Small Business Blog

Team Coaching - Coach Your Team and Remove Staff Interruptions

Here's How You Can Personally Coach Your Team To Take On  More Responsibility. Leaving You More Time To Focus On Whatever You Like ...

Do you want more freedom? Freedom to focus on growing your business, freedom to maximise the value of the asset you have worked so hard for all these years to create, or freedom to start enjoying life's simple pleasures like golf on Wednesday Morning, or 3 weeks holiday to Europe, socialising with friends, or spending more time with family. Whatever you want to do more of it really means you'll need to be needed less and less at your business. Wake Up! What are you doing every day to ensure you are not needed in your business?

Learn what I believe is one of the simplest methods I have come across to be needed less by your business. In fact, I'd go as far as saying this method is more important and supersedes "systems" in its effectiveness to get results for business owners (Big Call... Heck Yes!)

 

Big Call...Systems suck if you have to run them, or worse you have a team and they don't use them!

I remember meeting a business owner a few years ago now who was obsessed with systems, and the fact that they were the answer to all his problems. His problems were similar to many business owners, working 60+ hours a week for, well... nothing really. At the heart of his issue was not systems, (sure they desperately needed improvement) but he was the core issue and his relationship with his team.

Each time he would try to sit down to gather his thoughts to work on improving the business process, he would get interrupted.

You see, from working with hundreds of business owners over the years one thing has become perfectly clear to me, business owners get interrupted so much that sometimes it almost becomes their role! So... business owners have 2 areas they mainly deal in...

• 1)Doing actual work, whether it's operational or sales focused or whatever... actual work that if they were ultimately not needed in the business someone else will have to do.
• 2)Interruptions... and interruptions are in the following four areas... i) Team, ii) Customers, iii) Suppliers, iv) Personal.

So if you could have a tool to start to reduce the number of interruptions you'd automatically reduce the hours you work and be needed less and less in the business right?

Wait, the tool I've got is more than just that, it starts to get the team to think for themselves, to become proactive, to take responsibility, to use their own brain and initiative, which ultimately leads to more and more "Actual Work" that you as the business owner do being done by the team until; your definition and required level of freedom is achieved...i.e.

• a)Reduce number of hours you work each week from 60hrs to 40hrs. (Or)...
• b)Start working 3 ½ days not 5. (Or)...
• c)Able to go on holiday for 3 weeks without talking to the team. (Or)...
• d)Turn your star employee into a General Manager and sell the business as a ‘fully managed investment", giving you a greater sale price and more money for your ‘rejuvenation' period (note: rejuvenation not retirement. Retirement is dead for all you baby boomers, think rejuvenation, think the greater the value of your business the more fun you can have!).

You too can learn how to COACH your team...

Coaching is simply the encouragement and helping of others figure out the answer for themselves. In a nut shell all you need to do is ask questions!

What....? Where...? How...? When...? Why...? Who...?

These are not Yes or No questions, but thought provoking questions that require people to do what?..... THINK! So the next time, Jack comes to you and asks you how to do such and such, or Mary asks where to find blah, or Bob wants to know what to do next, or Sam needs to know what's happening with that order... you ask them a question to let them figure it out! Warning, this requires more patience than you have previously shown, after all I understand it's is just a heck of a lot quicker to ‘tell' them the answer, right?

If you always tell, they'll always ask. If you always ask them questions until they figure the answer out, what do you think might start to happen? Well, they'll likely now know where to find that information, or how to deal with that situation, or ultimately they'll begin to understand that you trust them to make the decision themselves.

Here are some examples:

So Jack, tell me, how would you do such and such? Really, why is that? What are the impacts to (the business/other team members) if we do it like that? Ok, so why is that important?

So Mary, where would you look for blah? Ok, but if you did know, where would you start to look?

So Bob, what is your role? What is the purpose of that role? What other activities would indicate that you are doing that role well? Which one of those activities do you think is the most important? Really, why is that? What are the impacts... Etc...

"Ok James, so above we deal with interruptions, what about reducing the actual work I do?"

The answer... Well just think for a second, what is it that I do with my clients that are enrolled in one of my advisory programmes? ....... How often do I talk to them do you think?...... How often do I communicate with you via this newsletter?.......  Weekly, right? So I propose you have weekly 15 - 60min one-on-one "Coaching Sessions" with your team. Think I'm kidding, heck no! How do I get my clients to get great results? With a 15-60min weekly session of course! How do I provide you with value the mimosaWEEKLY TIP^TM? With easy to consume weekly information. Provide an environment that improves on a regular basis.

How often are you setting goals with your team (or if you have a large team, your key team members only, eventually the key team members will coach those they lead) in a one-on-one basis? What are you doing to have a process of improvement and growth in each of your team members so that between them they can ultimately do all of your "actual work"?

In the Weekly Coaching Sessions; get the individual to set their own goals and action points by asking questions so you facilitate and lead the session until they come up with the goals. They write them down, then next week they report back on what they achieved on their goal list, you ask more questions and they set new goals... and so on...

You'll be amazed at the progress, at the new speed your team can operate, at all the things that are starting to be achieved. And you'll be relieved to feel that you are not the only one that comes in to do battle every day, you'll start to see that yes you can have a self-managed team, you simply need to provide the right environment.... a coaching environment.

This week's action points...

Take this seriously. Don't just give it a go, then slip back to your old habits in a month, make a commitment, a commitment to yourself...  define the ‘freedom' you are after and commit to becoming a coach and a leader to develop your team to get there.