How to Get Your Team to Do What You Want: A Simple Approach for Small Business Owners to Follow
Just 4 simple questions will help you solve one of the biggest problems for small business owners, and I promise they will work for you like they work for my clients!
Working with many small and medium business owners, I find that one of the most common complaints is “Why can’t my people do what they’re supposed to do?”
For business owners, it can be a big deal that casts doubt on the future success of the business.
Usually, without your people doing what they’re supposed to do, the pressure on you as an owner goes through the roof; resulting in you spending even more hours on the business. In fact, the cry of “It’s easier to do it myself” becomes more and more frequent as the cost of payroll continues. Unfortunately, ‘do it yourself’ will put a glass ceiling on your business’ ability to grow. Therefore, it needs to be fixed.
So what is causing the problem?
Well, the brutal reality is that the cause of the problem is exactly the same as the source of the solution. Are you!
It is very easy to blame others, but as a business owner, you are responsible for all the successes and all the failures. The only reason (good or bad) your business is where it is now is because of the actions you’ve taken. Do you agree?
Let that sink in for a minute… because the moment you accept that as the truth, then we can move on. If you don’t agree, stop reading now and email me; we need to talk.
Okay, are you ready for the questions?
I have given some information below each of them to help define what each question means.
Just 4 simple questions to ask yourself to get your team to do what you want them to do
1 Have I clearly explained what I want my people to do?
In my experience of working with business owners in Coventry and Warwickshire, not explaining what is needed and the consequences of the results of their efforts is the number 1 cause of people not doing what you want them to do.
Business owners are generally not good at clearly explaining exactly what we want people to do. We often expect people to “know” what to do. After all, we hired them to do the job, right? But if you haven’t explained what you want in a way that is understandable to the employee, how are they supposed to know what he has in mind? Pretty obvious, but few homeowners do this.
The solution is to have a clearly defined role profile that breaks down each of the key elements or objectives of the role in plain language. The test is that if the employee did all the tasks on the list to his satisfaction, would he be satisfied? Also, if you weren’t around and someone else had to do the job, would the role profile give you enough clarity that you don’t need to augment the description with some additional clarity?
As I said earlier, a written job profile needs to be understood not only by you, but also by your employee. To make sure you are clear about the requirements of your profile, ask the employee if he understands it and to tell you in his own words how he interpreted it.
Sometimes their answers will surprise you. At first, it may mean that you have to redraw the profile, but over time the answers will be more consistent and this process could even show points in the business where you need to improve.
Job profiles are different from corporate job descriptions or job titles, which have become much vaguer in recent years. Successfully completed role profiles remove the ambiguity of what is expected. If you want to see an example of a role profile, send me an email.
2 Have I clearly defined what a good job looks like? Will they be able to know what results will create success and make me happy?
The second biggest issue I run into, too often, is that the staff member can’t do enough to meet the owner’s demands. However, when questioned, the owner cannot tell me clearly how he intends to measure the employee’s performance. They just expect the employee to ‘Get it!’
Can you see how that is a recipe for general dissatisfaction? The employee tends to feel that nothing he does is enough, but he does not have or is given clarity about what is needed to improve.
The solution is to define what result each particular job requires, key objectives, timing, consequences, etc., and provide some guidance on how you want to achieve it. Unless it has to be an extremely rigid format, don’t define the work down to the finest detail. The reason for this is that the employee may well find a better way of doing something than he has thought of. We don’t all work the same. As long as the result defined by you is achieved or exceeded without prejudice to other procedures, accept your changes.
By defining what great work looks like, you can help everyone know when they are successful. Email me if you’d like to see an example of a feature profile.
3 Have I helped them understand the importance of the task at hand and how it benefits the rest of the team/business?
Most companies have interdependencies between different teams and within team members, and the performance of a single team member can affect the performance of all the others. Not just in terms of morale, but also because the failure of one staff member can prevent the next one from doing their task or even undo previously completed work.
Too often I have seen individuals and teams selfishly succeed at the expense of others within their organization. Not exactly a “One for all and all for one” attitude!
The solution is to make sure your staff really understand what the common goal is that they are contributing to and what their role is within the company/department in helping to achieve that goal. From experience, I have found that rather than having one-on-one meetings, larger group meetings can be very beneficial. These occasional company/department ‘awareness’ meetings are best done when as many as possible are able to attend and interact with staff from other departments. Another way I’ve seen it done is for a couple of members of one department to ‘present’ to another department how their particular role fits in with the whole company picture. These short presentations are typically 10 minutes or less in length and can be very effective in creating a true picture of the operation of the entire company.
I read a powerful story recently that illustrates this point: – A group of journalists were touring NASA around the time of the moon shots and they came across a janitor who was busy sweeping the floor. What are you doing here? One of the reporters asked, looking slightly over his nose at this guy. Without hesitation, the janitor replied, “I’m helping put a man on the moon.”
So how do your people feel like they’re contributing to your company’s broader mission?
4 Have you set aside regular times for honest 1-2-1 reviews of your performance?
This is another area that I see frequently causing problems. There is simply not enough two-way communication within companies; even, indeed especially, at the higher levels.
So right now, do you have a regular schedule of 1-2-1 meetings between an employee and their line manager? To be honest, the owners who do are in the minority of small business owners!
The benefits of these meetings are that the employee can assess their own performance against their given goals and have their line manager validate (or not) that vision. Just a word of warning here, DO NOT call them appraisal, performance, or appraisal meetings. People don’t like to feel like they’re constantly being judged by their employers, and those meeting titles send that same message. Rather, people like to think of themselves as an important part of a process. So maybe call them something like production meetings or development meetings. Any meeting title you want, as long as it doesn’t sound like you’re judging the employee. So many times I have heard people say ‘I have my appraisal meeting tomorrow’ with the same tone of voice used as if I were sentenced for murder.
No matter how well the employee performs, these 1-2-1 meetings can be the opportunity to identify ways the employee can contribute even more. Where there are gaps in performance versus requirements, there is an opportunity to do something about it. It should also be the time when an employee can suggest to the employer/manager ways he thinks operations can improve, or are lacking, but may be outside his scope of employment. There are many times when employees have identified possible points of improvement that an employer would find difficult to know about.
If nothing else has a 1-2-1 review, when done correctly, it allows the staff member to feel valued and listened to. Which will make them better employees and more likely to do what you want them to do! If you want some ideas on how to set up an evaluation system, send me an email.
conclusion
Great communication within a business is not hard to do, but it is also very easy not to do it. Before you file this document, take 5 minutes to write down your key learnings from this article and decide what actions you want to take to improve your team’s performance over the next 90 days.