A major thing that causes business growth to slow down is the inability of the business owner to build employees up properly and motivate them to perform at a high level.
In fact the business owner often DEMOTIVATES their employees in ways they don’t realize.
For example:
I experienced this firsthand as an employee when I was climbing the management ladder. My boss, who was the business owner, was changing my position during a reorganization after I had been there for years wanted to pay me less than I thought I was worth.
We were negotiating my new pay, and upon hearing my counter offer to his stated salary for me, he grudgingly agreed but with the caveat:
“OK, but so you know, this means this is the highest salary you will make here. There’s nowhere higher for you to go.”
I said OK and took the salary, but I was extremely perplexed, disheartened and confused as to why a manager, and a business owner, would say this to a top-performing management employee.
In doing so, he inadvertently communicated to me that there was no longer reason for me to improve my work. He basically gave me an incentive to start to slack and not care about the business any longer.
Luckily for him, that’s not my nature, but for a lot of people, it is and they are easily put off by statements like this.
I knew that if I were the manager in this case, hearing that an employee wanted more than I was offering would have made me excited because this would have given me a few options to move the employee and business forward.
When work is tough and business is hard, it’s easy to slip into a mode of people management that’s guided by the immediate business do-or-die needs and throttled by time and money constraints.
But what is hard to see at these times is that by building employees up, they can actually create more time and money by leveraging employee enthusiasm with improving skills, efficiencies and performance. The employees can in turn do better work, create cost savings and more profit, be jazzed to build the business, be a part of something special and stay for the long-haul.
Going back to my own situation, I couldn’t imagine communicating to an employee that they are in fact worth what they think they are, but they’ll never be worth more and that I’d never pay them more.
If I were the manager, I would have thought to myself:
“Wow, I wasn’t expecting that. I don’t know if we can cover what he’s asking, but I sure love his enthusiasm and confidence. Let’s figure out a way to make this work and feed that enthusiasm to get him to take on more responsibility so we can really make things soar here!”
When someone thinks they are worth more, it should be natural to harness that perception they have of their abilities and worth, and leverage it to coach them up, if you don’t think they are quite there – hold a carrot out in other words for them to improve – or come up with a business strategy or shift in their role or responsibilities to take advantage of their potential to make them worth it and make that pay off.
Building employees up to take on more and perform higher is a lot cheaper and has a lot more upside than finding new employees to do the work, or having your current employees disengaged, sputtering or not fulfilling the potential of their performance – leaving the business owner sitting on an untapped goldmine and never knowing it and having to eventually rehire and restaff when employees leave who would have otherwise been the new top leaders.
I hadn’t been in business myself yet at this point in my career, but I knew it was a grave leadership mistake, because I did already understand human motivation, rewards and incentives.
Again, this pay scale “policy” for me that my manager came up with on the spot was rooted in fear of not having enough revenue to support a higher salary, and I get that, but what he missed were multiple opportunities to embrace my belief in myself and my abilities in the business, to grow the business further, make his profits larger and his life easier.
I see missed opportunities like this from my clients as they are managing their employees as well. And when I do, I make mention of it and we work together to harness all the great opportunities and excitement that is right there in front of them.
Having employees who are confident, enthusiastic and want your business to succeed is so exciting and what can happen when you have more clarity, focus and outside perspective to recognize these incredible opportunities for what they are instead of the headaches they can feel like in the moment.
This is what gets me so excited to help my clients turn the businesses on fire and ramp up their revenue quickly while relieving their own time crunches and schedule stresses.
In fact, this is one of the top areas of focus I help my clients with in my four-month Service Business Accelerator coaching program.
In the program, we specifically look for, identify and strategize multiple ways to motivate, train and coach employees to make them All-Stars who love the business, take ownership and do what needs to be done to grow the business while feeling challenged, rewarded and being a part of something special.
This drastically cuts down and often stops employee turnover, creates huge cost savings and supplies an abundance of time and business efficiencies for the owner.
When we work together one-on-one in this program, my clients see their businesses and lives change by routinely getting more done in less time, focusing on the areas of their business that they really love the most, and watching their business double or triple as they do it – with less work, less stress and more enjoyment.
DM me on Facebook or email me if you’d like to have a quick messenger or email chat about the Service Business Accelerator program to see if it’s a good fit for you and your business to help take more off your plate, create outstanding, dedicated and highly effective employees, and double or triple your business in the process.
I’ve been doing this for 16 years and absolutely love watching my clients and their businesses soar!
Talk to you soon.
