalty, harmony, and results are important to your organization? Comment below.

SUGGESTED ARTICLES:

Why Aren’t You Delegating?

How To Systematize Your Business If It Isn’t Working

8 Golden Rules of Effective Delegation And How To Delegate To The Best People

Why Aren’t You Delegating?

by Leave a Comment

(Stop Being a Control Freak in Business)

How comfortable would you feel about asking your friends and family to do a favour for you? How about asking a stranger on the street to help you with a task?

Now you might or might not feel comfortable with asking other people for help. But most entrepreneurs are very reluctant to delegate tasks. And it’s usually because of two reasons.

One possible reason is that you’re the type of entrepreneur who is a control freak. You don’t want to give up your authority. Another possible reason is you are afraid the person doing the task will make a mistake.

As a result, you become a one-person business doing all of the work yourself, working until exhaustion, with no time to reflect on how to move your business to the next level.

However, the sooner you start delegating, the sooner you can grow your business.

You don’t need to be a CEO or the boss of a couple of employees before you start delegating. Sharing the work will ease your workload and free up your time for other tasks, like planning out the direction of your business.

You can start delegating as soon as you’re ready. You don’t even have to wait until you’re rich.

Have a look at my business for example. People tell me because I’m rich, I can delegate. But the opposite is true. It’s because I delegate that I’m rich. It’s a chicken and egg thing.

So if you have your own business and you aren’t delegating, start now.

Here are some tips to motivate you to be less controlling and more at ease with delegating to other people.

Watch this video on why you should be delegating more for your business.

Start With The Right Mindset

If you don’t have the habit of delegating now, you won’t be making the money to maximize your time. And if you don’t have the habit of delegating now, you’re not likely to be delegating when you have more money.

One reason why you’re not delegating is because you’re thinking about saving. You want to wait until the future when you can afford to start paying other people to do tasks.

The opposite is true. You’ll start saving money when you can afford to put money aside. To make enough money to put some aside, you need to free up your time to work on generating more revenue. You can’t do that if you’re saving money by doing all the routine tasks yourself.

You need to start developing a millionaire mindset now.

Right now, for every dollar that comes in, you want to set aside ten cents. You’re cultivating a habit early on. Then when you have a hundred times more money, you’re already used to saving a bit of everything you earn.

So start the habit and delegate small tasks. Let your less important responsibilities go gradually and as you get some good experience working with others, keep delegating more from there. If you’re still reluctant, it might be because you have limiting beliefs.

Why You Aren’t Delegating

What’s holding people back from delegating? They can come up with enough reasons to last a lifetime.

For example, they think they can do the job better themselves. They don’t trust others to do it because the other person might make a mistake. Or the other person isn’t qualified to do it or they already have enough to do.

Or they believe they are the only person on this planet who can do it so they can’t ask anyone else to do it.

All of those reasons are nothing more than limiting beliefs. None of it is true, and having those beliefs doesn’t help your business. You don’t get anything done, and you stay on the hamster wheel.

There are some tasks that you can delegate to others.

  • Responding to emails
  • Responding to customer service
  • Scheduling business and personal appointments
  • Writing to new prospects
  • Bookkeeping, graphic design, website development
  • Travel arrangements

All of these tasks and more, you can delegate to other people. If you aren’t delegating, there are four big fears that are holding you back.

1. Fear Of Losing Control

You fear what could happen if you lose control. Maybe the other person will make a mistake and it will cost you time or money to fix.

You fear you could be rejected if you ask someone for help. You’re worried that this person will think you’re incompetent because you’re not doing the task yourself. Or you’re inadequate.

This is especially true of men. Women are more willing to ask for help. Men are taught to be strong and macho so if you don’t do something, you’re incompetent and you might lose your sense of honour.

Maybe you don’t fear losing control, and you’re not afraid to ask for help, but you like to watch every dollar you spend very carefully.

2. Fear Of The Cost

Sometimes entrepreneurs think the cost is too high and they can’t afford it. They want to save money. However, you need to think about how much your time is worth.

If you want to make a million bucks a year, your work has to be worth $1700 an hour. If you don’t delegate, then you’re losing $1700 an hour. Isn’t your time worth so much more?

Even if you think you can’t afford to delegate, start the habit and free up your time. You can’t be afraid of losing money, or having a bad experience.

3. Fear Of A Bad Experience

You may have tried to delegate in the past and it turned into delegation hell because the person you trusted and paid didn’t deliver as promised.

To avoid that, create a document. Provide your consultant or assistant with the information they need, the steps they need to take, and your expectations. They are less likely to make mistakes when expectations are clear.

If they still manage to make mistakes, then hire someone else. Or delegate to three people and see who does the job the best. Keep the good one and let go of the rest.

Another way to think about it is this: Have you ever had a bad meal in the past? Did that stop you from eating ever again?

For that same reason, don’t let a bad experience stop you from looking for the right person.

4. Fear Of Not Finding The Right Person

Hiring the right person is a numbers game that you won’t get right every time. In the big scheme of things, it’s not going to matter. Six months to a year from now, you’re not going to remember the minor errors. You just need to get better at filtering out the bad matches.

Here’s an example. One of my business partners had a business for 15 years. He wasn’t good at hiring or managing people.

One day, I asked him to fire everybody. He didn’t want to do such a thing because he considered his employees as friends.

The experience turned out to be a business lesson for him. All the people my business partner thought were his good friends tried to get to every last dime when they were fired. One even kept the iPad he had been given.

Employees are employees.

Hiring people is a skill. There are so many steps to choosing the right one, from filtering to coaching them to training them to develop new skills.

The way I hire people and run my company is a bit unusual because I run this virtual empire. I choose to work from home. I don’t want to commute or go to an office. When my mentees call me, I’m in my underwear, not my suit. I like to be at home.

I get up, do my morning routine, and get to work. It saves me a lot of time. But that’s a personal preference. It also means because I don’t see my team face-to-face most of the time, so I need to trust them to do their responsibilities. So when I hire, I choose people who can work independently.

Why You Need To Delegate Now

If you want your business to grow, you need to learn to get comfortable with delegating now, not in the future. Your time is valuable, so overcome your fears and start finding tasks you can ask other people to do for you. Most importantly, establish a hiring system so you create a team of people you can trust.

What tasks do you delegate to other people? Comment below.

SUGGESTED ARTICLES:

8 Golden Rules of Effective Delegation And How To Delegate To The Best People

How To Manage People And Be A Better Leader

How I Built A Powerful Team Of Independent Entrepreneurs

8 Golden Rules of Effective Delegation And How To Delegate To The Best People

by

The mission driven entrepreneur, working as a one-man or one-woman show, will not survive unless he or she learns the golden rules of delegation.

If you’re a fledgling entrepreneur, assigning tasks to other people is a critical part of growing your business. It’s a dream to believe that you can handle all aspects of your business yourself. You can’t work alone – you need other people. If you can’t trust anyone other than yourself to do the work, then you will be working endlessly on the hamster wheel for a very long time.

So how do you begin to delegate tasks, not just to other people, but the best people? As an entrepreneur, it’s natural that you want to develop a wide range of skills. But as you work on your business, you’ll realize there are aspects you hate and aspects that you just weren’t born to do. Delegate those tasks to someone else first. If you aren’t good at accounting, hire or outsource an accountant.

When you have a set routine for the everyday tasks for your business, delegate those tasks too. In one sense, you are clearing your desk of all the clutter. When you aren’t focused on the day to day survival of your business, you will have the energy and time to see the big picture and to think about the bigger questions. Where is your business headed? What are some current challenges you need to overcome? What’s the next step to growing the business?

But until you start to delegate, you won’t have the mental and time capacity to work on the big picture and jump off the hamster wheel.

Here are eight golden rules of effective delegation that will make you a great leader and free up your time for other aspects of your business.

Rule 1: Clarify The Task In Your Own Mind

Clarify what the task is before you ask someone to complete it. There are some important questions to ask yourself. When you have the answers, then delegate the task. You can envision the task in the following way.

1. Who will do the task?
2. What is the deadline?
3. What exactly needs to be done?
4. What is the desired outcome?

After you have the answers in your mind, or written down, then assign the task. Be clear on what exactly needs to be done, such as the entire first draft for a Facebook ad, or a completed inventory of your products for that month. Also be clear on the outcome, such as completed inventory in a spreadsheet that will be presented at the next meeting.

Rule 2: Delegation To The Right Person

Now that you are clear on what needs to be done, your next step is to choose the right person for the task. The best person to choose is someone who is brilliant at doing that type of work. It might be someone you’ve hired for your team, or someone you are outsourcing work to. Here are some more specific tips for making your selection:

  • Delegate to someone who is task-focused and explain why this task is important
  • Delegate unusually challenging tasks to someone who has lots of experience and would like something different than the usual routine
  • Delegate routine tasks to someone who is extremely organized

Rule 3: Always Have A Deadline

If you don’t set deadlines, nothing gets done. It doesn’t mean your team is lazy. Sometimes they have so much to do that they need deadlines to help them prioritize what is more important. The deadline should be challenging but realistic.

Stretch the abilities of your team to see what they can do, but don’t ask them to do the impossible either! If I am working with a new person, and I need something done within two weeks, I tell them I need it in a week.

I want to see if the new person can get the job done and find out early on if they can work under pressure to complete urgent tasks.

Rule 4: Communicate Orally And Write Your Plan Of Action

Sometimes I only give the core structure of what I want and I let my mentees figure out a plan of action. I let them make their own mistakes. By making mistakes, they learn their lesson. If I watch them too closely, they won’t be able to grow.

So communicate your plan orally to your team and let them decide on what to do. To check on their progress, ask them to write progress reports. You can have them report once a week on Monday, or daily at the end of the day. The frequency depends on the person’s skills and their needs.

Clear communication will look like this: message sent to get the task done, message received by the person doing the task, and message acted upon, or completed.

Rule 5: People Don’t Do What You Expect, They Do What You Inspect With Respect

You may be clear with your expectations, you may be choosing to delegate to the best people for the job. In the end, people don’t necessarily do what you expect them to do. That’s the tricky part about delegation. They do what you check up on with extra attention. So what you inspect, they do with respect.

It means you have to follow up to make sure the task gets done even though it’s not your job.

Rule 6: Delegate Responsibility And Authority

As an entrepreneur, you may be willing to delegate responsibility but you may find it much harder to delegate responsibility and authority. You don’t want to give up authority because you fear loss of control.

You will ask someone to do a task but require that person to run everything by you. In that case, you are micromanaging. You need to be able to give other people some authority, even if it means letting them make mistakes. It’s the only way they learn and the only way you get off the hamster wheel.

Mistakes are okay as long as they don’t kill the company. Only incompetence is not okay. You may be wondering what the difference is between the two. Let me share a quick story.

The C.O.O. at my mentor’s company made a mistake that cost ten million dollars. My mentor had a meeting with him about the mistake. The C.O.O. thought he was going to be fired but my mentor said he had just invested ten million in the guy’s education. He kept his job and made sure he never screwed up again. The C.O.O. was extremely loyal and over time made my mentor one hundred million dollars.

So if you are afraid to give other people authority because you fear they’ll make mistakes, you need to let them make the mistakes. Otherwise, they won’t learn, and you will be very busy micromanaging your team.

Rule 7: Give Praise, Feedback And Additional Responsibilities At The End Of The Project

So the project has come to an end and you delegated tasks to other team members. At this point, you want to provide feedback on how they did. You want to be a coach and mentor.

Whatever you do, don’t yell at them. Praise them for what they did right and then give feedback on what they can do better. That’s how they learn.

Also, give them additional responsibilities for the next project. By delegating more tasks, you free up your time for other aspects of your business, and your team grows in experience.

Rule 8: Don’t Be A Perfectionist

If you are too much of a perfectionist, you will be the runner of a marathon who never leaves the starting line. You will never get anything started or finished. Your projects will never end because you are going crazy with the details.

Effective delegation is about progress, not perfection. Start your project, and do what you can, but don’t get stuck on all the small details of what you need to complete.

When you go to the bank, the teller or the bank machine isn’t going to ask if you completed your work perfectly. Your cheque just goes into your account.    

In the big scheme of things, if I’m facing a business problem that I find overwhelming, I look at this photo on my wall. It’s a picture of the universe. When I look at it, my stress disappears because I realize… I’m just a molecule. What’s the big deal? Nothing matters. I’m only here for 80 years. And then I’m not that important anymore. No one is that important. So don’t place so much importance on yourself to finish things.

Those are the rules of effective delegation. Now that you know them, here are three quick tips on how to find the best people to share your work projects.

Three Tips For Effective Delegation To The Best People

Tip 1: Respect them

Work together as a team and respect the people you have delegated with tasks. You can set high standards and expectations and be tough, and still have respect.

In some areas, their expertise will be better than yours which is another reason you should not be afraid to delegate. This is how your company will grow.

Tip 2: Pay them well

If you pay them well, you will have the best talent. If you can’t afford to find good people maybe your business model needs to be changed.

One Christmas I sent my contractors a bonus through PayPal. I got an email from them thanking me. The bonus moved me up on their client list. I want to represent 40% of their business so when I want stuff done, it gets done.

Don’t delay paying your team members and contractors. If you want to stand out with your clients and contractors, this is one way to do it. They should be making you returns because of how you treat them.

Tip 3: Praise them

I praise team members and contractors and anyone else if they do something well. Don’t just say, “Good job.” Be specific with your praise, such as telling them that you liked how they handled the situation and you appreciated the help.

Those are three tips for delegating to the best people. If you want to grow your business, then overcome your hesitation, and start delegating tasks to free up your time.

Summary of the 8 Golden Rules of Delegation

Delegating to the best people is key to getting yourself out of that hamster wheel and building a successful business. Richard Branson of Virgin Group says that if your team understands your vision and they work autonomously, “You’ll find that you have more time to focus on the big picture and achieve the things you need to do to make your product or service stand out.”

So here again are the 8 rules of delegation. You can also watch a recap of these rules of delegation and tips on how to hire in this video here.

Rule 1: Clarify the task in your own mind

Rule 2: Delegate to the right person

Rule 3: Always have a deadline

Rule 4: Communicate orally and write your plan of action

Rule 5: People don’t do what you expect, they do what you inspect with respect

Rule 6: Delegate responsibility and authority

Rule 7: Give praise, feedback and additional responsibilities at the end of the project

Rule 8: Don’t be a perfectionist

 

Have you started delegating? Comment below.

 

SUGGESTED ARTICLES:

Why Aren’t You Delegating?

How To Manage People And Be A Better Leader

How I Built A Powerful Team Of Independent Entrepreneurs

 

 

 

I hope you enjoy reading this blog post.

Schedule an add a zero session™ with our team to see how you can use our time-tested strategies and systems to scale your business now.

book a call