The New Way to Lead Your Team Without Burning Out

If working in your small team leads you to work weekends, feel like you're babysitting adults, or feel like you are a human suspension system just taking on all the stress so that things are smooth for the rest of your team, then you need to hear and apply the seven tips I'm going to share in this video because these practices can solve this issue without you having to fire your entire team. Hire an expensive business coach. Daydream about a business mommy who just does everything you don't feel like doing in the business, AKA a business in integrator, switching software, or simply giving up thinking you don't have what it takes. Tip number one is to get used to ritualizing successful behaviors, which is a mouthful. But all I'm trying to say is when you have a big goal, figure out what tiny regular actions you need to take to achieve that goal. That can be by looking at what successful people do using ChatGPT or just thinking about it. For example, if we wanted to have the successful outcome of losing weight, we know we could ritualize this by saying every Monday and Wednesday I'm going to go to the gym, or every day I'm going to maintain a calorie deficit, or every Sunday I'm going to meal prep. These are all things that are recurring, simple actions that if I do them and I care enough to do them, I will achieve the successful outcome. Makes sense, doesn't it? Well, the same thing applies to business. What I call it in a business context is routine ifying. I have a whole video on the concept up here. But when we want to have a certain behavior happen in our team, we want to make a ritual of it. For example, an email subscriber, Jolene, brought in this question. She asked how do I get my team members to look at my process docs more than once? Just like weight loss, this is an outcome we are trying to achieve. So how could we routine ify or ritualize this outcome? Well, we could use a routine such as the one discussed in this video here on getting your SOPs updated we where every 30 days a person is given a task that says review any sops you haven't updated in the last 90 days. What does that do? Well, it incentivizes somebody to regularly check the SOPs just like we want. And if they don't do that regularly, it gives them a one time, I don't want to say punishment, but one time catch up to do that regularly. So at the very minimum, every 90 days SOPs are getting a thorough look over in that way, we are making small routines that achieve the set outcome. Whether your goal is looking at SOPs, losing weight, booking discovery calls, or filming YouTube videos, the secret of all of this is just viewing anything you need to do as a series of habits that kind of compound over time. And your job is to identify the habits and repeat them. So it's just a matter of willpower to actually make it happen. A simple question you can steal to make sure you're applying this in your business is, is this what do I need to do? And at what frequency to be successful in this area? Ask that question to your team or to yourself anytime you're looking to improve a certain area of business and your answer will be routine ifying, AKA ritualizing what success looks like. Habit shift number two is to get used to making what you are doing and what has happened public. Our goal is to create a shared area where we keep a log of all all of the things we've learned in the business. And in this case, learning is referring to mistakes because the fact is, the best way humans learn is by messing things up and correcting them. But here's where it gets good. Okay, you might feel like you're babysitting adults at work, but the fact is you are working with adults, meaning they are capable of learning from other people's experiences rather than just their own. So let me just compare that here. Say there's a stove, it is hot and there's a toddler there. And you say, hey, don't touch the stove, it's hot. What are the odds that that toddler is going to need to touch that stove to prove for themself that yes, it's really hot if they can somehow reach it, that's probably going to happen because toddlers need to have that first hand experience to believe something to be true. Adults, we've been there, we've touched the stove, we've touched the electrical outlet. We know the value of listening to other people's experiences because it can save us pain and suffering. So when it comes to a team environment, by creating this public error area, that's a mouthful. We're basically telling people, hey, don't do this. Touching the stove hurts. Forgetting to update this plugin breaks things. Skipping this detail when invoicing stinks. We are giving this public record of all of the ouchies to avoid. And unlike toddlers, adults will want to know that information to avoid the the headache of having to fix those issues for themselves. Does this mean there will never be mistakes? No. But will we be able to prevent silly mistakes because people will be able to learn from others experiences. Yes. And I should say this specific tip is inspired by subscriber Matthew who left the question how do we change our culture to be more process driven? This is the tip that I would say makes the biggest shift and it all starts with one area in your account. While I wouldn't suggest starting off by bringing this up in a group setting because it can sound like you're pointing fingers if you are in a one on one environment, a good question to ask to kind of start discussing this topic is something like hey, I understand we had an issue with this thing. Can you help me understand what exactly happened to cause this issue? I'm not looking to blame or point fingers. I just want to understand what led to this so we can start moving forward. If you're concerned about this coming off as punitive or punishing for your team, the best way to dismiss that is to start leading by example. So as a CEO, as a manager, as a leader, put your mistakes in there and don't sugarcoat them. Don't put like the oh, I was too perfectionistic. No, this isn't a job interview. We need to actually be honest. Put actual mistakes that you are making big problems as you are solving them into this area so that you can model that it is okay. The majority of the mistakes during this initial period should be from leadership and over time you'll see that transition to a more equal percentage. That brings us to tip number three which is require preventative actions. That means when something goes wrong, do not accept or look for an I'm sorry kind of statement or it won't happen again. Sure, those things might make someone feel better because they feel less guilty. But as a leader, as someone trying to build a process driven organization, I don't want to say that stuff doesn't matter. But that shit don't matter. That's just for your own validation. Do with it as you will. Logically, what we need is a here's what's going to happen in the future. So not sorry is not blame, not well here's why or excuses. Just okay this happened. Here are the steps I'm going to take. The preventative actions that will prevent this action in the future. Makes sense, right? For example, let's say a typo went out in our newsletter. The preventative action might be having a checklist of things to look for before scheduling a newsletter to that includes checking for typos. Or let's say we had a client call we were hosting and the person responsible for it was out sick and didn't find anyone to cover, so the clients were ghosted. Oh my gosh. Terrible situation. Preventative action might be that there are always two people on every call, so if that ever were to happen again, it wouldn't be a big deal because there are two people there. These preventative actions tend to be small tweaks that the person responsible for the area is in charge of solving. So not me, the founder, not the owner, not the manager. It is the job of the person. So if I messed up the newsletter, I got to prevent this issue in the future. If I messed up the event, I need to prevent this issue in the future. If I messed up scripting a video, I need to prevent this issue in the future. It is an individual responsibility. The only job of the manager in this situation is to oversee and guide and to make sure it actually happens. A good prompt for a manager or someone who's managing themselves to get into this mindset is what can I do today to make sure that repeating this mistake is almost impossible? By the way, if you're a bit of a nerd and would like to have a more personalized assessment of which of these tips might be most helpful for you, I actually have a free resource I'll link in the description it's in Free Operations audit. It asks you a bunch of questions about how your team runs and then it gives you a recommendation as to which area of systemization there are three is your greatest struggle. We've already had thousands of small teams go through this audit, which is completely free. So if you want to try it for yourself and see where you stack up, you can use the link in the description below. Tip number four is about infusing learning into your culture. And when I say infusing it into your culture, I do not mean getting the word learning printed out in giant letters and posting it on your wall because that doesn't do shit. What I actually mean is working it into the conversations you're having. For example, have a section in your performance reviews where you assess how well does this team member demonstrate a student mentality? Or in your team meetings have a what lessons did we learn this week Section in the agenda. In my view, student mentality is a beautiful in between away from the move fast and break things at all costs, Startup land and the never make a mistake because we need four layers of approval for anything. Corporate land student mentality beautifully in the middle. All this is is about creating space to turn mistakes and preventative actions into into celebrations. And that kind of connects the last two tips to this one. So just to break it down, we might have had the mistake of forgetting to follow up with a customer. That stinks. But then we might have had the preventative action of creating a template. So anytime we have a sales call come in, we always have a task to follow up. Great. Now, in this step, this third phase, I'm going to go into my team meeting and celebrate. We now have an amazing template for keeping track of follow ups. And by me sharing that not only am I now celebrating the learning process, I might inspire somebody else on the team to use that template or to create a similar template to prevent an issue that they might have in the future as well. Now, there are so many formats where you can infuse this kind of celebration into your culture, but if you're looking for a way to involve it in conversation right now or today, a prompt I would use is the simple question, what did we learn from this? And just be careful, when you do this, you're not like, well, what did we learn from this? Because then you're going to come off as an asshole and that's not going to be helpful. Instead, we just want to approach this constructively, like a teacher reflecting on the lesson we just went through and just turn around with a smile and say, so what did we learn from this experience? And shut your mouth and let everyone else talk. But speaking of keeping your mouth shut, sometimes you're better off speaking out. And that comes from a question from subscriber Christian, who asks, how do I change an entrenched employee mindset where they're really used to not updating documentation and other pieces? My suggestion for Christian is to start prompting in conversation the actions you want to see. For example, you said you're going to update those emails. Yep. Great. Can you tag me in the task? Um, you know, okay, if you haven't created the mistake task yet, create it and then tag me in it. Because otherwise I'm going to start following up with you every day with an email to figure out the status of things, and that's going to be a pain in everyone's butt. Yeah, I'll do that. In that way, we are firmly reminding our expectation and reminding people of what the cost is of not complying with the system. In this case, it's if you don't create the task, not only are you breaking our policy, but I'm going to annoy the hell out of you with emails, which is wasting more of both people's Time. So we're making it the obvious choice to follow the policy, which in this case is to log the issue task. This all comes back to one of our rules of process, which is that memory is a liability. And if you want to store information, amazing. But don't store it in a human brain, which is meant for processing things, not storing things. All right, so we've got two tips to go. But one thing I want to remind you of here is that if you just follow all of the tips I'm laying out in this video, you will never have a mistake or firefighting happening in your business ever again. That was like the most YouTube thing I've ever said. That is also completely not true. Look, I'm not going to be one of those bro y marketing guys on YouTube saying do my tips and your business is going to be great like this. There's plenty of them. I'll give it to you straight. This is not going to prevent every issue your business will ever have. Anyone who promises that is lying. But when these issues come up, you'll be prepared like a firefighter. Meaning you've got your plan of action, you know exactly how to fix it, and you've got direction. I know I've said this a lot of times now on the channel, but when you have pressure, without direction and knowing what to do, that is the cause of stress at work. When you have pressure but a clear path to focus on, that's velocity, that's motivation, that's speed of resolving the issue. That is what these habits are about. It's not about making you some kind of perfect business that never makes mistakes. As long as you join my six figure mastermind. Like baloney. What it's about is making you quickly take an issue that happens, focus your team and take action to correct it. All while removing stress and replacing it with incentives, speed and motivation. Speaking of motivation, tip number six is about making sure you're incentivizing the right things. So I'll give you a quick example. I worked with a client recently who had a small team and one of the challenges they had is that they wanted the team to be more responsible. But the challenge is the team's incentives. What they were measured upon, celebrated for, or, you know, yelled at for was around task completion. And basically the rule was as long as you didn't have any overdues, you were good. If you had any overdues, you were trash. Maybe not that extreme, but still. So the team was incentivized to take on as little as possible as Long as they finished everything that they did. Striving to do more and take on bigger projects was actually discouraged because you would be punished if you did not finish all of your tasks in the day. That's a not so great side effect of treating overdue tasks as your main metric because you were incentivizing a not so great behavior. Instead, what I would suggest you look at is incentivizing creation of value. So give team members key metrics that are tied to what actually generates value for your customers. We have a whole video on key metrics up here if you want to learn more about it. But rather than tasks complete, could it be support tickets resolved if that's not possible because you've got a very collaborative environment and there aren't any individual metrics possible, could we at least flip from overdue tasks to number of tasks complete so it's a positive metric where the more you do, the better. That way if someone has a mistake that happens and that derails their day, we can celebrate them for solving it instead of saying, oh my God, you have an overdue, which is basically telling them, hey, if there's a mistake, make somebody else fix it because it's going to get you behind. If you're looking to check if the incentives might be part of why you or your team are spending your time in the wrong ways or doing more of the wrong actions, a great question to ask is why? Why are you doing that? Why is that your top priority this week? Why is this project important? Especially if you are a manager of other people asking your direct reports, why are those your top priorities for the week? We'll tell you so much about where the incentives are are making sure you don't go at it with an accusational tone, right? Like, once again, don't be a jerk. You really just want to understand what is their thought process. You will be shocked by some of the responses you get. I remember asking once, you know, why are you working on this project? And the direct report said, oh well, I really think it's important that we set up this affiliate program because it's going to make such a big difference. And I turned to the person, I said, you know our affiliate program makes like a hundred dollars a month, right? Like if you just worked on this, that would have a much bigger impact overall. But they didn't realize it because they were so focused in their own lane. So I would just encourage you, you want to dive into this area, ask why? Review your key metrics. And this tip, I should say, is in response to subscriber Phil's question, which is how do I convince my team members they want this too? The answer, Phil, is by making sure you're building incentives and rewarding based on the things you want to see. And remember that free operations audit in the description will help you know where to focus and where you should focus your team. So that's down there if you want it. Last but certainly not least, the most impactful tip. If you take nothing away from this video, take this one. Don't borrow emergencies. And I have to say this one with a bit of a chuckle because this is the most difficult habit for me. I have a terrible habit of not following this habit. So let's both do better and treat this as the top priority going into this next year. Here's how it works. When someone doesn't prepare, when someone doesn't read the sop, when someone doesn't follow the policy and haywire happens, see it happen, note it in your noggin for personnel files or anything else, and do not take on the issue for yourself. That's it. This habit is a very useful one to have. In response to the subscriber question we had, of course, who am I producing SOPs for? No one reads, right? If you follow this habit, sops will be read. So let's go through an example of what this might look like. Let's say you were drafting emails. You've got one person drafting, you are reviewing, and then the email gets scheduled. Someone drafts. Amazing. The draft gets onto your plate, you look at it and you're like, wait, this is missing this. This is missing this. This is. This is totally not following our process. When this happens, do not fix it. Do not suddenly start drafting the email just because it wasn't done. No, instead you go back to that drafting task. You find it, wherever it is, you reopen it. You say, this is not complete. You leave a comment that says, I was supposed to review this email, but it was not complete. Please complete it according to the SOP and resubmit it when it's ready. By the way, this is now one day overdue and the deadline is xyz. If it's not done by that point in time, we're going to have a problem. Or whatever the stakes are. Want another example? Let's go with this one. Let's say Bob is in charge of retiring an offer. You have a service you're offering, you're not offering it anymore, and you say, hey Bob, you're in charge of making this disappear. So it doesn't show up anywhere. Well, a week later someone reports that this offer is still visible. It's linked in a bunch of places. It was never removed. What do you do? Well, the normal default reaction is, ah, they didn't do their job. So now it's my problem. I might as well just do it myself. God, I can't trust anybody. Bebe. Bleh. You know, been there, right? It's not just me. Instead, what you need to do is go to the person responsible, say Bob, who said he was going to do this weeks ago, and say, bob, finish what you said you did. You told us you told the whole team it was complete. It wasn't complete. Go finish it and make it Bob's problem. Bob's the one working late. Bob's the one stressed out over it. Bob's the one who's worried about all the support tickets coming in because they're all assigned to Bob. As hard as this can be, because sometimes it means that resolutions take longer, that clients have to wait longer for responses, that the business is having more pain by having this go back to Bob. In this case, it is the thing you need to do. These scenarios sound easy for you to navigate and you're like, ah, no problem. Of course I'd give it back to Bob. Job think again. Because both of these scenarios are actually real things that have happened in the last year in my own business. And I'll tell you, only half of them did I have the self control to not help solve the issue and put out the fire before it spread. So while this is definitely the most powerful habit I think in this whole bunch, it may not be the easiest one. But even though I might not be an expert in giving critical feedback to employees, I do know someone who is. Watch this video on the end screen where I sit down with seasoned manager Zandra and she shares her tips on how to give critical feedback in a constructive way and how to approach offboarding if things aren't going the right path. Watch that video here and until next time, enjoy the process.