“Sometimes managing people becomes such a burden. Part of that has to do with my fears about confrontation and with understanding things that they don’t get. And part is just wanting to focus on doing what we do, not all the details that go into making that happen. Is it worth the effort?”
Every small-business owner is faced with the challenge of managing people. Remember two things: 1.) you can’t go it alone and 2.) having a team that supports you makes things easier. Building a support team is all about understanding what you need and talking openly about that.
Early in the business, the company needs generalists and multitaskers. There are often more tasks than people. As the company grows, job functions become more specialized. Routines are put in place. Lower level skills can complete assigned tasks. As sales volume increases, repetitive tasks consume more time of a single individual. There’s a shift from the need for generalists to the need for specialists.
The right fit
Some individuals make the transition from generalist to specialist and some don’t. Periodically the company needs to take a look at who’s on board, and how well they fit the jobs the company needs done. That includes having frank conversations about how employees do/don’t fit where the company is going.
Try one-on-one conversations with employees. Talk about what is and isn’t working. Get employee feedback on how they see the situation. Here are some questions you might want to try:
- How do you think the job has changed over the past year? What do you like about the changes? What don’t you like about the changes?
- What tasks are easiest for you? What cause you the most difficulty?
- If you could be doing any job in the company, what job would you prefer to be doing?
- If you could work anywhere, what’s your ideal work situation?
- It looks to me like you’re struggling with some of the tasks assigned to you. What does it look like from your end?
- What do you see yourself doing a couple years from now?
- How do you plan to add more value to the job you do/would like to do, in order to justify a bigger income in the future?
- How do you expect to gain the skills you’ll need to keep growing?
Moving up or on
Listen very carefully to the answers. There are some right answers, and some wrong ones.
If you get excuses, blaming, cover up, objection to learning, that’s not good. Also beware if you’re hearing it’s all about the individual, not about the company. You may need to re-focus the conversation. You might want to say:
I want to focus on you, your fit to the company and what you can do to change things, to make things better for yourself and the company.
I hear a lot of excuses. That’s not productive. What role can you play in making things better?
How does what you want to accomplish fit with where the company is going?
If you want to do something different, who will step in to fill your shoes in your present job and what do they have to do to prepare for that?
Keep in mind that turnover can be a good thing. Tell employees it’s OK to pursue something that is a better fit. Ask people to talk about long-term plans beyond the time they work for the company.
Get people in the habit of training their replacements, so they can move up/move on and you don’t get stuck. Openly discuss an individual’s future, even if that includes moving on from the company. At the same time, identify those individuals you see as long-term players, either because they have the greatest growth potential or because they are the best at what they do and they want to keep doing just that. Talk with them specifically about how you see their fit.
