Having a self-reliant team is crucial in growing your business.
When your employees can function and thrive under minimal supervision, you can focus on more important areas that will push your business to the next level.
But with employees heavily depending on you to guide their every step, you'll have less time and energy to concentrate on higher-level tasks.
How can you train your workers to have enough competence and confidence to complete their work independently?
In today's episode, our guest Lauren Goldstein and I discuss how you can grow a team that can work independently and effectively.
Lauren is the founder and CEO of the award-winning and globally recognized boutique business consulting firm, Golden Key Partnership.
Since 2011, Lauren has been helping business owners achieve true entrepreneurial freedom by optimizing their teams and operations to successfully transition from day-to-day business "operator" into business owner - running their business instead of the other way 'round.
We discuss:
03:23: What is the main obstacle to having self-reliant team members in your business?
06:06 What do you look for to ensure you hire people who can do the big-picture thinking for you?
07:45 Are there specific questions to ask or qualities to look for if you want to recruit players vs worker bees?
11:25 Regarding the "Four C's", the first one is Clarity, but what are the other three C's that you want to use in your business?
14:28 What is unrelated work? Can you give us examples, and how do you recognize if someone is doing unrelated work?
17:12 How should you coach your team members? Do you take advice from management books and resources? Or do you consider your personality and your unique business needs when building your team?
21:29 What is the "Rule of Three"?
27:52 What can you realistically do to get your people to the 90% level wherein they can practically just run everything without your involvement?
30:19 What are some things you would put on the Scorecard?
31:24 Do you have a Scorecard for a specific person, the company, team members, or all of the above?
34:43 What is the realistic next step leaders can take in the next week to develop self-reliant team members?
Resources:
Lauren Goldstein, Founder, CEO, and The Business Doctor, Golden Key Partnership:
https://www.goldenkeypartnership.com/
LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenegoldstein
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/GoldenKeyPartnership/
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/gldnkey/
Podcast | The Biz Doctor:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biz-doctor/id1618773779
Scorecard:
http://www.goldenkeypartnership.com/scorecard
Bullseye Hiring:
https://www.goldenkeypartnership.com/bullseye
Kathy Svetina, Fractional CFO:
https://www.newcastlefinance.us/
Blog post | How to Coach Your Team to Become Self-reliant
https://www.newcastlefinance.us/post/how-to-coach-your-team-to-become-self-reliant
Kathy (host):
Hello there and welcome back to Help! My Business is Growing, a podcast where we explore how to grow and build a business that is healthy and sustainable. I'm your host, Kathy Svetina.
Kathy (host):
A vital element of successfully growing a business is having a self-reliant team that's delivering results with minimal supervision. When your employees lack independence and always rely on you to put fires or appoint them in the right direction, it slows down the decision-making process and prevents you from focusing on the higher-level tasks that you need to do. So the question is, how do you nurture and coach your team to work independently and gain enough confidence to troubleshoot without involving you all the time?
Kathy (host):
A quick reminder, all of the episodes on this podcast, including this one, come with timestamps for topics that we discuss, and each one has its own blog post as well. You can find all the links and all the detailed topics of this episode's show notes.
Kathy (host):
Our guest today is Lauren Goldstein. She is the Founder and CEO of the award-winning and globally recognized boutique business consulting firm called Golden Key Partnership. Lauren has been helping business owners achieve true entrepreneurial freedom since 2011. She does this by helping them optimize their team and operations so that they can successfully transition from a day-to-day business operator into a business owner, and they're running their business instead of the other way around.
Kathy (host):
Her focus on team + ops, revenue + leverage, leadership + mindset is a secret to her client success. Her client's lovingly call her "The Biz Doctor", which is also the name of her podcast because her superpower is helping highly specialized seven-figure service-based entrepreneurs uncover what is keeping them stuck in the 'trenches' of their business. Bottom line, Lauren helps you have a business that can sustainably grow without you feeling like it's all on you, and one that when you decide to take that deserved a vacation, it runs without you having to worry.
Kathy (host):
Join us.
Kathy (host):
Welcome to the show, Lauren.
Lauren (guest):
Thank you so much for having me.
Kathy (host):
Thanks so much for being here. I am really excited about our episode today because we're going to talk about, I think what is an important topic on how to coach employees to be self-reliant and troubleshoot without much of the owner's involvement. And I'd say that most of the business owners, except of the micromanaging ones, we really want our employees to be- Yeah, exactly. To be self-reliant and troubleshoot without much of our involvement. But it also takes work to get there. And I've been thinking about this a lot for my own business too because I want my team members to be that way.
Kathy (host):
And I've figured out that there might be three components that impact the level of self-reliance that the team member has. One is the personality of that person. Two would be the amount and the type of experience that they had in the past. So meaning like the work experience and how they were managed. And three is the actual development from you as a manager. So making sure that you're setting clear expectations, that you're giving the quality feedback to the member. So I'm wondering, with the businesses that you work with, what have you seen as the main obstacle to having self-reliant team members in the business?
Lauren (guest):
I love those three that you shared, and I concur and I would say the biggest obstacle that I see with getting a self-reliant team. I think it's twofold. First, I think a lot of entrepreneurs think when they're building a team, they need somebody who's just like them to do it because this is your baby and you're doing so many things, you're the chief everything officer at the beginning.
Lauren (guest):
But when you really start building a team, it's key to have people whose strengths are your weaknesses, who can kind of level you out and make sure that the things that you're blind to, they can actually see.
Lauren (guest):
And in that same vein, the other thing that I've really worked with my clients on understanding is the difference between a player and a worker bee. A lot of times I see entrepreneurs hire worker bees because they think they need somebody just to check off tasks. And then when in reality, especially when you have a lean team or let's say less than 10 people and you're the one that's primarily managing everyone else, it's critical to have players because players come with a plan. They're much more project-based. And yes, they do tasks, but they're much more big-picture and they'll run with you and have that autonomy that you're looking for.
Lauren (guest):
Whereas worker bees are really task-based workers, and so then you end up doing two jobs. You have to think of things for them to do, and you're doing your job versus with a player, you have the end goal and the project that needs to be completed, and then they figure out how to get it done.
Kathy (host):
Yeah. I really like that distinction. And even with the businesses that I work with, they struggle with that. And I always say, when you first start the business, especially when you're in your early stages, meaning less than 50 employees, you have to have people that are have multi-potentials, so they're not as specialized as you would need them to be when you're a hundred million dollar company, because it becomes more as a pizza tracker type of production of work, so to speak. I like to think of it in that, in those terms, so you need more specialized and focused people there.
Kathy (host):
But when you're in a smaller business space, you do need employees that are able to do. They can do your social media, but they can also think about the type of content that you want to produce, or for example, in the marketing space. So it's really important to have that, like you said someone who is thinking more as a player versus a worker bee. So when you're going out there in a market and you're trying to find these type of employees that are able to do that thinking, big picture thinking for you. Are there any things that you should be looking for when you're recruiting?
Lauren (guest):
Yeah, absolutely. So before I answer that question, I do want to put a little caveat to your multifaceted comment. It is great to have employees that can do multiple components, as long as they're related. If you're hiring a jack of all trades or somebody who's trying to do bookkeeping and social media and customer service or something like that's going to actually be a detriment to you, to the team, to the business. So wearing multiple hats and say the marketing department is different than somebody wearing multiple hats in multiple different departments.
Kathy (host):
Oh yes, please do not have someone do your bookkeeping and marketing at the same time. No, that's a no-no.
Lauren (guest):
I know it sounds like a no-brainer, but a lot of entrepreneurs, especially in the beginning when they're trying to hire an "Oh, they said they could do this and that", and I know people like to want to be needed and make a difference.
Lauren (guest):
So they sometimes volunteer for things that maybe they don't really want to do or. They feel they need to do, but they're not really skilled at it. So it's just something to keep in the back of your mind. You can hire a part-time expert for a heck of a lot more impact and less money than a full-time someone who's doing a lot of jack of all trades.
Kathy (host):
Yeah, I agree with that. So when you are looking for, to recruit someone who is more of a player versus a work could be, what are some of the things that you should be looking for as you're interviewing them? Are there any specific questions that you can maybe ask how you go about putting the job description any type of things that would really give you that type of person versus a worker bee?
Lauren (guest):
Yeah. We have the something called The Four Cs to a High Performing Team, and that first one is clarity. So to find a player, you really need to start at the very beginning with clarity around the role. We actually have a tool that we use with our clients called a scorecard. But when you have the clarity of how the role fits into the company, the innate talents that somebody needs to have, because it's not just enough if somebody, let's say you're looking for, to go back to your marketing example, somebody who knows how to run Facebook ads or Instagram ads or do something like that, it's not enough to know the platform or the tools. You have to have the clarity on who that person is in their DNA. Because you can't teach someone to be an extrovert or to be able to build rapport or to have a marketing mind, but you can teach them how to use Instagram or Monday or whatever kind of software you're using. And so when you are able to really think about the role and what innate talents and what accountabilities, then that allows you to really get clear on the mission of the role because players are very project-based, mission-based. They want to know that what they're putting in is making a difference in the business.
Lauren (guest):
And so once you have that clarity, the scorecard actually, we designed it to be able to basically plug and play into a job description. So when you have a job description that's listed, like a lot of job descriptions you see out there, that's like you're going to be working in Google Sheets and Salesforce and like all these things, that's going to attract a worker versus the way that we consult with our clients is when you write it from a place rather that talks about the mission of the company and why this role is important and how you fit into the business and the accountabilities you'll be held to, that's going to attract a player much more than a worker be.
Lauren (guest):
And then when you're talking to them in an interview, a couple of questions that I like to ask is the easiest one to see if you're talking to a worker bee or a player is the simple question, "We have a goal of increasing our lead generation by two X over the next six months, what is your plan to do that? And so what I did with that question is I gave them a goal and then I asked them, "What their plan was?", which actually goes back to the whole purpose of this episode, which is how we coach employees to be self-reliant and autonomous.
Lauren (guest):
And so by asking the question of what is your plan? You actually get to see a lot of those things that you talked about in the beginning of the episode like what is their experience? How do they operate autonomously? What is their actual plan? When you're talking to a player, what they'll say is when I was in X, Y, Z role, what we did was this, and so in this role, what I would do is I would work backward and do X, Y, Z, versus a worker bee will say something like "Oh, I'm happy to do whatever you would like me to do. Or I would ask, what did somebody who was in this role before me do?" And so they're very much in that like very small space of not really being able to critically think and they're looking for the right answer versus a player who's going to basically say, "This is what we tried before, this is what I'm going to try now if we fall in our face." We'll course correct, but this is the goal and this is really how I think we can best get there.
Kathy (host):
Yep, that makes sense. And you talked about the four Cs one was the clarity, like being really clear on what type of things that you need from that particular role, and then that impacting how you're interviewing for the role. So how, what are the other three Cs that you want to use in your business?
Lauren (guest):
Yeah. So the second one is capability. The third is capacity, and the fourth is communication. So capability, again, goes back to the innate talents. Does the person have the DNA to be capable and successful in the role? And then in terms of capacity, that's what I talked about a little bit before about a lot of times the reason we burn out employees is not because we've given them too much work, it's because we've given them too much-unrelated work. So if things are starting to drop through the cracks, or you're seeing that your employees are not working on the things that you want them to prioritize, chances are you're actually giving them things that are not really related and therefore not actually in their wheelhouse or superpower.
Lauren (guest):
Because we use this tool called Wealth Dynamics and it looks at the four different energies of a business. You've got Who Energy, which is marketing and sales. You've got What energy, which is all about ideas and creation. You've got When, which is about delivery and customer service and project management. And then you've got the How, which is about systems and automatization and really just getting the things we start finished.
Lauren (guest):
So if you are finding that your employees are at capacity, the first question to ask is, "Are you giving them too much-unrelated work?" Or are the expectations around deliverables or dates or things just not realistic and just really digging down and seeing how their capacity is being structured?
Lauren (guest):
And then communication is a lot about feedback. It's a lot about bi-directional communication. And actually, one of my favorite stories about this is once you get to know your team, there's different obviously types of people, but there's two big differentiators with how people process information. Some people process internally based on data, based on past experience, or they're just going to take everything you've said and then process it internally versus people. Other people will do it externally. They'll go talk to their colleagues, they'll go ask experts. And the most hysterical thing is when those two people are in meetings together and the external processors want to stay and talk it out. And you see the other people who are frustrated because they have the data they need and they just need to go process.
Lauren (guest):
And so part of the four Cs of communication is knowing how your team communicates, not only with themselves but the team as a whole. So you can set them up for success and keep them going on the best path and course correct is needed through feedback.
Kathy (host):
And let's go back to the capability and having them do the unrelated work. So I want to dig a little bit deeper into that. What exactly is unrelated work? If you can give us an example of that and how do you recognize if someone is doing unrelated work?
Lauren (guest):
It's much easier if it's truly unrelated, like a marketing person doing bookkeeping, but it gets a little blurry when it's something that's, let's say in the Who energy or just like on the start of the When energy. Sometimes we'll see something that actually seems related, but it's not like a salesperson then trying to manage them when they come on board and then deliver. So technically those are two similar but unrelated things because the skills you need to sell someone are different than the relationships you need to build to have a really great customer experience and keep someone.
Lauren (guest):
And so that's an example of something that probably you could see some stumbling blocks around. They closed the new client, but then they missed some sort of onboarding detail, like maybe they didn't get the payment set up right or the contract was set out late, or something like that. Because there's a certain level of project management and detail that comes after the sale, and that's really where I specialize. I'm not a front-end person. I'm a backend business person. So what happens when you have a customer, how are the operations and teams supporting the business to scale?
Lauren (guest):
And so a lot of times that front end, backend seems very similar, but it's actually different. And so that's what I recommend is to look at your business and see is this customer-facing. Is it back? And then really asking yourself, is it related or does it just seem similar?
Kathy (host):
Yeah, that's great advice because sometimes it really does feel like they blend with each other and there's no real cutoff when the next team should take it off. So like really thinking about how does this look like and does it really mesh with the skills that this person has? Because like you said, I sales is a lot different than actual client's delivery type situation.
Lauren (guest):
Exactly.
Kathy (host):
So we started this conversation with a way that we wanted to go more into like, how do you actually coach the people? So we've talked about how do you interview and how do you figure out if they have the capability being clear on what you need, the communication from you and from the team member. But let's say that now you have, you've onboarded the person, they're there. How do you really coach them? Because I think this is an interesting time in the business because you can take, there's a lot of advice out there, I would say. Like, how do you do this? There's a lot of management books, but I've al always very particular of, I think, what does it make sense for you and for your personality and for your business as well, and for the type of team that you want to build. So would you say that is an important piece of how you coach people as well?
Lauren (guest):
Absolutely. Absolutely. And actually that's one of the very specific differentiators about me is by using Wealth Dynamics, we actually help you build the team that's right for your unique CEO profile because there's eight different entrepreneurial profiles that will all lead businesses in a slightly different way.
Lauren (guest):
And so where I see a lot of entrepreneurs struggle when they're building a team, even if they've had a team and they're growing their team, is the realization that you're a business owner, you're not an operator, and so you've gotta elevate out of the trenches into that visionary leader and CEO, which is sometimes very hard to give up control.
Kathy (host):
Yeah.
Lauren (guest):
And there's the other part of that of sometimes you're just not sure how to give up control because you've been doing the things for so long that it's sometimes you're just like, "Ugh. Screw it. I'll do it. It'll take me five minutes." But then that five minutes that you spent doing it versus actually enabling your team to be autonomous is going to start compounding.
Kathy (host):
Yeah.
Lauren (guest):
And this something that I really work with my clients on is the see one, do one, teach one. And this is something that I learned from my former days in the medical field of when you're onboarding someone, obviously you want to start with clarity and have the scorecards so that everybody knows what the expectations are.
Lauren (guest):
One of my favorite quotes is "Unshared expectations are nothing more than premeditated resentments."
Kathy (host):
I love that. So true.
Lauren (guest):
Isn't that great?
Kathy (host):
Yeah.
Lauren (guest):
And I see a lot of employees fail in the first 90 days because the expectations aren't clear. So when you start with the clarity, we recommend the scorecard that we use and like really get them clear on what they're going to be accountable to, what success looks like, and also asking them, that's something that I ask actually in the interview, "Is what does success in this role look like to." So that you make sure that you're both working towards the same goal.
Lauren (guest):
So then once you have that expectation, everybody has the clarity, then it's time to the rubber meets the road. And something that I found to be really effective is, especially if you're handing off stuff that you're doing Because you're doing it anyway now. Take a loom. Loom is a free video resource that we love using just record yourself doing it, and that way they'll have a resource they can go back and look at to see how you're doing it.
Lauren (guest):
Now, if it's a new role that you have not done yourself, or maybe you did poorly. Let's go back to marketing. Let's say you're a CEO, that's not a marketing expert and you're hiring a player in marketing. This is going to take a little bit of trust for you to really allow them to lead you. And so when you're onboarding a player, you're again going to make sure everybody has the accountabilities, the clarity around expectations, and then the onboarding that you have for a player is slightly more flexible.
Lauren (guest):
Again, we need worker bees. Not to say you should never have a worker bee, but worker bees are going to need more structure, they're going to need more handholding, but players need more flexibility and autonomy. So as long as they know what's expected, they have the time on the calendar to strategize, ask for support, share what's going on, and they get consistent feedback, then it's going to be a lot shorter onboarding.
Lauren (guest):
And so if you follow the see one, do one, teach one, that's going to help you get them up to speed faster. So they see what you're doing, they do what you're doing and explain it back to you, and then they go teach somebody else.
Lauren (guest):
And then that actually brings me to the rule of three. If you want me to touch on that, right now.
Kathy (host):
Yeah, because I've been wondering about this ever since we had our previous discussion before we started recording this podcast. We had a meeting and you mentioned the rule of three, and I remember it. That was a specific thing that I wanted to talk about on this podcast because I think it was a fabulous thing.
Lauren (guest):
Yeah. So the teach one plays into the rule of three. So if you're not familiar with the rule of three, or rather my role of three. When you're the CEO, your time is so precious and you want to empower the team to really work as a team and also use their critical thinking skills.
Lauren (guest):
So the rule we have is you can't ask me a question. You can ask little questions, but if it's like a big project thing or you're really getting up to speed the interruption for a question, you have to go look at our resources, you have to Google it, or you get to go ask another team member before you involve me.
Lauren (guest):
And I know that might sound harsh. Like what? "You're not supporting your team and they can't ask you questions and this and that." That's actually the opposite because what I'm doing is I'm empowering them to trust themselves. . You can find a lot on Google. You can find a lot in the resources or knowledge base that we have. We have a whole Loom library.
Lauren (guest):
And then of course, asking your teammates helps build that culture and communication and you would be surprised how often things get solved that you didn't even know about because they're not coming to you. Because when I see entrepreneurs get trapped in the trenches most. It's because they've accidentally made themself an irreplaceable linchpin where the team doesn't feel comfortable moving forward unless they talk to you first.
Lauren (guest):
Now, I will say this does cause some people anxiety or worry or like triggers the giving up control, but I will tell you, there's almost nothing that you can't clean up and if you build the right team, they'll clean it up for you or they'll learn from it. Because a lot of times we want to protect the team, and protect the customers, but if you're not letting them make mistakes, which I know as an entrepreneur is painful. Then they can't learn and then that means you can't take a vacation because they're always relying on you.
Lauren (guest):
And I'll never remember this is actually a very, nothing catastrophic happened, but in my other business, we are onboarding a new person and there's always things that no matter how much you onboard somebody that's like the once a year, "Oh, I totally forgot this ever happens, kind of thing." and we had an international return, which has a whole different level of complexity and she went to do the return and didn't double check what service priorities she was using, and so the product that we sent was like $130. The return service that she selected was $157 because she selected next day. So obviously we like lost money across the board from like the cost of import, export, and her time. Anyway, so it was a very expensive lesson but you can bet your bottom dollar. She's never done that again because she was so mortified and it's something that I probably could have said because it just I think it actually was said like when you do a return, she's the least expensive. But I think in the moment she got frazzled and forgot and the potency of a mistake with the team is actually going to help them retain that and share it and learn it. And it also gives us something to giggle about.
Kathy (host):
It's one of those battle stories that every business owner has and their team member.
Lauren (guest):
Absolutely. Absolutely. When you initiate the rule of three, it really protects your time and it creates camaraderie with the team and empowerment with your individual employees that will allow them to run the business in a much more efficient way without as much input and time from you.
Kathy (host):
Yeah, I really like that because it frees you as a business owner, it frees and it empowers the other person, the team member. But I think there's also the step, I think there's a next level step, too that I would add to it is once they have figured it out if it's a new thing that you don't have the resources to encourage them to actually do the internal resource. Documented it, put a link to wherever they found it so that, because I always found this, that if I had a question if one of the team members had a question once, it's probably a chance that it's going to happen the next time and the next time and the next time, so that the next person, when they have the type of question, doesn't have to go and do all this heavy lifting research. They can just go back into the resources, internal resources that you have.
Lauren (guest):
Yes. I love that. And that is part of our SOP procedure is if there's something that needs to be documented that isn't in there, that you add it because it's not just up to one person. Like we don't have a Chief SOP Creator. It's up to everybody to really make sure that the business is running like a well-oiled machine.
Kathy (host):
So one thing that I've seen people struggle with too is where do I even start? Like I have these team members. I thought they're self-reliant, but they're not really, or maybe they're like half there, but not there just yet where I want them to.
Lauren (guest):
Yeah.
Kathy (host):
What do you think? Can someone do realistically to get to this level because I think of this as a scale, right? There's a, between a zero and a hundred. If we say a zero is someone who needs a lot of handholding, they basically are at the level of micromanaging to a scale of a hundred where someone can just run everything without your involvement. And they're happy and they know what they're doing. They're essentially at the level of a mind reader. So there's the scale in between, you want it to be more towards a hundred as much as you can. You're never going to get a hundred, but you want to be as close to it. And let's say that you are at the level of 30 or 50, but you want to go to the 80. What are some of the things that you need to do in your business and with your team members to get closer to 90, or 95?
Lauren (guest):
That is a great question. So my recommendation for entrepreneurs to have a small team is there really shouldn't be any worker bees that you directly manage. There should always be a player in between.
Lauren (guest):
So the first step would be to really determine who on your team is a player versus a worker bee, and then if you have worker bees on your team, see who can manage them. Because the bad news is you really can't make a worker bee into a player. Like they're just not made that way. And so if you have players can become better players, worker bees can become better worker bees, but to make the jump from a worker bee to a player, it's just a different perspective in how they view the world, how they view problems, their level of trust in themselves, the level of trust in their work. And even leadership courses can't really help you make that jump. They can help them be better leaders, but I wouldn't also recommend a worker bee as a leader. So if you have worker bees in your business that are leaking time and revenue. I've done this many times with clients.
Lauren (guest):
My recommendation would be to see if they're costing you too much time in revenue to actually let them go and hire a part-time player. You can get a heck of a lot more out of a part-time player than a full-time worker bee, especially if you're managing them.
Lauren (guest):
And then in terms of just how to get the most out of your team in general. I spoke about it before, but the scorecard is really going to help because it's going to help you make sure everybody on the team is clear on how they fit into the business, their mission, their accountabilities, any threats that are looming that might inhibit them being successful in their role because that's how you get the most out of your team, is making sure the expectations around what they're meant to be doing in their role and success are the same, because if you have mismatched expectations, then that just creates frustration, which actually leads to resentment. And once you or your team are starting to resent each other, there's really no coming back from that.
Kathy (host):
And what are some of the things that you would put on the scorecard? But before we answer that, let me also ask you this. Do you have a scorecard for a specific person, for the company as a whole, for a team member, or all of the above?
Lauren (guest):
So I can actually like our scorecards free. I can give it to you guys to give to the listeners. So we do a scorecard for every person and the like their role in the person are basically the same scorecard. In terms of the company, the scorecards, if you will, around the company are more KPIs. And so those are bigger actual scores versus the scorecard that we use, it's just thinking of it like let's see if I can think of a good analogy for this. It's the cockpit of their role, like it's got all the instruments and all the dials that will allow them to fly, fly to their destination with their role.
Kathy (host):
Let's think of a role. Let's say that you have a content marketer on your team. I don't know if that's the type of role that, that you've done a scorecard before. If you haven't, let's just pick whatever example that you've had, but what are some of the things that you would put on the scorecard specifically for them? Do you have any recommendations of what you would put on there?
Lauren (guest):
So you're asking like specific like words or innate talents? Is that what you're asking?
Kathy (host):
Yeah. I'm just interested. So if I'm thinking of a scorecard in my mind it's more of a yellow, green, red type of thing. What is it that you would put in there? Is it how they drive the business? What type of revenue they brought in? How often are they producing something? What are some of the things that you would put on the scorecard for this particular role?
Lauren (guest):
Gotcha. Okay. So let me give you a little more label land of the scorecard because that might make more sense. So in our scorecard, you've got their name, their role, who their manager is, direct support is their salary. The status, like actively hiring filled when it was last updated, it's got the mission. So in other words, what's the purpose of this? And that's like the GPS coordinates of the role. It's got why is it important? What problem is this role solving for the business?
Lauren (guest):
My favorite question of if there was one thing that they did in this role and they didn't do anything else, what would make it a success?
Kathy (host):
Nice.
Lauren (guest):
Modeled after the book, The One Thing. Asking, how does it fit in the company as a whole? We have the four Cs that I talked about for a high-performing team. There's actually seven, but we just were talk about the four, unless you're working with us. So it's got all seven on there.
Lauren (guest):
It's got the competencies. So again, what innate talents? Does the person need to have to be successful in the role? Role responsibilities, what outcomes are they going to be held accountable to? Any sort of description, sub-items to that.
Lauren (guest):
Their path towards success. So we want to make sure that as much as they're helping the business, we're helping them. So what is their vision? What does success look like for them in the next year in their personal life, in their professional life? Any sort of threats that we know about that are going to impact this role.
Lauren (guest):
So for a content manager, like a threat would be the algorithm changing or me not getting them what they need so they can make the post. And then the red, yellow, and green actually come in during the monthly review. And so then we look at what worked really well, what didn't. What do they need to do more of? What do they need to stop doing? And then like in terms of their areas of accountability, where did they fall in terms of success on that?
Lauren (guest):
Does that answer your question?
Kathy (host):
Yeah, it does. Thank you. Thank you. I think it's more from someone who's a fractional CFO, I think of more in terms of numbers and yellow, green, and red type of KPIs sort. Is that more of a holistic way you've described this I especially like this, if they did nothing else, what is the one thing that really is important in their job? I really like that on the scorecard, so thank you for explaining that.
Kathy (host):
So, Lauren, we have talked a lot about this, but I always like to ask this one question. Every single guest that comes on this podcast, if someone wants to go and implement this there, there's a lot to implement. There's a lot of material here. But what is the realistic next step that they can do in the next week or two to develop that self-reliant team member and something of a small step that will get them closer to that a hundred level on the scale?
Lauren (guest):
Yeah, so I think probably the first step that's the easiest is just to go and audit your team. See what players you have, and what worker bees you have, and just get the lay of the land of your team currently.
Lauren (guest):
And then if you want to take a bigger step than our, I always recommend actually sitting down and going through the scorecard and really seeing if you have the right butts in the right seats, because it could be that you have a great team, they're just not in the right role, or they're just not clear about their role because a lot of times if an employee's not being as successful as they could be, it's because again, maybe they're at capacity or they're not clear on their expectations, or there's some level of support that they don't have right now that would make all the difference. So if you can take and do one thing this week, it would be just to really take a hard look at your team and make sure that everyone's really clear on why they're here, how they're helping the business, and what they're held accountable.
Kathy (host):
Thank you, Lauren. Where can people find you?
Lauren (guest):
So you can find me @ it'sLaurenGoldstein on Instagram. You can also find me on LinkedIn or you can visit our website www.goldenkeypartnership.com. And I'm going to give you a link to our scorecard, which is a free resource. I love giving it away because such a huge difference in teams, whether you're hiring or whether you have a team, it's going to help you find the right person, and it's also going to help you get the most out of your current team.
Lauren (guest):
So one of my favorite resources, and then if you like, really want to dive into how to hire, you can also I have an on-demand workshop called Bullseye Hiring that goes much deeper into the scorecard and job descriptions and helps you really hit the bullseye with your next hire.
Kathy (host):
And we are going to link all of these in the show notes and also on the blog post as well. So if you are interested, you can take a look at there and it will take you to Lauren's resources.
Kathy (host):
Thank you so much for being on the show, Lauren.
Lauren (guest):
Of course. It was such a pleasure and I could talk about this for hours, so thanks for having me.
Lauren (guest):
Thanks so much for joining us, and I hope that today's episode will help you train your employees into the well-oiled and self-sufficient team your business deserves and needs. Also, if you love this episode, you can find all the timestamps, show notes, blog posts, links, and more on the website, newcastle finance.us/podcast.
Lauren (guest):
And before I go, it's always I do have a favor to ask. If you are listening to this on Apple podcast, if you could please go to the show and tap the number of stars that you think the show has. because this helps with the algorithm and it helps other people find it too and benefit from it. Thanks so much. Until next time.
