Watch This if You Get Disappointed With Employees

If you've ever had a manager or an employee not put full effort towards the task at hand or felt like they never did a great job or as good as you, I hope this video helps. The reason that most great performers will not deploy 100% of their effort towards the mission is not because it's a bad idea or a good idea, it's that it's not their idea. And as much as we want to say that everyone should just do their job, Most people deploy more energy towards things that they came up with, their ideas. And one of the things that you can do is ensure that when there's a mission that's critical to the business, that the ideas of the team are the ones that we act on instead of just always as the owner or the founder pushing through our ideas. So we were talking inside of the Home Service Boardroom, which is a community of million-plus dollar business owners. About this. And I shared 5 steps that you can use to see your manager step up and really go the next— go to the next level, go the extra mile, and really deploy what I call discretionary effort, which is they don't have to put this effort in, but they do it because they care. They do it because they really do want to see something happen inside the organization. This is the thoughts in the shower. You don't pay them any extra. They're off the clock. They don't have to be thinking about the business. This is time when they're in bed and they wake up and they start thinking about the business. This is discretionary effort. They can decide to deploy that effort or not. And the vast majority of wins in business and getting ahead happens at— when discretionary effort is deployed. The effort that does not have to be deployed, but it does because of care and attention and passion for what they're trying to work on. And so the question becomes, how do I get other people to do this? Because As the business owner, as the founder, you have your equity wrapped up in the business. You have the livelihood of your family wrapped up in the business. But for someone that you're paying by the hour or you're paying salary, how do I get them to deploy discretionary effort? How do I get them to think about the business and solutions to the problems in the business when they're not on the clock? Or when there is opportunity that they could be doing something else, but they would rather, they would prefer to think about the problems inside the business. And how to solve them. And so I have 5 steps. The first one is hearing their idea. If you're just constantly shoving down the throat of your team, your ideas, your plans of action, and you're taking this top-down approach of always just taking action on your ideas, they just become glorified task doers. And especially when you're 3, 4, 5 employees, that will work just fine. Because a lot of technicians do want to be told what to do. They just want a checklist. And for a lot of people, this is actually a whole skill in and of itself, is like developing systems, checklists, SOPs, protocol. Here's the steps to follow. A lot of people want that as technicians. And for a lot of us as business owners, we had to develop that skill so that we could clearly articulate and tell our team what to do. As the business grows and you get A-players, as you get people that Otherwise could start their own business in your industry. That same skill that you have to learn of telling people what to do and telling them the checklist and the procedure and A and then B and then C and then do these things and then you are complete, a start and a finish. Over time, you need people that go beyond that. You need people to think about the business outside of work. You need the person that is going to think about solutions when they're working out, when they're walking on a treadmill, when they are in the shower. When they're driving to work. We need to unlock this. But how do we? Well, first off is hear their idea. And again, your first 5, 10 employees, they don't even want to think about it a lot of times. They just want to know, tell me what to do. I will do it very well. Give me some sort of compensation plan that gives me more reward the faster and the harder I work. And I'm happy. But once you start getting 10, 15, 20 employees, and you need mid-level managers, you need technicians to become crew leads or foremen or leaders inside the organization. Once you start needing those people, you've gotta realize that you can't just act on your own ideas. And if you do only act on your ideas, you become the bottleneck. Because for every single problem that comes up inside of the organization, you are the bottleneck for the solution. So when we think about how we make progress inside the organization, we have a problem, We have a solution, and then execution is made. And if you've always identified the problem, identified the solution, and just told everyone how to execute, that will get you to about $1 million in revenue. After that, we've now gotta find people that can identify their own— the problem inside the organization, identify their own solution, and then go execute on it. But to find that person, and more importantly, to retain that person, you're gonna have to change the way you think about command and orders inside of the business. You will not be able to be the only one, the genius with 1,000 helpers, people just taking action on everything that you have come up with in your brain. And again, what has got you here to $1 million will not serve you well getting to $10 million. And so what got you to $1 million is you being able to articulate the problem, articulate the solution, and then tell people to execute. But over the course of time, you become the bottleneck or the business stalls. And you just constantly are working all the time because you're the only one that can actually come up with ideas to solve the problems in the business. So how do we solve this? How do we attract great people that are gonna deploy this discretionary effort to your business? First off, let's hear their idea. And for a lot of us, this is the hardest part, is shutting our mouth when we think we know best or we have the most experience or we have the most industry experience. We've seen this before. But to shut up and listen to someone else's idea, even though they might be wrong, is for many of us the hardest part. That's step 1, hear their idea. Number 2, once you've heard their idea, maybe they're 80% correct. If this is the correct path, maybe they're here. Okay, I'm gonna offer an opposing point of view. I'm gonna try to swing them back to like the middle of the road. But if they're— this is the direction they wanna go, this is the plan of attack, the execution that they wanna take. I might bring them an opposing point of view just to balance them out or for help— helping them refine their idea. But ultimately, what I don't want to do is trample their idea and just tell them, no, no, no, that's wrong. And here's why my way is right. What I want to do is I want to offer ways to refine their idea, to bring perspectives that they have not thought of or ideas that they might not have necessarily even considered to be able to refine their idea, make it better, or potentially change their mind slightly. But in this case, I am offering an opposing point of view to refine and like iron sharpens iron. A good idea with another good idea makes it even sharper, makes it better. And so instead of just— I'm not just gonna like let them take execute, you know, execute on a bad plan. I'm not going to also just trample them and tell them my plan is better and here you go, do this. There is nothing more defeating for a great talent to have an idea of how they can solve a problem in your business. And then you say, no, that's a bad idea. We're going to do it this way. You're going to lose good people. And if they're really good, they could compete with you. If they're really good, they have a lot of options to take their employment elsewhere. There's 1,000 other people that are willing to hire them if they have skills of management, sales, they work hard. And so we gotta treat people differently than when we had 3, 4 employees. We've gotta treat them like partners. Like, we really genuinely care about their opinions and their perspectives and their ideas and the solutions that they bring to the table. So hear their idea, then I'm gonna offer an opposite point of view to be able to refine that idea. And maybe I know this is the right way, I know 100%, and they're over here, I'm gonna offer the perspective so they can't— it brings them back maybe towards my idea a little bit, or at least just challenging their idea so it gets their brain moving in the direction of, okay, there's some things I might not have considered. The third thing I'm gonna do is encourage them to defend and refine their idea. Now, if you've been more of a command and control type of personality and you've told people what to do, you're gonna actually have to encourage them to challenge you. You're gonna have to encourage them to defend themselves. Because if they have an idea and you say, oh no, no, this idea, what about this? Have you considered this other option? What if that was to happen? This specific scenario, how would that impact your execution? You're gonna have to potentially actually encourage them to challenge you. For a lot of employees, especially if they've been with managers where challenging the boss was potentially looked at as a threat, they will see going against the idea of the owner or their boss as potentially them losing their job. And so to reduce their guard, you're going to actually have to encourage them to give you— to give you feedback, to tell— ask them, hey, what's wrong about my idea? Hey, could you poke holes in that? Hey, if we had to, and there was— there's another solution that we're not thinking of. What would that be? And actually encourage them to poke holes in their own idea as well as your idea that you've put forward and defend it. Like, hey, you think that's the case? Okay, great. I'm gonna bring this other perspective and I want you to defend your idea. And actually ask them to bring somewhat of a debate between your idea and their idea, because somewhere in between there's probably the right path. And the 4th thing is I'm going to let them choose. So have their, you know, hear their idea out, offer an opposing view, encourage them to defend or refine their idea. And then number 4, I'm going to let them choose. So now that I've outlined my idea, their idea, ideally there's been some back and forth, some debate to be able to refine the idea of what the plan of attack is going to be. Then I'm going to say, hey, look, I'm going to let you choose and I will back you up 100%. And that's number 5, back them up 100%. Whether it be resources, time, energy, I am fully on board. And that's really where any democracy is tested is like when 60% of people vote in one direction, what happens to the other 40%? Do we rebel or do we get on board and we put full energy towards making sure that the entire whole of the organism, the organization is moved forward? And so I'm gonna tell them, hey look, I've outlined this idea, you've outlined this idea, we've had some back and forth, some defending, some debating, some refining of our ideas, I'm gonna let you decide on the plan of attack, and I'm going to back you up 100%. You will never hear me try to go against the plan of attack if you choose the idea besides my own. Very important to set this level of safety that they can choose their idea and that they know that you will support them and not just constantly try to undermine the decision that was made because it wasn't your own. Now, what happens if they win? What happens if they choose their own idea, the one that was put forward, and they crush it? I am going to heap praise on them. And like a coach in a team that gets the trophy, they accept the award. They then pass it along to their team. They don't hold it. It's not theirs. They pass it along to their team and they allow the team members, the players on the team, to relish in that glory. That's what a great coach does. They don't hold it to their own. It's not that— no, all the praise goes to the players. Now, the same thing is true if it goes wrong. This is the big one. If your team member takes action on an idea and you had said— oh man, I got a spider literally. Let's go. Just outside the office at a table here. But Let's say it goes wrong. They take action, and you kind of had warned them that this is going to happen, and it does happen, and it turns out that the idea was not perfect. There was holes in their idea or their plan of attack, their execution. I am not going to rub it in their face. I'm not going to say told you so. A great team member will be self-aware enough to know that hey, boss was right. Next time, I'm. I'm gonna consider even more what they're saying because obviously there was holes that they saw in this plan that I did not. And let your track record speak for itself. If your idea was so great and then you allowed your team member to decide on the plan of attack and then you threw your full resources, time and energy towards making that idea happen and then it fails, if they're a great team member, they'll be self-aware enough to know that the boss saw something I didn't and next time I'm going to listen more. I'm gonna refine my idea more before I bring it forward. And I also, I am very thankful that I have a boss that did not be a stick in the mud, didn't try to prove me wrong, didn't try to go behind my back or sabotage my idea. They put full resources and full attention and fully supported whatever I was doing. They supported it to the internal team, they supported it to external customers, and even though they might have seen holes in my philosophy, they still publicly in the front yard made sure that I was being supported. So So if they lose, avoid the inclination to say, I told you so. If you do that, you will lose just as much credibility as trying to trample them at the very onset of making the decision. The same thing of, oh no, that's a bad idea, let's do it my way. Same exact horrible thing that's gonna happen to the culture if you allow them to take action. You say, okay, great, go for it. They fall flat on their face. They make a mistake. It doesn't go according to plan. And then you say, see, I told you so. Next time you should listen to me. You do not need to say that. Now, a great team member will be self-aware. A bad team member will be too proud to be able to change their behavior and listen more next time or refine their ideas next time or come with more humility to the fact that you might have more experience, you might have more insight, you might have more knowledge, you might know the industry more and have better Visibility to what's going on inside the organization. And so when they come to you next time with their idea, they'll probably come a little more humble. Now, if someone is proud, prideful, and now they are trying to shirk the responsibility, the bad decision, they're trying to cast blame, all these other things, that's not a team member you want on the team, and you got to get rid of them. But if that team member is an A-player, they will respect you more if you deploy energy towards their idea, and even if it falls flat on their face, And they have egg on their face from a bad decision or didn't go according to plan, you then still allow them on the next time they have an idea to execute. And they will refine their ideas, they will become better. And this is the process of allowing mid-level managers to grow inside the organization. And the reason that we don't do this many times is because we don't want to see the error, we don't want to see the mistake. We think we have all the ideas. And maybe you do, maybe you are correct, maybe you know they're going to fall flat on their face. if they take this decision. So when should I actually step in and veto things? Very, very rarely. Very rarely should I step in and say, you've given your idea, I've given you an opposing idea, we've refined the idea, but I'm still— I'm going to make sure we're doing my idea. I'm going to veto your idea. I would use this with great caution. I almost always want my mid-level manager, I want my technician, I want the person that's coming up with the idea to feel like they're executing on their plan, because it's when they execute on their plan that they get discretionary effort deployed when they think about it. And especially because I have offered an opposing view, they have actually seen those potential threats to their idea. They will work extra hard to ensure that doesn't happen. They will work extra hard. They will deploy so much more energy towards explaining it to the team, pushing, going the extra mile when it's their idea. You might ask, like, well then, when do I veto the idea of my team member? If it's going to hurt other people on the team, if it's going to lead to catastrophic failure for the business, yes, I'm going to step in. But first, I'm going to try for them to see and realize that themselves. But again, if they are head down, though, this is my idea, and you know this is going to cause pain to other people, whether it be customers, employees, the rest of the team, then yes, I am going to step in. If it's going to cause mission failure, i.e., the The goals of the business have been clearly identified, the values of the organization have been clearly identified, and taking their plan of action is going to completely trash that or hurt other people or keep us from ever reaching the end goal of the organization, then yes, I will veto it. But very, very rarely. You want to use executive power as little as possible when you're trying to build a healthy team. This is not A monarchy. This is not where you just tell people what to do. If you want other leaders to rise up inside the organization, the plan of attack has to change. So I would think about this. I would consider this. And if you want to attract great leaders into your organization, you will have to be a great leader. And one of those things is sacrificing your pride that you are not a genius, that you might be wrong. And even if you're right, you do not want to be the genius with 1,000 helpers. That everything has to go through you. Every good idea comes from you. Every single win is because of you. Every single loss is because of you. Everything is because of you. You are the bottleneck. And if you want great people to work for you, have the humility to realize that deploying all your energy behind their idea is the best solution.