Help your team help you.
One of the biggest stressors I hear from clients as they’re scaling and growing their team sounds like:
“Why aren’t they helping me?!!”
“Why don’t they get it?!”
“This is costing me so much time and money, and I could just do it faster myself.”
This can be frustrating on your side AND your team’s side, because the truth-truth is most people WANT to do a good job and support you.
I find that a lot of times when you’re frustrated on the business owner side or the team is frustrated on the team side, oftentimes it’s because somewhere we’re not being as clear as we could be in what we’re expecting on those deliverables or on the timeline for that task.
Usually, there’s an opportunity here for more clarity with:
1. communication around how you’re explaining what you want done (deliverables)
2. timeline
Because you, in your brain, might know *exactly* what you’re expecting because you’re in your business all day long.
But, we have to remember for our team members, not only are they not in your business all day long (and probably in multiple other businesses), they also can’t read your mind .
Getting clear on specific deliverables and timelines allows you to help your team help you.
For example, asking your team to help you with your Facebook group to “pump up the energy” might make sense to you, but on the team side, that could mean so many different things.
This opens up a lot of room for interpretation on tasks/deliverables and it’s vague on the timeline. What exactly is the task you want the team to execute on? How are you measuring success? Does this mean spend as much time as it takes? Does this mean a few hours?
This can be also be frustrating on your side as the business owner when you get a fat invoice with waaaay more hours than you expected for work that’s being done that’s not at all what you *actually* wanted.
It’s also not so fun on your team’s side when they feel like they’re feeling around in the dark and hoping they’re getting things right or worried about your response when they send off said invoice. Remember, your team is, well, on your team, and wants to support you and your business.
Help your team help you and minimize the miscommunication and stress on both sides by spending some time upfront to over-communicate exactly what it is you want support around, your specific expectations for deliverables, and a clear timeline.
Wishing you your version of success.