MBA982 How To Empower Your Team To Manage Themselves + Free Ride Friday!

Hey there today is free ride friday so make sure you hang on to the end of the episode to hear who won this week's free ride every friday we give away a lifetime membership to one of our programs this month we're giving away easy course our thirty day course on how to build an online course in thirty days it's a dollar five hundred value sold over at easycourse co but we give it away for free every friday for somebody who's left us a rating and review on itunes we do a weekly random draw and somebody wins so if you'd like to win just leave us an itunes rating and review to enter the draw all right let's jump into today's episode hey o welcome to the one hundred dollars mba show because your business needs you at your best that's why we deliver our daily ten minute business lessons for the real world i'm your host your coach your teacher omar zenholm i'm also the co founder of the dollar one hundred mba a complete business training and community online over at one hundred mba net and in today's episode you will learn how to empower your team to manage themselves we've all heard the term micromanage where you're all over every little thing and part of every single decision and some of us we don't want to micromanage but we just don't know any other way so in today's episode i'm going to show you some simple steps to empower your teammates to manage themselves so you just put them on task and then just review the results no need to manage the process or anything in between this is going to save you time this is going to save you stress it's also going to make you enjoy your business a whole lot more plus your employees your team are going to like you for it they're going to love you for it because hey you're trusting them and you're allowing them to grow professionally so let's get into it let's get down to business have an ingenious idea indiegogo the global launchpad for entrepreneurs can help you raise money for your product and turn it into the next big thing their global backer community of millions as well as expert tools and twenty four seven support can help you find success at any step of your journey to market learn more and download indiegogo's free crowdfunding field guide at www dot indiegogo dot com one hundred mba to get started for some of us empowering your team sounds great but it's like how do i do this how do i you know hand over the reins and give them more responsibility and make sure that they're actually doing what they have to do well this is something i had to go through myself building my businesses and i was actually forced to do it because our team was growing and i just couldn't manage everybody i had to start putting people in place to help me manage so the first step i would say is to start thinking about building a management team you need to have managers in your business you can't be the only one managing now you might be thinking i can't afford all this i can't get managers well even if you have one person in each department they could be the manager because they're going to have to feel empowered to work with other people themselves because the managers talk with other managers so even if you have just one customer service agent that's a customer service manager if you have one person in sales that's the sales manager and once you grow then they'll have people under them that you can have them manage but by making them a manager they are starting to understand they're going to have to be responsible for their department they're going to have to start building their own procedures number two you're going to have to start taking some risks now they don't have to be huge risks but let's say for example you're building a new project or a new offering or a new feature in your business your product i like to have one meeting with the people involved we discuss what the outcome is this is what we want out of this project this is what it should look like at the end when it's out of the oven right like the turkey out of the oven in the cooking show here are my recommendations of how to get to that result now i need you guys who are on this meeting your your teammates the people that you've hired to get to this result you can take my advice you could take some of it you could take all of it the point here is that this is what we need if there's a budget involved this is your budget this is the timeline this is when it's due this is the deadline and go ahead and do it you are responsible for the result you have to give them that responsibility tell them that they're responsible this is their job now and that you'll be checking in on a regular basis online whether it's email or with some task management software like basecamp and you don't have to check in every day but you can check in periodically once a week or something like that the point is that you got to tell them hey you guys got to work together you got to meet on your own you got to discuss you got to have your own chats if you need my help i'm happy to join and help out but i want you guys to take on this project i learned this technique from phil knight the founder of nike he mentioned this in his autobiography shoe dog where he says he likes to tell people who what he expects and let them surprise him he says tell people what you expect and let them surprise you don't tell them how to do things don't hold them by the hand tell them this is the result we need it's your job to get there you have the freedom the autonomy to go ahead and do that make it happen i do this all the time and let me give you an example we just released a new feature on webinar ninja which allows people to use their own thank you pages you can use webinar ninja's thank you pages this is the confirmation page a user would see after they register for a webinar but now we implemented a new feature where you can have your own thank you page or you can host your own thank you page on your own site and forward your registrants to that page so obviously that takes a lot of coding it takes a lot of design you gotta change the ui and the user interface in the software so it's a bit of a project it's gonna take a few weeks so i met with our lead developer our designer and our front end developer and i told them this is what the experience needs to be for the user they asked me some questions they told me okay when's the deadline when we need to get this done and i just asked them so what's the first step and do you need anything from me well they said the first step is that we need to document this whole feature so that if anybody's involved in this project they could just follow the document so they know how everything's supposed to function it's hard to remember everything in a meeting so my lead developer will write up a document he'll send it to me and say hey does this sound good is this exactly what you want i may make some modifications or say nope that's exactly what i don't want and that's exactly what i said great thank you and from there he hands it over to the designer the designer works on the design has the looks and aesthetics might chime in with me and say hey do you like this look or this look or might chime in with the whole team although say this is what i thought like what do you guys think so by this time by the time she finished the design it's a few days in and i'm spending five minutes just to look at a design done she then gets on a call on a video call with the front end developer and says hey this is the design we need to implement on our ui let me show you exactly how it functions what it looks like here's a mockup this is what happens when you click this this is what happens when you click that all that stuff the front end developer develops it makes sure the designer is happy with it then goes back to the lead developer lead developer codes the backend and then sends it to support to say hey test this out make sure there are no bugs so you get the point i'm not really involved that much other than just hey i like the way this looks and that initial meeting i gotta empower my team to make all the decisions to make all the meetings to hand over things that's why it's important to have that first meeting so everybody understands what the procedure is step one design step two implementation front end step three backend step four testing step five go live right i highly recommend using some sort of project management software whether it's trello or basecamp we use basecamp we love it because it has these great to dos and everybody's notified and it's a great way to collaborate especially when you have a remote team like ours so empower your team to make decisions and take it on another strategy go on a management hiatus what does that mean is that at some point you're have to go on vacation or you're going to have to take a break so whether you're taking a two week vacation or a month vacation whatever it is you need to kind of prepare your team that hey i'm going away soon and i'm not going to be available i'm shutting off completely you can't ping me you can't email me if there's an emergency you know i just have my lead developer or my manager call me on the phone but if i don't get a phone call i'm not talking to anybody but you got to prepare your team for that so one of the things i like to do is give them tasks tell them this is the result we need and this is the deadline when i get back i'm going to check on you check on what's going on and i need this done you need to work it out you got to figure it out by letting them know that hey you're not around to micromanage and that they have to manage themselves it's going to empower them they're going to feel like okay i got to do this i have a result that i have to meet you know the founder of the company is not around i can't reach out to him or her nor will he or she nag me or remind me of things right now this is going to take a little bit of trust on your end you're going to feel like oh i hope they're doing the work hope that they're doing their thing hope everything is going well you just got to trust in it and you got to kind of pull off the band aid and you may want to do this in steps i started this about four years ago where we took one week off shut off completely then we did two weeks and three weeks and then now eventually we can get a month where everybody's on task and everybody's working with each other to reach that goal now a couple warnings one you can't empower and completely hand over the reins from day one of employment you gotta show people how you expect things to be done in the beginning or have somebody do that for you whether it's a manager or somebody you have in place you have to set the tone the culture in your business once they're set after a few months or so they can carry on those values and as your team grows new people will feel the environment immediately wow everybody's doing things on their own they're empowered we're working together i'm not being micromanaged this is great now a word of warning not everybody can do this not everybody can be empowered and feel like hey i can do things on my own i like this some people don't like not being micromanaged they want to be micromanaged they want everything spoon fed to them they won't do anything unless they are spoon fed the information or the tasks at this point you have to reevaluate that higher you have to talk to that person and say hey in this team we empower people to do things if you need you know directives every single day this is not going to work out so we have a couple options either we have a plan so you can transition into this new way and you can learn to feel empowered and understand that you don't get to be micromanaged here or we part ways right now and there's nothing wrong with that some people just are not a good fit and you're not going to know that sometimes until you actually hire them some people you have to tell them to do something three or four times before they understand it's important that's a no go in our business if i have to say it once it's maybe too many times no but seriously i probably don't have to say anything more than once to any of our teammates because they got it they know it's important they know they have to do it and a lot of times i don't have to say anything at all they know it's expected i also want to emphasize this takes time it takes time it took me years to get to the point where i am today and i still have a lot ways to go my goal is to be able to step away from the business for six months and have it run on its own i'm nowhere near that yet that's my goal but again it takes time it takes the right talent it takes cultivating the right team nurturing that team and making sure they know you're appreciating them and building that trust in that relationship takes time guys i got more on today's topic but before that i gotta give love to today's sponsor support for today's show comes from microsoft teams microsoft teams is your hub for teamwork in office three hundred and sixty five here at the hundred dollar mba we run a remote team so we have teammates all across the world and sometimes communicating can be quite hectic organizing everything from chats and emails and files it can get chaotic with so much to look after it would be great just to have everything in one place and that's what microsoft teams does teams is a single workplace where you can work share and connect with the people in your work life teams brings together chat meetings files and apps all in one place take teamwork where you work with apps for mobile and desktop so whether you're sprinting towards a deadline or sharing your next big idea teams can help you and your team achieve more i recently used teams and i found the user experience to be so simple and clean i found it like stress reducing so i tip my hat to microsoft teams for building such a easy to use app microsoft teams in office three hundred and sixty five visit office dot com teams to learn more now at the start of the episode i talked about having managers in your business even if it's just one person per department and that person runs the whole department but as you start growing and let's say for example your customer service team starts growing and you have you know three or four agents and a manager not everybody you hire is a leader some people may want to be a leader and that's good and some people just don't want to be a leader your job as the founder as the manager as the person who leads your team is to identify these qualities is to look out for people that can be great managers in the future and to groom them have them shadow the manager that's there now have them fill in when that manager is out sick or is on vacation you always should think of a backup plan for your managers you got to start grooming people before you need them because hey if they're really good there's a good chance they might do something else in the future so be prepared make sure that you groom people that have that inclination to be a leader and my last piece of advice is that if you do empower your team to do something to take on a project and it doesn't go perfectly well they fail they miss the deadline something happens it doesn't mean oh i can't let them have any power i have to micromanage them again it just means you need to refine your process you have to debrief and sit down with them and say hey why didn't this work out why did we miss the deadline why didn't we complete the project and hear from them find out what they struggled with and see how you can help them in those areas and give it another shot they might need a little bit more of your help maybe the procedure wasn't clear maybe they didn't know what to do next or who to hand over to find out rectify those problems and give it another shot maybe make the next shot a smaller scope project so they can get a win get them a win so they can feel like yes we could do this we can manage ourselves and we got this right well that wraps up today's lesson but today's episode's not over it's free ride friday i got to give away a lifetime membership to easy course our thirty day course on how to build an online course in thirty thirty days over at easycourse co every friday we do a weekly random draw with anybody who's left us an itunes rating and review let's see who won this week's free ride and the winner is litcentric dot com litcentric says just the right topics five stars the topics on this show are not only interesting but they're timely too the content is just the right size length and scope to be useful thank you litcentric for that amazing review you are our freeride friday winner just email me omar zero zero mba dot net so i can hook you up with your free ride to ezcourse every week we do this so if you haven't left us a rating and review on itunes do it now so you can enter our weekly random draw alright that's it for me today guys but before i go i want to leave you with this being a great manager and a great leader is a lifetime pursuit it just takes time to get better and better and learn through experiences everybody has their own style everybody has their own way of doing things but there are certain practices certain things that i shared with you today that just work and make your life easier so give them a try alright on monday's episode our next episode is a guest teacher episode with joey coleman a great speaker a great author and he's gonna be teaching you how to counter buyer's remorse you know that feeling when people buy something and afterwards they're like oh did i make the right decision you gotta make sure that you tell them yes you did make the right decision make sure they know that it's a great experience how do you counter that buyer's remorse we'll talk about that or actually joey will talk about it in his guest teacher lesson hit subscribe so you don't miss it and until then take care.