Want Your Team to Take More Initiative? Watch This Now!

Hey there, My name is Michael King. Welcome back to the Connected Accountant. Earlier this week, I was on a coaching call with a firm owner who was getting burned out by her own team. I said, hey, what's going on? Why are you getting burned out? And she said, you know, over the last year, I put a lot of time and money into building a team of highly trained, highly experienced, competent professionals around me. I bring them on, I onboard them, I let them know what I expect of them. I let them know what I need them to be doing. And what I'm finding is anytime a question comes up or a situation arises that they don't know how to handle, they're coming back to me and asking me what I want them to do. And she's like, I'm kind of at that point where if this is what it's going to be all the time, do I really need them? I could just do this on my own. If I've got to work through every single problem that comes up in my firm, I've told them that they have the decision rights to go do those things, but they're just not doing it. Is there anything I can do to kind of fix this before I just completely go bonkers? And I said, you know, that's actually a common thing for firm owners and for leaders in general, particularly when you've got a team around. You know that they are trained, they are competent, they do have experience. And even when you've told them that you want them to make those kind of decisions, it's not uncommon for them to still come back and look for guidance. And the reason for that is they probably know different ways that that situation or that problem could be addressed, but they're just unsure about it in the context of your firm. They're unsure about how you want those kinds of things to be handled. And so now what we have isn't an issue of competency, it's actually just an issue of coaching. And so the way I like to think about this is a four step ladder, right? A decision making ladder. And your job as the leader, as the CEO of your firm is to coach them from step one to two to three to four. And in between each step kind of model the way. Here's what it looks like. Step one, as I like to call it, is the person comes to you and they say, hey, we've got this problem. What would you like me to do? And instead of taking the easy route and saying, you know, go email the client and tell them this, or solving the problem, what I want you to do is instead say that problem that makes sense. I can understand why you're confused about that or why you might need some help. This is what I'd like you to do. I'd like you to go and kind of just brainstorm three different ways that we could approach that problem. And once you've thought those through, come back and I'll help you think them through. And we'll kind of work together to figure out what the right answer is. And so instead of solving the problem, task them to go and come up with three alternatives. And what you're going to find is, over time, if you're disciplined about sending them back, when they come to you in the future, instead of saying, hey, boss, we have this problem, they're going to come to you at. At step two, and they're gonna say, hey, boss, I've got this problem. Here's three ways I think we could handle it. What do you want me to do? And so once they've arrived at step two, now you've got to coach them up to step three. And so what you would say is, those are three great alternatives. It would be really helpful for me if you would just kind of think through which of those alternatives you think we should use and why, and then come back and let's talk it over and I'll kind of make sure that you're directionally correct, and then we can go from there. And so just you're really disciplined about sending them back and having them figure out which alternative they recommend and why. And when they come back, kind of talk it through with them and say, like, hey, I understand why you would have picked this one, but because of xyz, I think this is the best bet. And so let's do that. And so what you're doing with this process of moving them from step one to step two and so on is you're teaching them how you think, you're teaching them how you apply your values. You're teaching them how to think through problem solving in your mind, right? Like, how you kind of think through those things. And so over time, you're going to get to the point where they come back to you and they're like, you know, hey, boss, we had this problem. Here's the three solutions that I thought of. Here's the one that I think we should go with and why. And you're like, great, go do that thing. And then finally it gets to the point where they're at step four in the ladder, and that's where they come in, they're like, hey boss, I had this problem, this is what I did. I just wanted to give you a heads up, give you, keep you in the loop. If you want me to do something different next time, you know, just let me know. Right? So you're coaching them from 1 to 2 to 3 to 4, and you really want them to get to the point that they're at step four. Now what'll happen sometimes, despite your best efforts to coach them from one to four, is sometimes I see people topping out at three and it's like no matter what I do, I can't get them to the point where they're like doing the thing and they're coming to me, they're like, here's the alternatives, here's what I picked, here's why they're still asking me for more. And I would say that probably the majority of the time, the reason that that happens is because as the business owner is the leader, what we'll do sometimes is we will inadvertently take their decision making rights away through our actions. And this is what I mean, let's say that a billing question came up for a client and they said, hey, what I did is, you know, I decided to knock $500 off of this person's invoice because of whatever reasons. Let me know if you want me to handle that differently next time. And you're like, really? That probably should have been $1,000 off or it should have been $250 off. And we go back behind them and we change their decision, we kind of undo the, the thing that they decided to do. And what that does is we are through our actions telling them that they really didn't have that autonomy, they didn't really have those decision rights after all. We take that away from them and what that does is it subconsciously kind of knocks them back to tier three. So the challenge for us as leaders is that when our people come and they make those decisions, if the decision they made is within the framework of our values and within the context of, of the decision rights we've allowed to them, we've really got to question if we should pull that decision back or change that decision or just kind of let it go. Because there's a cost of undoing that decision. The cost comes in the form of us knocking them down to that tier three or step three in the decision making ladder. And so, yeah, while it may not have been the perfect decision or the decision that you would have done if it wasn't a bad decision or the wrong decision. Sometimes we got to just let that be the decision so that we can empower our people and we can give them the autonomy to make those kind of decisions for for themselves. Because at the end of the day, that's really what this is all about. It's really communicating to our people that they have the decision rights and they have the autonomy to make decisions. And so what we've got to do is really support that through our words and our actions. Look, if this was helpful, then you might also enjoy checking out my free newsletter, the 5 Minute Fractional CFO. Every single Friday I deliver one actionable tip to your inbox that will help you start, scale or optimize your fractional CFO services. And if you'd like to check that out, go to www.theconnectedaccountant.com blog. We will be sure to drop a link to that newsletter in the description below. In the meantime, I look forward to seeing you back right here next week. I will see you then my friends. Take.