Stop thinking of yourself as a player; see yourself as the head coach, captain, or general!
If you are doing menial tasks, like answering the phone, you have to change your mindset. If you wouldn’t pay someone a CEO salary to do the job, then you shouldn’t be doing it. Ask yourself “What is my time worth?” or “Should I be doing this task, and could someone else be doing it?”
You should only be spending your time on the big picture priorities of developing and growing your business!
1: Build your “Dream Team” – and pay for it.
Top talent might cost a little more, but if you have the right talent, it’s worth it to pay over the industry standard or your local competition, but it’s also not always about the salary. Your compensation package should be comprehensive. Offering an extra week of vacation, personal days, sick time, or 100% paid health insurance premiums can go a long way. A Glassdoor survey found that 70% of talent would prefer better benefits over salary.
2. Delegate
Why delegate, and when?
Oftentimes people don’t delegate because it takes a lot of up-front effort. First you have to explain something that you already know backwards and forwards, when you could probably just do it in half the time, in order for someone to complete the task. However, when you delegate properly, it’s successful for everyone. If the task can be done by someone else, it someone else can learn from the task and it’s not time sensitive, it’s best to delegate that out.
The truth is, your skills as the head coach are better used to further develop the strategy, new ideas, and managing the organization. By doing the work yourself, you’re failing to make the best use of your time, potentially losing revenue in the process.
Also, your team isn’t being developed for long term growth and your management team will feel ineffective creating a negative culture portraying you as a “Helicopter Leader”
3. Build Great Company Culture
You may have heard the phrase, so-and-so “drinks the company Kool-Aid…” Great! Serve them another glass and get rid of the naysayer- no I’m not kidding, do it now!
Those negative or pessimistic views people spew are toxic to building a great company culture. Your staff will thank you for it; we’ve lived through it! How people “feel” is a reflection on you and the company culture you’ve established, and people will “disengage” at work if you don’t have a strong culture.
Studies show that 50.8% of employees are “not engaged”. Companies that increase their number of talented managers and double the rate of engaged employees achieve, on average when employees are highly engaged. (Sources: Gallup)
Do you see the $$? If you’re running your business like a CEO, I do! So, how do you build company culture?
- Lay your corner stone. What’s your mission statement, vision statement, and values?
- Use your employees to help find culture weak points; think about a survey!
- Use your team to create your culture together! You want everyone drinking the Kool-Aid!
- Launch your core values. Communicate them well. Put them in every aspect of your business from recruitment to termination.
- Provide top notch training.
When core values are properly aligned, and everyone is following them, you will begin to speak a different language; your core value language.
