The Three Keys to Leading Your Team with Clarity

This is the Momentum podcast. Last week, Cadey and I met with a friend of ours, and, you know, we asked him how his business was going, and he said, You know, I'm really having problems with the operator, the person who's running the business. And I was like, Oh, well, tell me why. And he goes, Well, you know, a while ago, she came to me and in this, you know, certain profit center in the business, she said if we hired somebody else that we would be able to do more and make more money. And so he said, you know, he was like, I considered it. And I went back. I ran some of the numbers. I saw that she was right, and so we hired the new person. But what we experienced was a temporary increase. And now it's gone back down. And so we're not making the money. We were making it back. Now we're making less because we're paying to people in a place where we really don't need to people. And and then he said, And so I know she cares about the people more than she cares about the profitability of the company. And I paused him and I said, Hang on a and that may be a projection like that may be your projection on her. Have you talked to her about this? He was like, No, I said, Is she responsible for the profitability of this department? And he's like, Well, she and she she knows the top line numbers. I say, does she know the bottom line numbers? Does she understand how the expenses are affecting the business? And he said no. And I said, OK, then then your statement is that she cares more about the people than the business is a projection and projections in a management situation, they are dangerous. I'm Alex Charfen, and this is the Momentum podcast made for empire builders, game changers, trailblazers, shot takers, record breakers, world makers and creators of all kinds, those among us who can't turn it off and don't know why anyone would want to. We challenge complacency, destroy apathy, and we are obsessed with creating momentum so we can roll over bureaucracy and make our greatest contribution. Should we pay attention to their rules, but only so that we can bend them, break them, then rewrite them around our own will? We don't accept our destiny. We define it. We don't understand defeat because you only lose if you stop and we don't know how. While the rest of the world strives for average and clings desperately to the status quo, we are the minority. The few who are willing to hallucinate there could be a better future. And instead of just daydreaming of what could be, we endure the vulnerability and exposure it takes to make it real. We are the evolutionary hunters, clearly the most important people in the world because entrepreneurs are the only source of consistent, positive human evolution and we always will be. So when we project on someone, it's we take the feelings we're having, like the feelings he's having is, man, I want somebody to care about the business and I can't believe we made this this investment. And now, you know, the investment is not paying off, and she hasn't come back to me and said, Hey, we need to pull back this investment. But here's the reality in this situation the projection that she's responsible for it from him, the projection that she cares more about the company, they're saying more about the people than the company is going to create massive constraint in his business. Here's why. When we project, we create a solution or sorry, we create a reason for something happening that may or may not be real. And in this case, I really don't believe it was real because she didn't really have access to bottom line numbers if she made a suggestion based on the constraints she was seeing in the business. And here's the reality. She doesn't own that decision. In fact, he owns the decision, and I can tell by the conversation we are having that. He knows the decision because he said he went and made the decision and then came back and they did it and it worked for a period of time and then it stopped working. And so for us as entrepreneurs, we need to be very careful that we investigate that. We talked to our team that we asked them what's going on before we project something like our opinion on them because that's just going to create massive constraint and we don't solve anything. And then here's the other thing. If you want somebody to be responsible for something, you actually have to tell them. It's counterintuitive for us as entrepreneurs. But what often happens is we don't transfer responsibility to somebody. Then they don't behave in the way we want. And then we say things like they're not stepping up, they're not making the right decisions. They don't care about the company. They don't make decisions like I would. They're not, you know, they're not doing what they should do. And the issue is we haven't fully empowered that person to do what we need them to do. We haven't transferred the responsibility and said, You're responsible for this. I want you to maintain a certain percentage of profitability. And so that was a suggestion I made my friend. I said, Look, here's what you really need to do is sit down with the person who made this decision and say, Hey, we're going to change the rules of how we're doing this, and here's what we're going to do. We I'm going to transfer responsibility not for making sure that the operations of this part of the business are working, not just making sure that, you know, everybody gets what we promised them, but I actually want to transfer responsibility for the actual profitability. Then as an entrepreneur, this is what we think about naturally. And so we expect our team to think about it naturally. And so I want, you know, my suggestion to him was sit down and say, I'm transferring responsibility for the profitability here, and here's the percentage of profitability I want us to hit every month. And so I want your suggestions and your decisions based on maintaining a certain level of profitability. And so in having this conversation, you actually transfer responsibility to the person that you want to step up, that you want to actually do what they need to do. And then I told him in a full transfer of responsibility, you give this all to her and then you have conversations with her and you coach her through those conversations. So one of the biggest issues that we have as entrepreneurs is that when you uncover this is the issue uncommunicative, the expectations are almost always missed. If you're not communicating your expectation, if you're not saying, Hey, I expect you to keep this profitable, I expect you not just to make suggestions when we need someone, but also to make suggestions when, hey, it's probably time not to have someone and so uncommunicative expectations are one of the biggest issues we have. And here's the other thing and communicated expectations often create projections. We often project right when we have an oncoming indicated expectation and we think, Oh, this person is doing it for this reason. But oftentimes the reality is they're doing it because they're they're trying to survive in the business. They're trying to do the best that they can for you. They're trying to help you as much as they possibly can, and you haven't transferred responsibility or communicated expectations. So if you're a business owner with a team, maybe have that go through that thought experiment today, think like, where is it that I'm not getting what I want from my team? Where is it that I'm not having my expectations met? Where is it that I'm frustrated with a team member or feel like somebody is not stepping up in the way that I want? They're not taking the initiative, they're not doing it. And here's the reality until you give it up, your team really is going to step up. And here's what I mean by that until you give up responsibility transferred to them and then clearly communicate expectations. You can't expect your team to read your mind. You can't expect them to to just follow instincts like you do. You can't expect them to know what you want and remember every team member you have when most team members you have, unless you hire somebody into their very first job, every team member you have comes to you with the baggage of working in places where they didn't have responsibility, where pointing things out got them in trouble, were communicating too much was kind of a red flag that you were a dangerous person in the company. I mean, I've got an incredible operator named Hayley, who a lot of you know and. In her last job, she was told that she talked too much and she shared too much and she needed to keep to herself. I mean, the first six months Hayley worked with me. I was like, Hayley, I want you to talk more. I don't want you to keep to yourself. I want your ideas. I want to hear what you you have to say. I want to. I want your insights. And so I clearly communicated the expectation that what was the baggage she came to us with from previous positions. I wanted to get rid of it. And so go through this experiment today. You know, you might want to like really think to yourself, who am I frustrated with? Who do I feel like isn't stepping up in the way that I want? Who do I feel like isn't showing up how I want? And ask yourself, do they? Have you communicated expectations? Do they know what metric like profitability of a department that they're aiming for, that they're trying to achieve? And have you given them clear responsibility? Have you told them this is yours? If you go through this thought experiment and you go through your team and you correct these things, you're going to be shocked at just how quickly your team actually does step up. Start making decisions like you would and you create massive momentum in your company. I'm looking forward to seeing some of you in December during our event is coming up, and I'm really excited for finally having another in-person event. And I appreciate you joining me here today. And if you're interested in understanding more about how we help entrepreneurs grow and scale their businesses, you can go to billionaire kokum, download our billionaire code matrix and see where you are in business, and you can also sign up for a call with our team. So thanks for spending some time with me this morning and have an incredible day.