When things aren’t going right in your business, it’s easy to point the finger at your employees, claiming they suck at what they do. They’re hard to manage. They don’t do things the way you told them to. They call off and are lackluster when they show up.

Yet, experience has shown that when team members aren’t living up to expectations or appear to suck at their jobs, it’s often not their fault. It’s ours.

When Leadership Sucks, so Does the Team

Small business owners are used to doing a lot of the work themselves. And when they start to bring in new employees, they may not be aware of the leadership responsibilities that come with it.

When leadership skills are lacking, it results in a loss of productivity and efficiency within the whole team. Without proper onboarding, systems, and guidance, you’re setting your employees up for failure.

And that’s not what leadership does. Leadership paves the way so that it’s easy and rewarding for the team to do the work that’s necessary to get the job done in a way that feels rewarding and empowering.

It Starts with Your Why

Business owners want team members to value their businesses as much as they do. But too often, they fail to share what the ultimate goal is and why they’re even doing what they’re doing. Think of your employees. Sure, they're sweeping floors, but do they know why? Do they know what they’re ultimately helping you achieve?

It’s important to allow your people to really connect to your why. Allow them to become vested in what you and they are doing together. Don’t hold on to it as yours and yours alone. When your team can’t see their role in the big picture, it makes it hard to care. It makes it hard to understand the importance of what they do and their impact on the company as a whole.

Yet, when they’re behind your mission, when they can see why it matters, then they care. Then they want to do a good job. They want to be a part of it.

Leadership Skills that Don’t Suck

To ensure you provide the environment that gets people excited, you must lay the right foundation and build a relationship that allows for open channels of communication and learning.

• Create onboarding and ramp-up support: Ensure that you provide all necessary information through the onboarding experience. Anticipate the learning curve and give your employees enough time to understand and apply that information through their first few months.

• Get the right systems in place: In all aspects of your business, from onboarding through customer support, anything that you do more than once should have a system for how it’s done. Make things easy to repeat, ensuring there is a proven process that someone new can follow step-by-step.

• Document how systems work: From SOPs to how-to videos, detail how all basic processes work. Give your team access to the instructions so that they can refer back when they forget how to do something or what the next step is. When someone needs to take on new roles or responsibilities, you can quickly refer them to these tools and expedite the learning process.

• Clarify your expectations: When a task has always been done a certain way, it can feel like that is the way it should always be done. And maybe it is. But other times, the important thing is that the task gets done, not so much how it happens. When either one of these is the case, clearly communicate your expectations and set aside the desire to micromanage.

• Establish open communication channels: Don’t just encourage your employees to ask questions, provide them plenty of opportunities. Check-in on them regularly during the early stages of employment or new roles. Make sure they know where to find what they need. Be proactive in their education and understanding. They only know what you tell them, and when you understand the process thoroughly, it’s easy to forget what it’s like to be a novice.

• Provide constructive feedback: If you notice that a team member is lacking in an area, find out why. And develop a plan with them for overcoming the challenge. Do they need more support? A deeper understanding of the business’s goals? A different process? Get to the root cause of the issue and problem solve with them to find a solution that works.

When you create a workplace with clear communication, thorough training, and strong leadership, your employees with thrive. And so will your business.

If you want to learn more about effective leadership and see what it can do for your business, reach out to the team at HR TailorMade. We’re here to support you in reaching your goals.