When you put people together in your team, you’re bound by the laws of nature to come across situations where either personalities, goals, or approaches clash… and clash badly. These kind of dysfunctions within a team can kill productivity, profitability, and create a toxic work environment (even if it’s digital!) that can make running your business seem like driving a car with your handbrake on.
Usually it starts right from the beginning, at your hiring process. As an entrepreneur, you’re always learning as you’re going, so you hired a person one year because you thought you needed X, only to find the following year that you now need them for X + Y and this person can’t commit to achieving that for you.
Or you hired a person for X and a person for Y but now that you need X+Y in a greater quantity, both those people can’t coordinate together to make that happen for you and it’s causing personal conflict in your company.
Outsourcing is great, and it’s the first step to living the CEO lifestyle, but when your team is creating additional problems for you rather than solving them, you have to be able to recognize it quickly and make a change.
If you’re looking to avoid making these personnel mistakes and overcome these kind of dysfunctions in your team, here’s some food for thought:
1. It DOES start at the hiring process BUT… that doesn’t JUST mean getting the right person for the job. As an entrepreneur, getting a good hire means creating a great system for this new employee to follow that is proven and is guaranteed to increase profitability and THEN finding the perfect person to carry out that set of tasks. Too many entrepreneurs decide, “it’s time to find a VA” and they jump in and bring a VA into their team before they really have a complete plan mapped out for what that VA is going to accomplish and the effect that will have on their business.
2. About finding the “right” person: More often than not, the right person isn’t the one with the right skills, it’s the one with the right attitude! Skills can be developed, but a great work ethic and the drive to achieve is the result of a lifetime of experience. Some people have it and some just don’t… and no level of motivation or “pumping them up” will give it to them. Finding those “drivers”, those driving, hard working people with big initiative will make all the difference to your team.
3. When things DO go wrong: When all hell breaks loose, as the CEO YOU have to be ready to take responsibility. It’s easy to say “this employee has an attitude problem” or “this guy just can’t get his work done” but at the end of the day, the reason they’re working in this business is YOU. You have to be ready and able to quickly identify when a work relationship or situation has become toxic and make the decisions necessary to change it as quickly as possible. Don’t wait for it to just fix itself; Don’t keep putting it off hoping it will get better. Instead, know your goals, know if they’re being met, and if they’re not, act immediately to change it.
Toxic situations with employees can be among the most challenging things an entrepreneur has to handle but with practice they can be a tremendous vehicle for your own growth, both as a CEO and as an individual.
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