A business owner describes moving from seeing employees as distractions to asking about their 3-5 year goals and connecting personally with each team member. Servant leadership means slowing down and supporting people, not just extracting production.
What does it look like to sit down with somebody and I'll give you my perspective on it and to make sure that you are clear on what matters most to them. This is where I feel like most team leaders have not put themselves in a position to slow down enough and connect with another human being. Simply have a conversation with someone else and ask them, like, hey, hey, where do you want to be in the next three to five years? Write that down as you're listening to this podcast. Pause it and write that down. You have to go in and talk to all of your team members and ask them the question, where do you want to be in the next three to five years in your business, with your family, with your finances, and in other areas of life that might matter the most to you? Just ask them that question and engage in a conversation with another person. Me and my journey. I was so busy where I viewed my people. This is going to sound horrible. It's the truth. I viewed my people for at least the first part of my business growth journey as a distraction and an inconvenience. Not because I'm a bad person, because I was so overwhelmed with production and building the team and building systems and trying to be profitable and evaluating lead sources and getting distracted and trying to be a good dad and trying to be a good husband. And like all these things that fly into our world that take us away from the actual point of being a business owner is to humbly serve the people that agree to work with you. That is it right there. You have to be in a place of service and submission. Doesn't mean that you're. You let your people just walk all over you. You. You have to humbly submit to the people that are willing to work with you and realize that they're putting a lot on the line to work with you. Me and my journey. I was always thinking, not always, maybe the first two thirds of my journey, I was always. I had this mindset and a little bit of resentment toward folks in my world that man, I provide so much. I give so much. And it wasn't in anger. It wasn't. It was more of a frustration, like, I can never make you happy. Like, I buy all these leads, I give you all these systems, I have all these administrators hired. I've taken all this stuff off your plate and you're still questioning this or questioning that or you're not really doing what I would want you to do. You're not honoring your time blocks the way I would want you to on your time blocks. And it can become this sort of frustration, you know, and this constant tug of war between your team members and you as the team owner.
