As a business owner you might be familiar with this journey…At first, it’s just you, flying solo doing all the things. Then you hire your 1st team member (most probably a VA) and they take some tasks off your plate – time to celebrate!
And as the business grows more and more things need to get done so you hire your 2nd and 3rd team members, and possibly more from there. You need marketing support, a graphic designer and an accountant at least.
And then all of a sudden, you’re too busy again. But things are different now.
“Why is this happening, I’m paying all of these team members to take care of things for me. Why does it seem like I am back in the middle of everything again?”
Sounds familiar?
The truth is that managing a team is a lot of work – even the most amazing team need direction, especially at first. It’s a new set of challenges that need to be worked out.
Yes, even when you’ve got the right people, doing the right things with lots of skill and heart, someone still has to have their arms around all of it. They still need a captain to steer the ship. You’ve lost these day-to-day tasks off your plate, but you’re still maxed out – just in a different way.
So how do we deal with this? One of the most important things you can remember about building and leading a team is that it doesn’t happen in isolation. It’s a communication exercise now. You need everyone on board with your goals, from top level management (most probably you and or your business partners if you have them), through to the team members who execute the plans and directions on your behalf.
It takes time and it also requires some effort upfront. Putting good communication plans in place once you reach a certain number of team members is KEY.
So, if managing a team feels like A LOT, that’s because it is.
To help with this I have pulled together solutions to the 3 most common productivity-sapping team management issues I see in every business. How does yours measure up?
The problem – Answering Questions
No matter how well a task or project is planned out, your team will have questions. Things you couldn’t have thought to answer ahead of time will come up. And if someone with the answers isn’t available to give guidance, tasks and projects will stall.
The solution – create a FAQ or Wiki page for each project where you can save all of the project information, and add to it every time a question comes up that could be valuable to the team. Check out ClickUp for some great project. management solutions that can work for this.
The problem – Checking Work
No one wants to be a micromanager, and no one wants to have someone looking over their shoulder all day. But here’s the absolute truth: we have to inspect what we expect.
The solution – A big part of leading a team is walking around ‘the office’ to make sure things are being executed correctly. We must do this virtually too. Great teams do their best work when they are working with a manager who is active and engaged in the process.
The problem – No processes to follow
Businesses cannot run on people alone. Even the most loyal, been there since the beginning, can’t imagine the business without them team members will move on (or be unavailable) at some point. This is why documented SOPs are SO important… mission critical in fact.
The solution – A big part of managing a team is a) making sure everyone has processes to follow and b), ensuring everyone’s processes get documented and maintained. A team member dedicated to managing and documenting these processes is highly advisable once you reach a certain size in your business. You can read more about the importance of SOP’s here.
Building and leading a team is not a simple set it and forget it task. It is a huge part of things running smoothly in your company. And if you’re feeling like you don’t have time for all of this (not to mention hiring, on-boarding and training), you would be right! It’s a lot!
Once you’re beyond one or two team members it makes sense that you as the business owner have a hard time looking after the team. When you’re busy doing that, you are not busy doing the things only you can do for the business.
As a Certified Online Business Manager® and Director of Operations, People Management is one of the things I take care of for my clients when we work on a retainer basis. Could this be the next step in your business development?
If you’ve realised you’re the bottleneck stopping your business from growing wings, if you know things are not happening as they should, or if you know your business is reliant more on people than processes, I’d love to connect and learn more. Either leave me a comment below, or head over to my BookMe page and let’s get a date in the diary.
