ActionCOACH Cheltenham’s Post

Transcript

Welcome back to the second in a series of three videos talking about time, team and money. My name's Neil Martin, I'm one of the senior business coaches here at Action Coach Cheltenham. And today in the second installment, we are focusing on team. So let's talk about team. Let me start by asking you a question. On a scale of one to 10, how effective would you say your team is right now? And then ask yourself this question. In an ideal world, what would that number be? And if you could get your team to that ideal place? What difference would it make for you personally? What impact would it make on your time? What impact would it make on the productivity and the profitability of your business? What impact would it make on you being able to take time off to spend with family and other pastimes and pleasures, knowing that you could switch off and you were leaving the business in safe hands? So what we're going to talk about in this session are the six keys to a winning team. And the first of those is strong leadership. Now, what do we mean when we say strong leadership? But here's the important thing. As the business owner, your responsibility is to look after the team. And the team's responsibility is to look after the customers. And the customers responsibilities quite simple. They look after the business as in they spend money with the business to make sure that the business is profitable and sustainable. And then that business takes care of you as the business owner. And it's a cycle. That goes round and round and round. But sometimes that cycle gets broken and sometimes as the owner, you get involved with the team and with the customers and with every other aspect of the business. And so everything basically points to you. And that's not strong leadership. Strong leadership is being able to delegate effectively. I'm going to say delegate. I don't mean abdicate. I don't mean just, you know, give something to everybody else. I mean making sure that you've put systems and processes in place that actually. Describe how the business should run, the put in a foundation and a structure to that business, and then the appropriate training to enable your team to actually run those processes for you. But how do we get the best out of those people? Well, first of all, we have to get the best out of ourself, right? You can't lead other people if you don't lead yourself first. But the other big part of this is the need to have a common goal, a common goal, a common shared objective. And businesses that are young are generally a bit better at this, as in they tell their back story about why they exist. You think about it, when you first started your business, how excited were you to tell everyone, you know, the problems that you were trying to solve, the the gap that you found in the market, the the reason your business was there? How quick and easy was it to tell people that? But here's the thing that I've noticed working with many businesses over the years is the longer that business has been around, the less they tend to communicate the reason why they were started in the first place. It's almost like it's a given. So you know, new team members join the organization and they don't really know the back story. They don't really know what the business was set up for in the 1st place. They don't really know the vision of the company in its infancy, and very often they don't even know what the vision of the company is today. And so it's really important to communicate that vision and also to communicate, you know, what the five year goal is or the 10 year goal, the long term objective of the business. Where's the business trying to get to? What's the business trying to achieve? You know, what is what is the vision for the business and what is its mission for the next three to five years? And then within that, what is the 12 month goal? You know, what are we trying to achieve within this business this year and how well communicated? Is that and have we sold that to people on our team? Does everybody on the team understand why we're here and what we're doing and the reasons behind it? Because the more people buy into the vision and the more people buy into the goals, easier it is to get everybody on board and working towards that common objective. The next of the six keys. Is about the rules of the game, the rules of the game. How can you win a game if you don't know the rules? How can you expect A-Team to work to your standards if they don't know what those standards are? How can you expect someone to join your business and fit with your culture if that culture has not been articulated? So it's about understanding, you know, what the rules of the game are, what are the expectations, what are the performance indicators, the numbers that are being used to measure and manage the business. What are those and how well are those being communicated to each team member? How clearly defined are the roles and responsibilities of each person within the business? Because without clear definition of what's expected, how can you expect anyone to achieve it? You think about it in any game, any, any sport, how can you win the game if you don't know the rules? If you manage to win without knowing the rules, you were incredibly lucky. Whereas the most effective teams, they learn those rules really well and they learn how to play within those rules to get the best possible performance. The next of the six keys is to move on and talk about an action plan. And what is the action plan that you have for your business. And this goes back a little bit to what we were talking about in terms of the time video and time management. Because if you think about it seriously for a moment, you know the way that you're spending your time should fit with your action plan, which should fit with that common goal. The deeper the understanding of where you're trying to be in five years or 10 years and then where you need to be within the next 12 months to get to that point, the more detailed that action plan for say the next 90 days can actually be. You know, one of the things that we're huge advocates of within Action Coach is 90 day planning. In fact, we work with all of our clients on an ongoing basis to make sure that we have 90 day plans for their businesses in place so that there are clear objectives and we can make sure that those targets are being hit. But do you have? Was in place and you know, when you're looking at the way that you manage and utilize time and the way that you're investing your time, is it against the critical activities that need to be there in order to achieve that action plan and ultimately those goals and that vision? Key #5 is to support risk taking. Yes, that's right. Support risk taking. His thing? You can't do everything in your business, so you have to trust other people. But a part of trusting people is trusting that they will learn if things go wrong. Is trusting that they are making the best decision they can in a moment and sometimes that won't play out. It's allowing people to be accountable. It's allowing people to have ownership. It's allowing people to be responsible for their own actions within all of the other things that we've just talked about. So you know, within setting clear objectives and clear goals and a clear action plan, you setting clear rules of the game, provided people play within those rules. We have to allow them to take risks. It's a bit like, you know, if you think, again, let's go back to sports. If you think about a football match, yeah, there are clear rules, OK? You know, there are clear rules around what is and isn't allowed on the pitch. But while those players are on the pitch and they're kicking that ball around, sometimes they have to adapt to fit the moment. And sometimes they might do things that are slightly outside of things that were covered or planned in training. And they have to take those risks. And sometimes those risks are things that win the game, and sometimes they don't pay off and the game doesn't quite go to plan. But we have to be supportive. Of our teams and allow them some level of autonomy so that they can actually show up at their best. You can't be micromanaging things and getting into every single detail because otherwise you're never going to get the time to actually drive the business forward. And then the final of the six keys is to give 100% involvement or inclusion. Now, what do I mean by that? I mean that people need to be bought in. Your team needs to feel like they're being included. They need to feel like they belong. Having that sense of community, that sense of maybe even family within your organization. Because let me ask you a question. Do you do more for your family than someone you care about and someone that you don't know? The reality is, for most people, the answer is yes. And so the more people feel they belong, the more people feel like they are part of your organization, they're better. They're gonna show up for you. Now, that doesn't mean listening to every single voice. I'll rephrase that. It maybe does mean listening to every single voice, but it doesn't mean acting on every other person's opinion. But it does mean feeling like people have, you know, making people feel like they have a safe space to be able to show up. A safe space to be able to voice their opinion, a safe space to be able to have healthy debate and look at different options. And guess what, sometimes the best ideas are going to come out of those conversations. So it's absolutely critical to make sure that everyone feels like they're involved and that they're included. Now, talking of involvement and inclusion, the next slide, if you watched my time video, you've seen before because my next slide is all about what to do next. See, if you've watched this video and it's prompted some thought for you, now is the time for you to take some action. Now is the time if those light bulbs have gone on to go right. What am I going to do with this? Because I mentioned before, so many people watch a video like this, you know, they watch content over a period of days and they go, there's some great ideas in there. Someday I'll do something with that. But guess what? Someday never comes. So what are you going to do today? And it might be as simple as sitting down and looking at your team structure and going, you know what, all the people I've got in this team. Who do I want? If I was starting my business again, who would I rehire? Are people in the right role so they can shop at their best? Do we have the team structure right? Do I have my culture clearly defined? Does everybody know what's expected of them? Just a few things for you to think about. Thank you for taking the time to watch this video. Make sure you check out all the other videos in this three-part series and also the video from my colleague Ann Wall talking about marketing. I trust you found this useful and I will see you in the 3rd and final installment of this video series where we'll be talking about money.