The 2 Key Elements to Successful 7 Figure Teams

Alot of the clients I speak to are scaling from multiple 6 figures to 7 figures – or they are scaling to multiple 7 figures and they come to me because it’s feeling messy and the people side is feeling hard.

Often – people come to me thinking the issue they have is a recruitment or a hiring problem. 

“This person isn’t doing what I need them to do” or “I’m not enjoying how this person is working“

So I need you to help me work out how to hire someone better.

And while that may well be the case..

What’s equally often the case – is that the person is OK. The HIRE is OK… but it’s the leadership framework that includes a team structure that is lacking.

I’m not saying – you are a bad leader. Or it’s not them it’s YOU.  None of us need any more shame or negativity added to our entrepreneurial journey.

Notice the subtle difference. I’m not saying You are a bad leader. I’m saying you haven’t established your Leadership Framework YET and as part of that Leadership Framework it requires a Team Structure – that supports THEM to do their jobs and YOU to thrive as the leader in the business.

What I am saying is that a Leadership Framework doesn’t exist

You have 2 distinct stages of growing your team

and

2 distinct elements of growing your team

They are:

HIRING great people

LEADING them well

If you hire people who aren’t quite right – it puts even more pressure on your leadership skills

If you hire GREAT people who are pretty good – it’s less pressure on your leadership skills but you still need to learn to lead, have great conversations, give feedback, have simple systems in place so that everyone knows what they need to do, how to talk to each other and what’s important.

If you hire EPIC people – they may lead themselves to a certain extent – but it still doesn’t exempt you from steering the ship – you can never opt out of being the leader – setting the vision, deciding on the way you want your business to feel and how you want people to communicate with each other, setting goals and tracking the teams performance and ultimately deciding – does this feel good to me?

You can’t outsource your leadership ever! 

Sorry. 

We hear lots of emphasis on the ‘hire A-Players’ – and I know I talk about that too! Because that’s really important.

But equally, you need to focus and be ready to invest in… being an A-Leader – doing YOUR part to make it POSSIBLE for your team to thrive.

Here are some examples of what an A Leader DOESN’T look like:

• Not finding time to have meetings, or communicate properly what you want done
• Avoiding meetings because you think they are a waste of your time
• Expecting people to be perfect and amazing from the outset with limited information and not putting any review or check points in place to give them the space to get things wrong and for your business and brand to be protected
• Not showing interest in creating systems that will support your team to thrive and your business to flow
• Giving people a tiny bit of information about what you want – maybe explaining just a concept and getting frustrated with the detail or the further questioning and expecting them to work it all out for themselves
• Not making it really clear what you expect from someone – what their actual role is, what you expect done by when and what a great job looks like 
• Giving someone a title and expecting that’s enough for them to work out the details and then when they try their hardest to work it out and get it wrong – acting all disappointed that they didn’t meet your brief
• Interrupting your team with your ideas and thoughts at any time of the day (or night!) and expecting them to be on call and responsive within an hour of getting that message from you.
• Doing everything yourself because it feels easier than working out how to delegate and hand over jobs to your team.
• Seeing yourself as ‘amazing’ (which I’m sure you are) but somehow better than others and that no one will ever ‘do it as good as you’

Now I’m guessing that this list may have triggered some feelings as you read them.

GOOD.

That’s ok! 

I didn’t say any of it was easy.

This part of becoming a leader, becoming a CEO, creating your leadership framework and the structure your team needs to thrive….. is uncomfortable.

It starts with looking in the mirror.

Looking at whatever stories you have around being a leader. Being a boss. Having systems. What freedom means to you. What you are afraid of.  What you are creating. What you need it to feel like to feel good to you. Getting really clear about your intentions for building a team and building your business.

And with that goal in mind – working backwards to create the leadership framework and the team set up that feels great to you AND also works functionally for your team

I’ve worked with so many high peformers who have built epic businesses from their high performing capacity when they are doing most of the things, often with a little bit of help – but then they struggle with this bit.

This is the scaling bit. This is the challenge of how do I take what I do and how I serve clients and customers when it was just me AND MULTIPLY IT.

And the reality is that it’s NOT by replicating exactly what you did and how you did it. That might work for the first little bit, but it does not work exactly that way for the true scaling piece. 

You have to let some things go – decide what parts are less important in the scheme of the customer experience and in the scheme of the internal work flow. 

And you need to create systems to pick up mistakes – ones that once upon a time you may have picked up yourself. 

And you’ll need to decide human check points for stages that are really critical.

And often it’s the attachment to the ‘way things were done’ or the ‘way I want things done’ that needs to be analysed.

And this is the part that makes it unique to you.  How it becomes YOUR leadership framework.

You get to be pedantic about the things that are important to you.

AND

You get to really look at what you are attached to and get to the heart of what’s really going on.

That might be – 

Why am I resisting creating a work flow so people know what to do next without asking me?  If it’s because you are afraid of a client not getting the right experience from you personally then great – build a process for that.

But after a bit of digging you might realise it’s because your ego likes being important and valued and that’s what you are holding on to and you can go and find that validation or satisfaction in another way and then step away and let your business scale.

Your line of enquiry might be – Why am I resisting having a weekly meeting? It might be because you hate the thought of Monday morning meetings because that reminds you of the corporate job you left. In which case make them a Tuesday afternoon if that works better for you!  Or it might be because they feel like a waste of time – in which case what’s missing is a powerful framework for team meetings. AND you get to set it. Think to yourself – what would make me really excited to attend this meeting with my team? Focusing on my goals. Bringing to me questions that only I can answer in this environment. Everyone showing up with ideas. The meeting being less than 30 minutes.  Boom – there’s the team structure that suits YOU and gives the team what they need. 

So first you’ve got the HIRING THE RIGHT PEOPLE piece. And then you’ve got the LEAD THEM WELL piece.  

Which includes getting over any stories you have that system, structure and delegation is going to RESTRICT your entrepreneurial flow – when in reality – it’s SYSTEM STRUCTURE AND DELEGATION that will GIVE you the flow.

So I really want you to hear this.

You get to set it up so it works for you.

But you’ve got to do the work to get there.  

You can’t just hire someone and go BOOM I’m done here – run my business while I go over here on holidays.

Your team needs guidance. 

You get to set up the framework for that guidance.

You decide your role. You decide their role. You decide when you are going to chat to each other in various formats and they need to know what to do in between those conversation so they can always focus on the right things.

So if you would like to learn more about LEADING YOUR TEAM WELL then >> that’s what I do. I’m here to make this transition feel easy and the GREAT thing is, that once this is set up, it’s set up! You make little tweaks now and then but you only need to set up your Team and Leadership Framework once.

So I can support you to do this so send me a message or book a free Dream Team Discovery Call.