Leading People In My Business

Leading People, Even Talented Ones, Can Be Difficult Work

People are not easy to lead.  They love to lead themselves.  Most people I have hired find their own way around the business model and do what they think is the right things to do.  It is very common to employ people who just want to learn what they need to do and be done with it.  They only want to learn what will be necessary for them to do in order to remain employed.  Very few will come aboard your business model and want to do more of the things that will help your business model 'fine-tune' its existence.  Employees come to work each day with the expectation that you will provide for them a safe place to work, one that will compensate them for a fair day of work and one that does not put them on the spot or expect them to go the extra mile without added compensation.  For the most part, they do not want to come to work to be put on the spot.  Employees hate that place.

The art in learning how to get your employees to work on improving their 'at work' skills is a very slippery slope.  They do not feel it is their responsibility to learn how to 'fine tune' how they were shown to do their job when they were hired.  They came to work expecting to be told what their role was and how they are suppose to perform that role.  That's it.  Anything higher in expectation that comes later down the employment trail will be considered additional duties.  The employee feels like they are now being asked to do more than what they were hired to do.  In most cases, they accept this process fairly well.  They will tolerate learning knew stuff about what they are employed to do up to a point.  Every employee has a point in which they will tolerate learning new stuff to do.  Once that point is reached, they begin to find ways to slough off doing more.  Each employee has a different level that becomes that point.  Some go further down the learning trail than others.  Some come aboard your business model with very little desire to learn more about the 'fine-tuning' of their job responsibilities.  It takes all kinds of people to make up the personality of your employment staff.  You are the leader of this group.

People in a group are not easy to lead.  They have time and separate motives that they use to develop certain group pockets of interesting behavior.  Group dynamics can become a very slippery slope to manage.  Most leaders struggle with the art of managing groups well.  Most leaders tolerate certain group activities that harm some of the growth and progress their business model experiences.  They tolerate some 'not so good' stuff because they do not possess the skills to lead people through rocky waters.  Group dynamics can be very stealth in their approach to perform what they feel is the right way to do their job.  The employees will take possession of how they want to work well before they take possession of how the consumer expects them to perform.  Employees are employees, not owners.  There is a difference.

When your model has the opportunity to hire a previous owner of a past business, you will discover a different type of employee to manage.  That type of employee has a different level of work understanding.  They are employees that tend to take more initiative.  They take more possession of the work responsibilities that serve the customers larger desires.  They tend to take better grasp of difficult situations better than the employees who have never owned a business.  This can become a very challenging balancing act for the leader.  Having other leaders employed on board with those employees who do not lead well can become an interesting process to balance.  It becomes a lot like raising a large family of working kids.  Some dominate, some follow, some complain, some ignore and yet some will learn how to work harder on looking like they are working when in fact, they are not.  It can become real 'fun' to manage.

Leading people can become a very difficult task for some business owners.

Group Dynamics Can Be Challenging To Manage

My parents were raised in a different era.  My mother owns a small business to this day.  She works that business 5 days per week.  She is seventy-six years old.  She is a great inspiration to those who have become glued to go do what she feels is necessary to do.  My father has passed away a few years ago.  He was the driving force of their business model.  Both of my parents shared ownership of their business model.

During their business ownership career, my parents had a different perspective about how they expected their employees to perform.  A lot of how they believed they were employing people to do the job those people were hired to do may not be perfectly matched to how the employment laws are designed.  If for example, an employee made a mistake and cost their business some monetary loss, my parents might feel that that employee owed them the difference.  They may not take it out of their pay but they expected it in return for the employee to do some extra mile service to make up the difference.  If an employee was not cooperative in that kind of work effort, my parents were less likely to keep them aboard for very long.  My parents were raised in a different era of time.  They were not especially great people motivators.  They were also not the greatest leaders of the proper management for the strange quirks within group dynamics.  My parents were very impatient with that kind of stuff.  Since group dynamics could not be avoided in their business model, they never allowed the business to grow large enough to need big groups of employees.

My parents operated a small business model successfully for 49 years.  My mother still continues on.  Every single time their business model grew larger than the ability for the crew they employed to service that increasing demand, they slowed it down.  My parents did not have the complicated skills to be able to manage larger groups of employees.  My parents knew this truth.  As a result, they worked extra hard on keeping their business model small.  My parents preferred simpler dynamics.  They were extremely good at working their model with one or maybe two employees.  That is it.  No more.  Once the model grew to become more than two employees, all things would break loose.  The business model would become a mess with the mismanagement of the group employee dynamics that would always occur.  My father would step in, let some of them go and slow down his business production.  This was an obvious routine for several decades.  Group dynamics can become some very slippery grounds for a small business owner.  The art of leading people will get tested big time.

If your business model is growing large enough to employ a group of people, learn how to improve the art of leading people.  Leading people in your business model is one of the most serious keys to producing long term success.  If you do not possess these skills, go get help.  If you assume you are good at these skills but your performance does not match your self confidence level, go get help.  There are a lot of people who go on television strongly believing they are great singers in the contest shows, they are not.  They only believe they are good.  Make sure you are not one of those foolish leaders.  Group dynamics can kill a good business model in such a silent fashion.  By the time you discover how bad the dynamics are working, it may be too late.  Get help on leading people in your business model.  Learn how to study how the best do what they do.  Find out how the best models perform this responsibility well.  It is not an easy task.  Get help, get more information about how to improve these skills.  If you do not have an interest in trying to learn how to improve these skills, hire it done.  Make sure you do not 'kill' your growth to remain small enough to avoid the pressure of learning and improving these skills.

Leading people to do well in your business model is an art.  Some get it, some do not.  If you do not get it, find someone aboard who does.  Turn those responsibilities over to them to manage.  Then get out of their way and permit them the space to manage those responsibilities well.  Become compliant to their needs to do what they do well.  Step aside and allow your business model to grow up big on this subject.  Remember, you hired them to do this part of your job because you do not do it well.  Take your hands off of the steering wheel in this area of your business model.  Allow your hired leader to manage the group to better success.  Support their efforts even when you do not understand how it works.  It is a slippery area to perform well.  It is an art.  Make sure your artist is painting better results.  Allow them the permission to use the colors they choose to do their work.  It is imperative to do this well if you plan to grow your business larger.

Lead people in your business model.  Learn the art of successfully doing it.

Until next time...