Leave Your Team Better Than You Found Them

People want clear, concise direction and accountability. They don't want all the freedom in the world to figure it out on their own. They want the right mix between freedom to fail and learn, but also lots of direction and accountability. And we're back with another episode of.

He Said, she Said.

So we were taking a walk today, and we're just kind of reflecting on team building and all the great people that we've had in our lives that have helped us build teams. But we got onto the conversation because we got the nicest text out of the blue, and it was from a former teammate who went off to do her own thing in a similar space. And she just said something to the tune of, I guess I should have pulled it up for this. But she said something to the tune of, hey, I just wanted to thank you guys. You poured into me. You taught me a lot of things, and it's made a great big difference in my journey and in my success now. And to receive that type of text out of the blue felt so good for so many reasons. And that's why we got on the conversation. It felt good because we left somebody better than we found them. It felt good because we taught them some new skill sets that they were able to monetize later. It felt good because it was confirmation that we left on the right terms at the right time. Like, oh, my God. And so, anyhow, we just want to bring that conversation. You guys, when you're building teams, your whole goal should be leave them better than you found them.

Yeah, it's really interesting because the first time that you hire someone, and honestly, the first few years, it is like the craziest learning cycle. You don't know how to be a boss yet, and you don't know how to manage them, and you don't even know their personalities yet until you really start working with them. So for me, I. I actually, it has been my greatest teacher employing people, because a lot of people, and I know this was me. This is. This is so sad for me to admit, like, but this is baby Lori, so it's totally fine. I thought that when I hired people, they were just, like, meant to show up and, like, fix everything and help me and make it all work. And really, when you have a business, it's about helping them understand what they are supposed to do. So creating structure together, knowing what type of workflow that they need, understanding, you know, and knowing what questions to ask, what type of, you know, schedule they need, what type of environment do they need? And this is really something that for me, has become kind of next level leadership is trying to figure out how they work best by asking enough questions and giving them the structure. Especially if you have an A player, enough things to do. Making sure that they are actually challenged has been so important. Where in the past I remember I would kind of. It's like I set this precedence of almost tiptoeing and almost like, oh, do you mind doing this? And that creates a little bit of a strain in your relationship from the start when you tiptoe and don't give that structure and just want them to show up and figure it out.

Well, it's. Cause when you're, when you're leading people at first, there's a lot of oxymorons, right? There's a lot of counterintuitive things. So here's one of them. You kind of referenced it. People want clear, concise direction and accountability. They don't want all the freedom in the world to figure it out on their own. They want the right mix between freedom to fail and learn, but also lots of direction and accountability. Another oxymoron is you're not supposed to be their friend. I know it feels like you're supposed to, let's build this family and let's all be friends and let's team bond. But there's a distinct middle road between team bonding and being actual friends. And you usually, not always, but you usually don't want to cross that line. Another oxymoron is it's not a friendship, it's an equal energy exchange, right? So the goal is, oh gosh, I got to make sure they like me. Oh, gosh, I got to make sure they like working here. No, you need to make sure that everybody feels like it's a respected equal energy exchange. You are giving them energy in the form of a paycheck and a hopefully a great place to work. They are giving you energy back, equal energy exchange back in the form of output and production and helping you get to the greater goals as a team. But those things don't feel right at first. Walking that middle road doesn't feel natural at first. Keeping those boundaries up doesn't feel natural at first. And the great weird, unexpected punchline is this. When you learn how to walk that middle road instead of going too far into the friend zone or too far into bad boss zone, right? When you learn how to walk that middle road, that's when people are happiest. Not when you pander to them, not when you tiptoe around them, not when you go out of your way. But when you find that happy middle.

Road, I think one of the other things that's been really huge for me is going above and beyond with gratitude. Just words, words of gratitude. And also asking them what is their work Love language. Yes. For real. How do you like to be rewarded? You know, you could be rewarding someone with flowers and things when they would love cash or bonuses or when they would just love words. When they just want to hear what a good job they do, when they just want to be shouted out in front of their teammates, when they just want to be posted about. These are all things that go a very long way that requires check ins. So do you have normal check ins with all of your people to go over all of these questions?

You see what you're talking about in action. By the way, how often do you hear the story of someone who leaves either your place of work or someone else's place of work for a job that pays them less because their love language wasn't max paycheck? Sure, everybody likes to earn a great living, but guess what? That's not top of the totem pole for probably half of the workers out there. They want to be respected. They want either words of affirmation or recognition. There's a saying out there, and it's funny, I said it in a podcast the other day and the guy stopped me. He's like, well, I've never heard that before. But what gets recognized gets repeated, right? People will feed off of recognition.

It's kind of funny. It's kind of like if your partner was always buying you flowers, like every day you got the biggest bouquet of fresh flowers. Except he ignored when you asked him to take out the trash. Or he ignored getting his freaking clothes into the hamper. And it felt like a personal attack every time. Okay, not personal at all. Just kidding. But that is exactly what it's like. It's like you don't even see it. You don't. You're not even grateful for it. But one conversation, he could be like, oh, my God, I didn't want to buy these flowers anyway. And of course I do that. Or maybe I'd shift the money from flowers to a cleaner and fix everything.

It's interesting. I want to shift this a little bit to that next phase of leadership. And that is this concept of leaving them better than you found them. I think people all too often as leaders, they're afraid, hey, if I develop them too much too fast, they're going to go somewhere or they're not going to need Me. But listen, that's what owning a business is. It's very rare you're going to keep someone forever and it's very rare you're going to have enough positions for them to get promoted up to quick enough on their timeline where you'll keep their interest. So you actually have to. If you know you're not going to be able to trap them forever, which you don't want and they don't want, then the next best thing and the thing you should be doing is leaving them better than you found them. Teach them new things, invest in self development guys. For our teams, we have done things like sending them all to Tony Robbins events. We have done things like buying them courses that they want to take. We have reimbursed college tuition for an employee before. We have done a lot of things where our goal was to help them grow and make them better than the day we found them. Make them better financially than the day we found them. Make them better from a skill set standpoint than the day we found them. Make them better positive humans than the day we found them. Make them more hopeful about their own future than we found them. Because here's what happens. Sure, they may leave because they're going to, they're ambitious, they, they don't want to work for you ever. For work for you forever. Newsflash. They want to grow, they crave growth. So they may leave, they're likely going to leave. But you let them leave in the right way and under the right terms and you don't try and keep your thumb under them, but instead you cheer them, you applaud them. You should have the mentality of every time someone leaves you for a better situation, you should be celebrating. Take them out to lunch, to dinner and celebrate, wow, we really left you better than we found you. Joint mission accomplished. That's your role with people. And the irony is they'll actually stick around a little bit longer because they feel that love and they like that growth. Than if you try and try and just keep your thumb down on them.

And if they know you're this type of employer and leader as well, you're not going to be blindsided by the fact that they're leaving. And I'll tell you why. Because when you're open about this, like, hey, we're so grateful for the time we have with you, like, I know what your goals are and I'm so excited about the job that you're doing here and I hope we have you forever. But I know that's probably not the case. But when you go, just let us know. We'd love to help you into your next venture. Like, we've had those conversations where we're like, we love you, we want to keep you forever. But like we know you're going to grow. So what happens is they actually give you, oh, you know, I, I'm thinking of something. I would like to potentially try this out in a month or two. I want to make sure. Yeah, I'm starting a side hustle, but I want to make sure your transition to someone new is so flawless. We've had people stay and train people. We've had people who are like, message me anytime, email me if this person is having any trouble because we didn't say, oh my God, I didn't see this coming or I'm so upset. I can't believe you're doing this to me. That is not what you ever want to say ever to anybody who is leaving. Nope. Because if you are a true leader, you create leaders. And leaders go and lead.

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It was about two years ago, I think. We had two very key employees. Dakota and Emily leave in the same week, both voluntarily. Emily left because she wanted to start a brand herself, teaching people marketing and in online courses. And Dakota left because she was such a great event coordinator for us. She wanted to go off and do it for other people as well. Now you would have thought that would be like, oh my God, gut punch, wind out of my sails. No, we can't do this. What can we do? No, when they told us both, I think it was a day apart. Literally a day apart. We're like literally grounded, meaning in a good way. Feet grounded to the ground, standing there saying, this is what's meant to be. This is good. Go out, flourish, I celebrate you. And here's the punchline. Dakota now still does all of our events, so we still get the benefit of working with someone we love, that we trust, that does a great job for us. But she also gets to go and do other people's events. And it's fun to watch someone you love and care about flourish and make more money than if they were only working for you.

Yes.

Right. What a win. Win.

All right, so we wanted to share some of our just qualms throughout learning and growing. And like I said, if you're in this position in the beginning, I hope that these really help you and reach out and ask people who have had a lot of people under them, because that will probably help you just not only save your people, but actually enjoy the process. We've seen so many entrepreneurs who really, really struggle with their first and second hires because they don't know how to manage those people well yet. And it seems like it's the person you're hiring, but most likely it's probably not. And the faster that we can realize it's most likely our leadership, the more you're going to be able to grow that person and keep them and thrive and flourish together. So, you guys, I hope that this helped. As always, let us know. Give us a tag. Let us know if you are applying this at all in your life. Any last words, Christopher Harder?

Nope. Love and appreciate you. Big year coming up. I hope it's your best year ever. Thank you for listening.

We'll see you next week.

Sam.