Power Up Your Team Podcast: Recent Episodes

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Jeff is Founder and CEO of Key Performance Integrators (KPI), a firm providing Fractional COO services. He partners with visionary business owners to develop efficient and scalable systems and processes. KPI helps to identify, document and improve the key processes that drive their client’s business, train their teams so they can measure and continuously improve. KPI helps business owners achieve their goals and grow their business.

We had a wonderful discussion about Jeff’s work with his clients and their teams to drive change. Here are a few key markers:

• Business Overview and team experience 1:09
• How to make a difference as Fractional COO 2:10
• Driving change and get buy-in from the client’s team 4:44
• Driving change in large versus small organizations 8:43
• Same type of problems surface across industries 10:24
• Getting people aligned in the face of change 12:25
• Top three skills that make a difference at the client 14:51
  • Process – Data - Accountability
• Example of a successful client transformation 20:01
• Jeff’s contact information 22:03

Contact information:

https://www.kpintegrators.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreyprovost

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Today’s guest is Brett Knopf with KnopfKnows Solutions.

He is a Performance Coach and Business Strategist with over two decades of experience in Leadership and Sales Management across multiple verticals.

He has delivered nearly 1000 presentations over the course of his career for highly successful organizations such as United Healthcare, Equinox, and Hitachi, to name a few.

Brett's mission is to empower leaders and teams to create work environments that focus on collaboration, transparency, self-accountability and personal development in order to recruit, retain and develop elite performers at all levels of the organizations he works with.

He recently published his first book: “Everyday People Extraordinary Sales Success: Sales Secrets From Those Who Won Financial Freedom and Their Life Back” which hit #1 Bestseller in multiple categories.

We had a wonderful discussion about Brett’s work with his clients and their teams. Here are a few key markers:

• Background and inception of KnopfKnows Solutions 1:10
• Building a culture of team accountability 3:30
• Importance of clarity when building a culture 6:00
• Nuanced approach to team development 7:50
• Managing skill versus will issues 10:50
• The servant leader model 12:40
• A flexible and customized approach to working with clients 14:00
• Different needs in a new versus stabilized business 18:30
• Helping people to perform at the highest level 20:00
• The not so hidden cost of keeping the wrong players on the team 23:00
• Coaches as sounding boards to help clients work through challenges 25:10
• Contact information 28:17

Contact information:

Brett Knopf

KnopfKnows Solutions, LLC

Cell phone: 551-404-4060

https://knopfknowssolutions.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/brettknopf/

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Today’s guest is Australia-based Roslyn Ranse. She is a travel advisor and business strategist who’s been in the travel industry for over 15 years. She is the founder of Travel Agent Achievers, where she educates and mentors other travel consultants to grow their business and put in place systems and processes that will accelerate their business and ultimately enhance their client’s experience. Roslyn educates her community through live events, courses and masterminds. She is also the host of the Travel Agent Achievers podcast.

Here’s what we cover in our conversation:

• How Roslyn became an entrepreneur after a long corporate career 1:08
• Initial challenges after starting her travel business 3:30
• Started her 2nd business focused on educating other travel agents 5:10
• Delegating the right things to continue to grow and enjoy the business 6: 00
• Challenges to find the right people and build a strong team 7:33
• Mapping out processes and clearly defining roles help others to execute 10:00
• Avoiding the trap of thinking that every client is different 13:40
• The travel experience starts when clients book the trip 17:00
• Curating long-term client relationships to create personalized experiences 17:40
• Building a strong team to prepare for the next level of growth 20:40

Roslyn’s contact information:

www.travelagentachievers.com

info@travelagentachievers.com

LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/roslynranse/

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Welcome to this episode of Power Up Your Team podcast. This is your free resource with tips and tricks to build a high performing team.

If your business is growing and you are an entrepreneur with just a few part time resources, you sooner or later have to delegate larger portions of work that you used to do yourself. That is if you want to keep on growing.

It’s easy to let go of administrative tasks such as:

• booking appointments
• keeping your CRM system up-to-date
• writing and posting social media content for you

Most likely, you have an array of business partners who provide support services such as accounting, legal support or IT services.

But what if, despite all outsourcing and delegation, you are at your capacity limits?

Maybe it’s time to start building a full-time team!

You have covered all major parts of the business yourself: Business Development, Client acquisition, design and delivery, billing, correspondence. You name it.

And you realize that, while you are in the weeds focusing on execution, you don’t have time to think about strategic stuff anymore. You are rushing from one task to the next and still feel constantly behind.

No time to design and build the next program because you are busy delivering the current one.

No time to focus on new clients because your long standing clients are keep in you so busy.

So, the key question is:

Where do you start?

Who do you bring on board, first?

Here’s an approach I invite you to consider: Make your weakness your team’s strength.

Start with what you least enjoy doing, the stuff where you feel out of your zone of genius.

If you don’t like administrative tasks such as billing, bookkeeping, organizing things, creating process flows or work instruction, then maybe it’s time to put someone in charge of that.

If you don’t like to connect with new people every day, maybe it’s time to hire someone who focuses on business development.

To build a successful team, you have to be clear on your strength and know what jobs you are hiring for.

And it's equally important to do some soul searching on yourself.

• Are you willing to accept new ideas from that person?
• Do you need a thinking partner or just a person who executes?
• Does this person have decision authority or is he/she following instructions?

You have to be clear on “how much leash” you want to give your first team member. Maybe not from the get go but over time.

Over my career, I have built many teams and I realized that it is important to recognize when someone is more skilled or talented in an area than I am myself. It’s important to acknowledge that and create a trusted, respectful climate.

By nature, I am an operations person and like to make sure things run well and there is a clear line of sight between activities and results.

On the contrary, I never liked to go out and have networking conversations or join industry groups to solicit new business.

And guess what, there are people who loved just that! I put those people in positions to navigate our stakeholder landscape in and outside the company and let them run that show.

We aligned on purpose, intend and strategy. But that’s it. In our check-in meeting I viewed them as equal partner in pursuit of business success.

The first few hires are the most crucial ones because you are hiring 50 % of your team with the first hire and 33 % with the second and so forth.

Continue reading at www.powerupyourteam.com

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Today’s guest is Anne Rush, Founder & CEO of Elasta Jobs. Elasta Jobs provides HR consulting services through skilled independent consultants.  Prior to jumping into entrepreneurship, Anne has also held Fortune 100 executive roles in Talent, Operations, and Technology. Anne holds her bachelor's degree from Boston College and master's degree from Harvard University.   

Here’s what we covered in our discussion:

Elasta Jobs introduction 1:00
The idea and market need that started Elasta Jobs 1:46

• Helping independent consultant get access to clients
• Providing skilled talent on demand for a particular need

Flexible HR talent fills a capacity gap in a growing business 3:42
Aligning client’s needs with expert consultants in her network 5:10
Growing the business by leveraging the gig economy 8:22
Building a trusted consultant network one conversation at a time 9:40
Benefits of a reliable close-nit network 12:10
 Onboarding independent consultants to become one team representing Elasta Jobs13:00
Leveraging corporate experience to build, lead and empower the project teams. 16:10 Anne’s contact information 18:04

Anne’s contact information:

www.ElastaJobs.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/anne-rush/

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Today I want to add my 2 cents to the subject of quiet quitting. It’s a new term for a problem that has been around quite some time.

What moved it so much into the focus is the pandemic. It caused many people to re-evaluate what’s important in life and how they currently spend it.

And also, over the decades, the work itself has changed. There are more businesses that put employees in touch with the customer as they co-create the services. The rate of change has increased. Technology is more complex.

So every business needs the hearts and minds of all their employees to contribute with functional expertise and new ideas.

Here’s the truth: You simply can’t afford a quiet quitter on your team!

According to Gallup, “quiet quitters” make up 50 % of the US workforce. It’s those people who do the bare minimum and their mind is detached from the job. They are on autopilot so to speak.

They might smile, they show up on time, do what is asked of them but nothing more. No new ideas, no extra step when dealing with a customer, no improvement of their work.

As CEO or Founder, you have the power to create an engaging work environment that keeps your peeps engaged.

And frankly, if you want to scale your business to the next level of success you need people who are all in. You need them to say “Hell Yes” and not “Maybe”.

In my mind there are several things you can do to create that environment:

1. Anchor your business in purpose

What is the bigger purpose above and beyond the annual results or the current products or services?

That makes me think of the fable of the three bricklayers of which one is laying bricks to feed the family, the second one is building a wall and the third one is building the house of God.

1. Create clarity into where you are going

What’s your vision, what’s the strategy to get there? What’s the most important work?

The more people understand about the organization, the more engaged they can be.

1. Create context of how work gets done

If everyone just understands their job without knowing where work is coming from and where it’s going, it is very hard to get the whole picture. Going back to the fable, all they are seeing is the brick.

During my career in continuous improvement, I have encountered a lot of situations where employees didn’t know how their individual work fits into the overall context.

1. Lead with a process mindset

And yes, I am talking about process here.

Employee engagement is sometimes viewed as a matter of leadership tasks such communication, recognition, personal development. The soft skills. And they are all important.

But I have helped enough teams to improve their processes to know that transparent processes are a key ingredient to an engaging work environment.

Seriously, it can be so frustrating when you get a customer inquiry and don’t know where to get the information to answer it. Or, if you wait for an approval and can’t follow up because you don’t know who the approver is. Your request was sent off with a swoosh into a black hole called computer.

Let's review: What did I list so far? Purpose, Clarity, Context and Process

By the way, If this resonates and you realize that this is holding you back from the results you want, let’s book a strategy session. It’s 90 minutes where we can brainstorm how you can start to create a more engaging environment.

When it comes to leadership habits, there is one that stands out when it comes to quiet quitting:

Find out about tip # 5 at PowerUpYourTeam.com

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Welcome to this episode of Power Up Your team podcast.

These days, technology is a part of every business. Every successful venture depends on technology ranging from small best-in-class spot solutions to large end-to-end business automation systems.

And as you scale your business, your technology has to follow suit.

There is an overwhelming selection of software products out there. Most of them are solutions for specific tasks. It is difficult to integrate them and avoid overlap or gaps between systems. There is so much choice.

Just think of CRM systems as example. There are so many out there. HubSpot, Salesforce, Oracle NetSuite, Monday and so many more.

And they all come with excellent features, offer integration opportunities and promise a better world. It’s so easy to get carried away by really cool functionality.

And of course, you want to make sure your business runs on state-of-the-art technology.

But what if your processes are still not running smoothly?

With every system you’re adding there seem to be more manual workarounds that your employees are coming up with. That is so frustrating.

As Founder or CEO, you may not be the technology expert – unless that happens to be your product. But you are the expert in how your business runs and so is your team.

To guide your team in making a good selection, they have to recognize that technology is not the equivalent of process. It’s an enabler. Technology needs to support the process and the people doing the work - not the other way around.

So when you implement new technology, it's good to make sure your team has a:

• crystal-clear understanding of the existing process
• record of gaps that need to be addressed with new technology
• list of things that are working well that can’t be thrown out
• mental image of the future process
• role in the selection and implementation process

All team members who are working with the technology all the time have to be involved. By the way, that also helps with buy-in from a change perspective.

What if you are not the expert in the process?

Throughout my career, I had to lead several large technology implementations. Sometimes, I was in the role of President and P&L leader and other times I was a strategic initiative leader.

I was never the expert in the process. I am also not a technology expert. So in each case, I had to lead my team in a way that guaranteed the highest likelihood of them making good decisions for the business.

And I did that by involving them in evaluating current state and designing future state down to the click and clacks on very screen. We even looked at everyone’s role and evaluated how much they were aligned to the process.

When it came to configuring the new system, I remember we had many discussions about the extent to which we should customize the new technology to match our processes or change our processes to pick up the latest and greatest technology trends.

See there is a huge element of change management in here. Sometimes our team was fearful to change to processes away from what they were used to. We needed to make sure that employees were bought into that change. Otherwise, we would implement new technology and still have manual workarounds.

Think of technology as an enabler of the processes that are run by your team members.

Keeping a process mindset at the forefront will help to buy and configure technology that seamlessly integrates into the way you

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So, you became an entrepreneur to do you own thing. You are your own boss and ditched those rules and instructions your managers used to give you. As founder, you want to be creative and take your ideas to market.

But as your team is growing you realize that it’s very tough to keep your fingers on the pulse or predict a month end result when everyone is flying by the seats of their pants.

You are not involved in every step anymore and you suddenly see that people have created their own way of doing things.

That might be okay here and there but it quickly becomes a problem when there no clear view anymore on how products or services are created and delivered to the customer.

Processes are often associated with cumbersome mapping exercises and documentation of detailed work instructions that might get ignored before the ink is dry.

But without processes, you are wondering how things are going and what it is that people are actually working on. You are waiting and hoping that stuff will get done correctly and on time. By now, there are too many people around to follow-up with directly.

It’s so unsettling when you don’t have visibility into anything until it’s done. You are constantly looking in the rear view mirror.

Now there is the need for the team to step up and implement processes that align everyone around how work gets done.

And how do you show up as a leader to signal that processes are important?

I think you do that by asking questions that can only be answered if the team follows consistent processes. And, of course, you have to be a role model and follow the processes yourself.

So here are 3 types of questions you can ask:

Questions pertaining to roles and responsibilities:

Clear roles and responsibilities are important to get stuff done. So ask questions that start with “Who’s in charge”.

Handoffs between teams are a place where things fall frequently through the cracks. So ask about them, too.

Questions pertaining to processes.:

Have we improved the process for checking that payment has been received before we release the final product version to our customers?

How much time are we spending on the annual review with customers? How far are we scheduled out?

How often do we check in with the client after we completed the project? Who is doing that?

Questions pertaining to measurements:

Only what gets measured gets done. And those measurement give you the transparency you need to manage your business without being involved in every detail.

And here’s my favorite one:

How do you know you have done a good job?

This is very basic but the ability for people to assess the quality of their work is the foundation for making improvements and, believe it or not, a source of pride. People are more motivated when they know that their work hits the mark and makes a difference.

How would it feel to know what’s going on in your shop

Here the truth:

If you want a team that creates and follows processes you have to lead with an unshakeable process mindset.

That’s required to create an environment where processes drive consistency, transparency, and collaboration so you can keep your fingers on the pulse without being directly involved in every detail.

If this is an issue that is holding you back from the success you want, feel free to book a strategy session. We can brainstorm ideas for how you can show up with an unshakeable a process mindset and navigate your company to the next level of success.

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Hello and welcome to Power Up Your Team podcast. This is your free resource with tips for how to build a more resilient team.

Without doubt it is challenging to keep a team motivated and on board. It may feel like an extra thing to do when your plate is already full.

You have a clear vision and are excited about it. You can visualize how things will be five years from now. Maybe you envision a steady revenue line and a comfortable profit position. And, after many years with a bare bone salary for yourself, you can even give yourself a raise.

In your mind, you can hear raving reviews from your customers and your competition curls under the table. Your employees are thrilled now that they are working in a nicer space. And you envision yourself having more time to think strategically because your team is running the day-to-day business independently.

You carry this image of your future in your head and your heart. And this image is what gets you out of bed every morning.

But you are wondering if your team shares this exciting vision with you!

You have shared where you want to take your business from a financial and marketing perspective. And your team may just say “Ok more work coming our way”.

Maybe you talked about your personal vision. For instance, that you want to be on the top 40 under 40 list published by Forbes Magazine. That’s a awesome goal but it’s hard for your team to buy into. Because is your personal goal.

So how can you create a shared vision that your whole team will rally around?

You have to invest the time to co-create that vision with your team.

Have you ever heard someone say paint me a picture? Or, a picture says more than thousand words?

I believe, creating a vision board is a great way to engage your team. Vision boards have become known as a means to manifest a personal vision but they work for a team as well.

Creating a vision board can be a fun team activity where you take a scrapbook approach to visualize the business future on a large white board. You can use magazine snippets, photos, drawings, paintings and other stuff to create a collage where everyone can see themselves represented.

This activity will also bond the team together. If you have a remote team, you can bring them together in person for this important event.

Find out what opportunities they see for your business. Maybe they have other ideas and expand the vision that you had in your head. You learn how your business vision translates into a shared purpose and an individual vision for each team member.

Where you see yourself as the top service provider listed in an industry magazine, they envision themselves talking to a friend and sharing that they now work for a very successful company (as opposed to a small startup with an uncertain future).

Where you see yourself having a steady stream of clients and a growing top line, they are excited about more career opportunities or flexible work hours.

While you are seeing yourself as an established expert at an industry event, they can see themselves working in a bigger office or having better work-from-home equipment.

While the vision is shared, the meaning is different for each and every team member. The key is that they all can see themselves in that future and are bought in with their hearts and minds.

And the best way to get there is to co-create that vision. Having the dialogue so it becomes a colorful image that ignites yourself and your team every day.

So don’t be the only visionary in your business. Get your team on board so they can support you as you lead your business to the next level of success.

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Kelly Wittman is the owner of Witt and Company, a brand strategy and design studio that specializes in rebranding. Prior to the unplanned start of her business in 2017, she spent six years in marketing, event management and fundraising, specifically in the nonprofit and startup space.
Now, she happily wears the title of ‘unemployable’ and is on a mission to help people-first businesses create strategic and intentional brands that support them in doing more good work.

Here’s what we covered in our conversation:

• How Kelly got started with her business 1:10
• Kelly’s first client who started the pivot towards branding 2:17
• Leveraging corporate skills and education to build a digital company 3:00
• How Kelly went about building her team after welcoming her first child 5:29
• Recognizing the need for an internal brand for her own business 7:00
• Creating clarity for her team on the Witt & Company brand values 10:29
• Team feedback to ensure customer interactions are aligned to brand 13:50
• Open dialogue to keep employees engaged in the business 15:00
• Finding team members who align with the company values 16:47
• How Kelly’s internal brand values create a great work environment 18:21
• One person with different values can get a small team out of alignment 21:50
• Kelly’s contact information 23:00

Kelly’s contact information:

www.WittandCompany.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellymwittman/

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Welcome to this episode of Power Up Your Team podcast. This is your free resources with tips and tricks for how to build a more resilient team.

I have always believed that the team is the most important asset of any organization large or small. It’s like the organization’s heartbeat.

And yet, I have worked for and coached so many well intended leaders who just not understood or appreciated that.

They saw their role as pace setters, striving for accurate delivery of work, and timely task completion and monitoring performance. They focused on managing or completing work and not leading people.

Without the Team:

• Work will not get done. If systems perform a significant aspect of work, people need to invent, design, develop and operate them.
• New ideas will not come to the table, innovation of new products and services or continuous improvement on the work itself will not happen
• Connections cannot be made to the people that consume the services at the end of the value chain or to other critical contributors outside your business.

You can automate everything except the human spirit.

As leader of a team, the task of motivating is much more important than the task of monitoring. The task of motivating cannot be automated or systematized. The task of monitoring can.

What was important for me as employee that

• my leader cared about us
• I was able to contribute my ideas
• my leader heard and incorporated my ideas
• there was a sense of belonging
• we had a shared purpose
• my leader trusted my abilities

I could tell if the environment was setup for me to succeed or to fail.

You can create this positive work environment

And this work environment is what you as CEO or Founder can create. It’s an outcome of the team structure you put in place, the roles and responsibilities, processes and works systems and, more importantly, your leadership.

As your company begins to grow you need to swiftly step into a leadership role and leave the planning and execution of the work to your team

At the onset you may have done everything yourself soup to nuts. Then there may have been a phase, during which you collaborated with a few trusted partners.

With more success and growth, you started to delegate significant aspect of the work. Your role become to a great deal that of the chief motivator.

The time of this evolution is critical to ensure there is a strong foundation in place so you can level up. If you wait too long you suffocate the team and if you move too fast you create chaos.

At the end of the day, every CEO or founder needs team that

• effectively collaborates and supports each other in handling day-today operations
• trusts each other to share new ideas, call out things that don’t work and make improvements
• can improvise and adjust to unforeseen circumstance quickly and move forward

As motivator in chief, you create an environment that’s safe and fun so people come to work with their hearts and minds in the right place. As a result, they want to contribute and help you drive your business to the next level of success.

If this episode resonates with you and you like to discuss an issue related to motivating your team, let’s set up a strategy session where we can brainstorm how you can create the team you really want.

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Cheryl Mucha is the Founder & CEO of CFO Your Way

After 25 years in public and private accounting, including CFO positions in real estate investment firms, Cheryl founded her business in 2012. 

The company offers outsourced CFO services to businesses who need expert bookkeeping and controller services, and she and her team guide clients toward sustainable growth and profitability.

Here’s what we covered in our conversation:

• Cheryl’s background and business 1:10
• Approach to building her team 2:40
• Qualities Cheryl’s looks for in a new team member 5:20
• Telling the client’s business story through numbers 7:00
• Value of having experienced team members 8:50
• How to create a sense of belonging with a remote team 9:40
• How a backup system ensures seamless transitions 12:30
• Key ingredient to creating a positive, supportive team environment 16:50
• Cheryl’s contact information and podcast 18: 53

Cheryl’s contact information: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/cheryl-mucha-cpa/

https://cfoyourway.com/

Podcast Pathways to Profitability: Personal Tales of Business Success

https://cfoyourway.com/podcast/

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Welcome to this episode of Power Up Your Team podcast. Your free resource with tips and tricks to build a more resilient team.

During these times it’s so hard to find employees and, not only that, I hear from my clients that it’s also hard to keep them around. That applies particularly to people in their twenties or thirties.

I think young adults did not necessarily get prepared for realities of work during college. And they simply don’t know what to expect. How could they? Also, there are so many choices these days that they simply don’t know what they want from their careers or life altogether.

So they experiment. They join one company, think it’s boring and they leave. They try out the next. And yes, learning through experimentation is what scientists do to create the next innovation. Organizational development experts say that making mistakes is a key component in learning. And Albert Einstein said that failure is success in progress.

And yet, when young people enter the workforce, we expect them to get it right the first time.

Here’s truth #1: People will join your business and leave - that’s a fact!

Here’s truth #2: You can decrease the likelihood of employees leaving. But no matter how hard you try, you can’t prevent it.

As CEO or Founders, you can do two things:

A) increase the likelihood of them sticking around

B) Be prepared for when they leave

How do you increase the likelihood that a new employee will stay

Take your time interviewing them. Check out episode 10 of Power Up Your Team podcast titled “Don’t compromise on this when you hire your next leader”.

• Include multiple participants in the interview process. Let your existing team members weigh in. If they have a say in who is hired, they are more likely to support the newbie in feeling a sense of belonging.
• In conversation with them, get a sense if they can get behind your company’s vision and purpose.
• Once they have joined your team, allow them to change things for the better. No smart curious mind comes work to just follow instructions

And with all of that there is still no guarantee they will stay.

And be honest, do you want everyone you hire to stay for the rest of their life? You benefit from healthy change in team members because they will bring new thinking to your business.

So, how can you be prepared in case they leave?

• Don’t give them the keys to the castle.
• Don’t assign work to them that is mission critical and they are the only ones in control.
• Cross train your employees.
• Make sure several people can do critical work or have critical know-how.
• Create a back-up system. For example, have a primary and secondary for each client account.
• Structure the work for collaboration
• Create processes where your team needs to co-create to deliver product or services.

In summary, employees are leaving your business.
That is a reality.
You can control it to some extent but not fully.
The faster you can move from a team with individual knowledge to a team with shared knowledge – aka as organizational knowledge - the easier it is to navigate through choppy waters as you grow your business to the next level of success.

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Today’s guest is Kate Barry with eXp Realty. Kate began her real estate career in 2017 and started building her team in 2021. The Kate Berry team is a full-service agency that provides exceptional services to their clients. They are on track to hit $15 million in gross sales this year and have a 5-year goal to become a $100 million/year team.

With her team of administrators, a marketing director and an army of highly experienced buyer agents, Kate aims to help her clients strive and thrive toward their financial and personal goals through real estate.

Here’s what you will learn:

• Introduction to Kate’s real estate team 1:05
• Why Kate started a team and how it allowed her to grow personally 2:02
• A recent challenge with a real estate transaction 4:36
• Creating shared accountability through team roles 7:01
• Importance of people, process and technology playing well together 9:30
• Kate’s leadership role and significance of mentorship and support 12:00
• How Kate knows that she needs to get involved in a transaction 14:30
• How Kate sets up regular communications with her team 16:46
• Importance of being a role model for work/life balance 17:28
• How Kate enables a remote work structure 18:56
• How to integrate fun through monthly networking events 21:21
• Kate’s contact information 22:36

Kate’s contact information:

e-mail: KateBerryTeam@gmail.com

Phone: 1-802-VTH-OMES. (Vermont Homes)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/katebarryreagent/

https://www.facebook.com/katebarryreagent

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Welcome to this episode of Power Up Your Team podcast! This is your free resource with tips and tricks to build a more resilient team.

My teachers used to tell me that feedback is a gift. I quickly learned that it’s easy to accept that gift when it’s all positive or when we just get to hear “Well done” or “Awesome job”. It’s easier to receive and also easier to give.

But what happens when someone really screwed up? And you really just want to give this person a piece of your mind. You want to express how careless their actions were and how they compromised the team’s success.

That’s when constructive feedback comes in handy so that despite the crisis in the moment, you don’t break relationships, or the trust and confidence of your team members.

I remember a specific feedback session from early in my career where I was on the receiving end. I was new in that company and experienced a very engrained, formal performance review cycle for the first time.

Our leader asked to see the documentation before we would release it to our employees.

One day, she called me to her office and sat me down with an all telling smile. I remember sitting in her large office with an adjacent conference room in late afternoon sunlight. I thought “Oh shoot! What’s coming now?” She patiently read the first observation I had documented. She asked me: “What would you like to see Tim doing instead?” “What was he doing well?”

As we went through my documentation line by line, I shamefully noticed that I had produced a list of grievances. I was thorough – I can tell you that – but I totally missed the mark of what the feedback was meant to do. It would have been such a train wreck had she not guided me in rewriting it.

I learned how important it is to have a “glass half full” perspective to maintain relationships, trust and pave a path forward towards desirable change.

In my 30 years of receiving and providing feedback, I have learned a couple of things that are worthwhile to consider.

It should be specific to a situation

Instead of saying “you always do this …” refer to a specific occurrence: “Yesterday in the meeting this or that happened”. It helps to ensure that your feedback comes across as genuine.

It should relate to a behavior or action not be a judgement of character.

Instead of saying “You were late again. You are simply unreliable!” make the observation and state the impact that it had on the team: “You were late and we all were losing important meeting time”

Keep a 4:1 ratio for positive and negative observations

Starting the conversation with four compliments on what was done well, makes the portion where you address an issue much easier to swallow. Some research also indicates a 5: 1 ratio.

It should include feedforward

The past can’t be changed and the value of these conversation lie in empowering someone to forge ahead with new beliefs, skills, and actions.

I have experienced different levels of formality in receiving feedback. It can range from an informal conversation or a documented review.

I believe that in organizations where empowering feedback is given regularly, the documented review can be dropped altogether.

So, make giving feedback your leadership habit. Ensure it’s part of every conversation so your team can contribute at a higher level and you can achieve the next level of success for your business.

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Welcome to this episode of power up your team podcast. This is your free resource to help you build a winning team. The show notes can be found online at Power Up Your Team.com

You have set your eyes on your vision, have developed your strategic plan and a challenging year over year agenda. You may have funding from your investors or got a loan from your bank. And now you must deliver. Your business no longer a dream. Now it’s an obligation as well. Now there is pressure to deliver.

A along long the way you involved you growing team, kept them in the loop and made sure that new folks are onboarded so they feel welcome and know what to do.

But sometimes you are wondering if all your employees are truly on board or what they think about your agenda. Are they really in it with their heart and minds? Or, is it a physical presence, only? Are they going to stick around? 

And there are many ways to create a positive culture where a team is motivated and inspired to help you get your business to the next level. They work in concert with each other and there are leadership and structural elements that play into that. Each of my free episodes address an aspect of how you can create a winning team.

In this episode, I want to chat about three habits that I invite you to wrap into the way you show up as a leader. Make it a part of who you are.  

a.     Asking people for input and use it:

i.      Every touchpoint with your team, as individual or as a group, is an opportunity to invite their input.  Ask them causally about what they think related to business. That can be a decision you just made, a project that was just completed, a new procedure. Ask and listen. 

ii.     Asking input can be a regular behavior and more than an annual event such as  the employee engagement survey. Consider asking people junior to you and people outside your typical contact circle. Show up as the curious leader who wants to genuinely know what other people think.  It will help you check the pulse of your team and guide your decision making over time.

b.     Open and honest feedback

i.      You know, I never liked formal performance reviews. If you have ever worked in a large corporation, you may remember these sort of judgement days. But that doesn’t mean people don’t want feedback. Feedback is an important tool to keep people engaged and help them develop. 

c.     Public recognition for their success

i.      Take the time to recognize individuals and teams publicly. And by publicly I don’t mean a formal stage or the annual Christmas party - even though that would be cool, too. With public, I simply mean more people than the recipient alone. That could be a team meeting where you say “congrats on closing that deal” or “Great job on resolving the issue” 

ii.     Make sure you do the regularly and evenly so that it’s not the same person that being recognized all the time. 

iii.   This sends to messages to your team: you appreciate their contributions and, equally important you know what’s going on. You are dialed in.

Adopting these three habits will make a significant contribution to making people feel valued

Here’s the truth:

When people feel valued, they are more engaged at work. 

They take the extra step such as an extra phone call to make sure a client is all set or a stakeholder is on board. I think that feeling valued leads to more creativity and thoughtful action. 

Your team will show with more bandwidth, more resilience. They are more forgiving to accept changes in direction or changing priorities. I invite you to try it out as you navigate your company to the next level of success. <!--

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As business owner and people leader I am sure you care about the culture you are creating for your team. And by culture I simply mean the work environment that your team experiences every day.

Welcome to this episode of Power Up Your Team podcast.

Culture is a big word but essentially is an outcome based on many causal factors.

Casually, I think of it like baking a cake or making a salad. Have you been to a restaurant where, after you complimented the waitress on the meal, she says: “yes, we use the finest ingredients, full of flavor and they make all the difference?

That’s how it is with culture, too. So what are the ingredients to your culture?

And in a moment, I share the one ingredient that, I believe, is most important.

Typical ingredients are your purpose, vision and values. And then there are performance objectives, incentives, policies, procedures, processes – in essence all the things we can see or read. And there are so many more things I could list here.

The point is that it all needs to fit together so that the culture enhances you teams’ ability to create success for your business

For instance:

Superior customer service may not work well when employees are incentivized by the number of calls they get done in a certain amount of time.

A learning culture will not emerge If you don’t allow people to take classes or learn by doing through stretch assignment

A team culture will constantly be suffocated if everyone is incentivized by individual goals which pit people against each other.

As business owner, founder or CEO the sky's the limit for the culture you can create

An important component of culture are the intangible things that people observe when they are at work. They observe leadership behaviors, actions that get tolerated or not tolerated or habits that were created over time that only stick out to people who are new to the company.

When I moved from Illinois to the East Coast I never forget how dumbfounded I was when I noticed that everyone was eating lunch at their desk. I was used to going out with my peers and have an enjoyable lunch. First, I thought it was me. Maybe they don’t like me. But then I realized that it was simply how they had lunch. Had nothing to do with me. It was a matter of culture.

At the beginning I promised to share the single thing that can tank the culture you want you create.

And that is if you say one thing and do the other.

That’s why it’s so important to create a culture that’s aligned to your true beliefs and values so that you can show up with authenticity.

So, think about your values and create a culture that you can support with your words and actions.

For instance, if you say work life balance is important, then don’t work late or come to the office on Monday with work you completed over the weekend.

If you stand for a collaborative culture don’t make all important decisions by yourself.

If you want people to trust each other, you need to be the first one to trust the team.

I once worked for a company who was very high on employee safety. One day, during a heavy winter storm we were hoping the office would close early – like around 3 pm so we all could get home during daylight. Not only did that not happen but the CEO herself stayed late on that particular day working away in her office.

So what do you think the rest of us did?

Find out at www.powerupyourteam.com/32

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Hello and welcome back to episode 31 of Power Up Your Team podcast. 

Sometimes we quickly judge people based on their actions without understanding enough of the background or reason for their behaviors 

So let me give you one example. I felt so embarrassed about this situation that it serves as a reminder 20 years later to not judge people on a single action.

I was leading the implementation of a quality management system for a startup production company with a cross functional project team made up from all functions of the organization. 

Every week we had a team meeting to review status and agree on and assign the actions for the next week.  It was scheduled from 3 to 4 PM. It was still at a time during which everybody was physically present in the facility and nobody was on the phone or on zoom. 

There was one team member, let’s name him Joe for the sake of this podcast,  who always had to leave five minutes before the top of the hour 4 PM. No matter the discussion point, he dropped everything and left. 

I found out that Joe was vanishing every day sharply a few minutes before 4 pm even though the office was open until 5 pm. “Wow” I thought to myself “poor engagement. He really doesn’t care about our project,” He couldn’t possibly run to childcare because I knew he didn’t have any kids.

I mentioned that to his manager at one point in time. Even though we were peers and work friends he told me fairly formally that he approved of Joe leaving early but couldn’t tell me why.  “Ugh – what a joke” I thought to myself and “That’s not fair!” 

Remember episode 13 where I talk creating a fair work environment? Yes, this was still in those times when I thought fairness means treating everyone the exact same way. If Joe is allowed to leave at 4 pm everyone should have the option.  I have grown out of this perspective as I share in that episode.

Grudgingly, I went along leading the team meeting every week with Joe missing out on the action items in every meeting. 

And there finally was that day where I found out – with everyone else – why Joe had left so promptly and early every day. 

Go to www.powerupyourteam.com/31 to find out why Joe was leaving early and why I remember this story to this day! 

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Today’s guest is Sheila Siden, Founder of Resource Strategies.

Sheila brings a development approach to sustainable leadership, created over 30 years in public benefit organizations. Tapping into the power of purpose, Sheila’s methods increased funds raised and strengthened stakeholder relationships so teams align on shared purpose.

She earned a Master’s degree in International Management at MIIS. Her purpose strategy leadership succeeded in nonprofit development, Internet happening in the early 90s, and luxury hotel guest services.

Now she coaches and facilitates for founders and leaders who want to create collaboration and a purpose strategy.

When not zooming internationally from her rural locale on the Washington Coast, you can find Sheila on her beach bike around town getting doses of Vitamin Sea.

Here’s what you will learn:

· What Sustainability means in Sheila’s work 1:38

· How recent challenges affirmed her business focus 4:28

· Sheila’s approach* to help organization find their impact. 7:00

· Why all work starts with the founder/leader 9:25

· Example of one client who embraced the power of us. 13:52

· Why it’s important to make a mission explicit 15:51

· Get mission driven/socially responsible organizations better results? 18:30

· Sheila’s contact information 21:00

*ASPIRE = Action – Strength – Purpose – Involve – Recognize – Evolve

Sheila’s contact information:

www.resourcestrategies.me/coffeetalk to retrieve a worksheet “mining your why”

connect@resourcestrategies.me

https://www.linkedin.com/in/Sheilasiden

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This is episode 29 of Power Up your Team podcast and I want to talk about Moments of Truth and explain what they are and why they are so important. The show notes can be found online at www.powerupyourteam.com/29

If you grow your business steadily and there are naturally some bumps in the road:

• Website traffic may be down
• You have inquiries from prospects outside your target audience.
• Top clients are leaving after one or few cycles of service
• Prospects reject your proposals
• Client satisfaction survey come back with poor results.

Especially, when your business has grown to a point, where several people are working for you, you are not involved in every customer interaction or every decision that is being made.

Therefore, a great way to keep an eye on the important activities is to identity all Moments of Truth for your business.

What is a moment of truth?

Every time you or your staff interact with your clients or your clients interact with your systems!

Examples of direct interactions are:

Customer meetings, customer service calls or the team member who is welcoming your clients if you have a brick-and-mortar location or the assistant who is picking up the phone.

Examples for systems interactions are:

Clients accessing a portal to pay bills, browsing or conduct business on your website. All of that needs to be designed to create a great customer experience.

I recently had an experience where I wanted to pull down a travel receipt from one of the large online providers of travel services. That did not work. I constantly got an error message “Sorry something went wrong on our end. Try again”. Now I got on a very adventurous journey to resolve that issue. I “talked” to a chat bot who send me through various multiple-choice options. Neither one addressed my problem. I thought that at some point it would get me into a queue so I could talk to a human being. No such luck.

What’s is the reputation this company creates through that interaction? low cost – low service.

Is that what their management really wanted to create? What do you think?

Especially in the service industry, the customer is involved in creating the service.

For example, an insurance agent needs information from the customer to create the policy. In most consulting engagements, the customer information and feedback is vital before and during an engagement. In the travel example above, the customer needs to provide travel dates and lots of personal information these days to be let on the plane.

That is different from manufactured goods – such as a new vehicle or furniture. They are manufactured and then shipped to retail stores. That’s where the interaction with the customer occurs. And, of course, the vast majority of consumer goods can be bought online.

So here’s the point:

It doesn’t matter if your business is large or small, each touchpoint with your clients is an opportunity to make or break your reputation!

Continue reading at www.powerupyourteam.com/29

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Our guest today is Valari Jackson, the founder and CEO of Fierce Force Strategies. 

Valari is an expert in mindset, behavior, process and implementation. Valari is known for helping overwhelmed leaders and entrepreneurs finally get things done and understand why they have struggled to do so, by looking through the lens of personality type.

In this episode you learn about: 

• What Valari’s business is about 1:13
• How Valari leverages her ecosystem 2:05
• A recent challenge caused by doing too much herself 3:26
• Setting high standards for her ecosystem 5:17
• The challenge when outsourcing work we haven’t done before 7:03
• The value of a strong network 8:00
• Partnerships to co-create services 9:01
• Collaboration example 10:25
• How Valari selects her ecosystem 11:59
• How we can collaborate for mutual benefit 12:55
• Why being clear about what you do is so important 13:50
• Valari’s contact information 14:40

Contact information:

Valari Jackson

Fierce Focus Strategies

www.Busyisafourletterword.com

Valari@fiercefocusstrategies.com

https://taplink.cc/valari

https://www.linkedin.com/in/valari/

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I was recently chatting with a friend who I was working with a long time ago and that brought a ridiculous experience to mind that I had working for a leader who I generally admired and enjoyed work for.

The Context:

The two of us had the assignment to pull the annual budget presentation together. I you ever have been a point person for an important executive presentation you may know that it can be like herding cats. You need data, information, projections, opinions or slides from many different groups and individuals.  And you have make sure that everything mounts up to a great story.  

One day, my colleague and I were scheduled to meet with the division president to make final adjustments. We expected a one-hour meeting during which we get input and instructions for last minute changes.

So 10 AM it was. And while we were approaching the office the division manager was on the phone. The door was open and he waved us in. We sat down at the long conference table and watched him finish his phone call.  He hung up the phone and said “hi” and reconfirmed what he wanted to talk about.  

The Waiting Game Begins:

Then his phone rang again.  It was someone from engineering with a technical question.

After 20 minutes he hung up the phone and turned to us.  He said “OK” and started the conversation about our budget.  After five minutes his assistant knocked on the door. The CEO needed to speak with him.  We ask if we should leave the room and he said: “no” So we sat there somewhat embarrassed and listened to his side of the conversation.

After another 20 minutes or so, we finally were able to start our meeting – or so we thought. About 5 minutes in, he suddenly remembered that he had forgotten to talk to the production planning manager.

He excused himself a moment, left the room and came back quite some time later. And immediately another phone call interrupted him. That went on and on.  Believe it or not - the two of waited for four or five hours before he finally turned his attention to us.

Now admittedly, since we were very early in our careers, we got the VIP feeling being wrapped up that long in the office of the division president.

Neither one of us reported to him directly and that’s why I believe we didn’t say anything. The only reason why we kept on waiting for him was that we really needed his input.  And the longer we sat there without it, the longer we would have to work after hours.

Clearly our leader was overwhelmed and did not focus on the meeting. He had no control over his day. In fact, the day controlled him.  

Somehow, we got to the information we needed and got the presentation done on time. While we generally enjoyed working for this leader I wondered how he could not lose his mind working like this.

Here’s the Point:

If  your typical work day is peppered with interruption so you can’t focus on the people in front of you, then you clearly have opportunity for change! You have some thinking to do!

• Where are these interruptions coming from?
• Do you have enough structure and cadence on your day?
• Are you holding decisions too close to your vest and are a bottleneck?
• Are you not trusting your people?
• Do you have the right team in place?

There are many issues that can lead to a situation like I experienced on that day. And yes, we all have blind spots and good and bad days.

Strategy Session:

But if days with constant interruptions are the rule and this is holding you back from the success you want, let’s book a strategy session. In 90 minutes we can brainstorm ways you can limit interruptions to your day and level up your leadership and build a better business system so you and your team can thrive.

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Today’s guest is Jayme L. Aronson of Be Peacen Productions, Inc.

Jayme has 16 years of photography & videography experience.  She has spent the past 5 years developing as an Independent Film Maker.  Since then she completed her first documentary in partnership with University of Massachusetts Lowell String Project, filmed and developed story lines with colleagues and is currently in productions on 4 documentary’s and 3 feature films with her company Be Peacen Productions and colleagues! 

Jayme talks about how difficult it is to find the right business partners and how she has learned to use everyone's super power to create shared commitment.  

In this episode you learn:

Commitment of Jayme’s work (1:08)

Challenges of finding a great business partner (2:08)

Pain of a business partnership breaking up (3:31)

Looking for holistic connection when selecting business partners (6:57)

Game of Super Powers (8:51)

Creating shared commitment to drive successful outcomes (12:05)

Leaning in to co-create (13:20)

Jayme’s documentaries and her latest work “The catalyst” (14:00)

Jayme’s contact information (17:00)

Jayme’s contact information:

Be Peacen Productions, Inc.

https://www.bepeacen.com

E-mail address: bepeacen@gmail.com

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Hello and welcome back. This is episode 25 of Power Up Your Team podcast. I like to share an important insight I had a few years ago that literally changed my life.

A business plan can look great on paper but conquering milestone after milestone is not a straight line. It is a messy experience peppered with setbacks and costly turnarounds.

Things don’t always happen and people don’t react the way we want them to. Small steps along the way can seem daunting because we have never taken them before.

Examples:

• A larger firm we want to do business with but don’t have enough confidence to reach out
• An important client we want to attract but procrastinate making an appointment
• A speaking engagement we contemplate but never muster up the courage to take it on

We postpone because a fear of failing has taken residence in our head. Self-doubt creeps in and a little voice asks if we are good enough. Can we really do this?

Time goes by without us taking the important next step. Because we assume that any outcome other than what we want is a reflection on us. And that is a dead-end road with no way out.

Over the years, I created a thought pattern by which I always considered a set of scenarios. That helped me to be more accepting of other outcomes than the one I had forecasted or thought I needed to reach my goals.

I found that defining a best-case and worst-case scenario helped me feel less stressed and show up with more confidence. That made me a calmer person and better leader.

But still all hell would break lose when even my anticipated worst-case scenario did not pan out. Times when I had to go back to the drawing board and try completely new approaches just sucked the energy out of me.

I judged my abilities and I heard the little voice in my head “see you aren’t good enough”. I was so execution and results oriented that everything that didn’t work out as planed was reason to doubt my abilities.

But here’s the point: Who can control all these outside influences? Stuff just happens. The world is changing around us every second.

And now, I want to share something that I learned.

I learned that while getting my professional coach certification at iPEC, which is the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching.

They taught me a way of setting goals so that I can never fail. And the trick is to define the

minimal outcome of anything I set out to do as learning. Isn’t that genius?

So I started to define three outcomes for any challenging plan I wanted to take on:

• Optimal outcome
• Expected outcome
• Minimal outcome – instead of making the minimal outcome depending on outside circumstance, I defined it as something I want to learn from the situation

Let me give you one example:

A few months ago, I had the opportunity to speak in front of a large audience via video conference. I was worried that my speaking and presentation abilities had become a bit rusty. I also know that I am more comfortable speaking in front of an in-person audience than online

My optimal outcome: Presentation will flow perfectly and I can engage the audience as I was able to do in the past. I will feel at ease and deliver a powerful message within the permitted time. People will remember me based on my talk.

Expected outcome: I can get my message across without really connecting to the audience. I might rush a bit through the slides. But I will do ok and be in line with everyone else who presented.

Minimal outcome: No matter how it goes, I will learn how to tweak my approach so that I can be more comfortable speaking to a large online

Find out at www.PowerUpYourTeam.com/25 how I did!&a

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Our guest today is Karyn Ross of Karyn Ross Consulting. She is a long-time lean practitioner and author of several books.

Karyn speaks about her experience venturing into entrepreneurship at the age of 55 and how she moved beyond judgement and her own inner critic to create the successful busines she has today.

In this episode you learn about:

Venturing into entrepreneurship at age 55 (1:30)

Karen’s experience with her first business mentor (3:40)

Using lean principles to build a business (6:37)

Failing fast to learn quickly and continuously improve (9:23)

Realistic assumptions when starting out to avoid getting discouraged at the onset (11:48)

Growing a business is like growing a plant (13:48)

Importance of women helping women (15:16)

PDCA (Plan – Do – Check – Act) briefly explained (16:10)

Karyn’s company (16:34)

Karen’s contact information:

https://www.karynrossconsulting.com

https://www.kindleadership.org

Karyn@Karynrossconsulting.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/krclean4service/

Karyn’s books:

The Toyota Way to Service Excellence – Lean Transformation in Service Organizations (co-authored with Jeffrey K. Liker)

How to Coach for Creativity and Service Excellence

The Kind Leader: A Practical Guide to Eliminating Fear, CreatingTrust and Leading with Kindness

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The most important thing to create a successful team

Welcome to episode 23 of Power Up Your Team podcast. Today, I want to talk about the most important thing you can give to your team so they are engaged and help you drive your business forward.

And I am not talking about the paycheck or benefits which are also important because most of us have to work to earn a living.

As business owner you want your people to do more than just show up for their bi-weekly paycheck. You have created a fun and open office atmosphere. As a leader, you are friendly and approachable. And you have the feeling that everyone genuinely likes to work for you.

But you are finding yourself burning the midnight oil a couple of nights a week. You are doing a lot of planning, thinking and worrying by yourself. You just don’t have time for strategic thinking during normal business hours. And you are wondering why that is.

So try this. Next day you are in the office, engage with team members and find out how much they understand of the bigger picture. Ask a couple of questions:

• Why are we (enter your company name) in business? What is our purpose?
• Where do we want to take the business? What are our most important priorities?
• What is the purpose of your specific role? How does your role relate to other roles?

If they don’t know the answer, or, everyone has a different perspective, you have work to do.

People need context and knowledge about the business as a whole, so they can engage their minds above and beyond the routine tasks they are performing every day. They need information to make decisions and take action.

Here’s the point:

The most important thing you can provide to help your people help you is Clarity

Go inside yourself and reflect on why you selected to be in your line of business. What is it that you want to achieve beyond financial success? What is you mission and what difference do you want to make?

For example: An insurance agency owner who has a mission of “Helping people protect what they value so they can have peace of mind” is driving a higher sense of purpose than someone who simply says “ we are here to sell polices”. The latter sounds pretty dull in comparison, doesn’t it?

Then make sure everyone understands where you want to take the business. Share your strategic goals and the most important work that needs to get done to achieve them. Check out episode 3 “Don’t lose your team on your road to success”, where I discuss why your team is the most important stakeholder of your strategic plan.

Also, you need to create transparency about how your business operates end-to-end so people understand their role in the context of other roles.

Read on at www.PowerUpYourTeam.com/23 to find out about one key insight related to creating clarity.

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Don’t we all wish we had more time? But all we have are 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.

Welcome to episode 22 of Power Up Your team podcast. The show notes can be found online at PowerUpYourTeam.com/22. Today, I will discuss a great routine to bond with your team and proactively ensure everyone is positioned to work successfully.

As business owner or CEO you want to be sure your team is working effectively and work is flowing seamlessly so your customers are serviced well. Sometimes you find yourself hesitant to delegate important matters. It’s not that you don’t trust the individuals on your team but you question your team’s ability to collaborate well so everyone can do their part.

Especially in times when not everyone sits in one office because people are working remotely it is more difficult to determine if people may have questions or are lacking information or material to do their work.

There may have been instances, where you find out after the fact that issues popped up and work hasn’t gotten done. As result, you are rather doing a lot of the heavy lifting yourself so you don’t have to extensively review your team’s work or clean up a mess.

So here is a simple way to keep your fingers on the pulse. Spend 15-minutes with you team either daily, bi-weekly or weekly depending on the flow of work.

And let me explain what I mean by flow of work:

In a call center, where people review call metrics daily, it makes sense to spend 15 minutes each morning to ensure everyone is positioned for success.

In an accounting department, where people work to deliver a monthly book close, weekly 15-minute meetings may be enough to ensure everything is on track.

A weekly cadence might also work well for a sales organization to align everyone around prospecting and customer touch points for the upcoming week.

These 15-minute morning meetings are called “huddles” in the lean/six sigma operating environment and are also known as “stand-up meetings” in Information Technology department. Stand-up because the meeting is so short that it’s not worth finding a conference room and sit down.

You also may know huddle activity from sports. At a football game you see the players gathering in a close circle aligning on their strategy for the next offensive play.

And that’s precisely what these 15-minute meeting are doing for your business. The key question to address:

Is everyone positioned to win? Do all team members have what they need to be successful in their job on that day or during that week?

You as leader have a facilitative role. That means you ensure everyone attending the huddle has a chance to speak up and ask questions while you are listening to ensure that your team has a plan to execute.

This short touch point with your team has a grounding function. It sends a signal that everyone is responsible to generate collective success. Therefore, it is a team building event as much as it is reassurance for you that work will get done and every team member has clarity on what they need to contribute.

“We are in it to win it!” Whatever winning means in your business, you want to be sure you team starts off the day or week with a collective positive can-do attitude.

During the huddle, you need to ensure that team members surface any problems that get in the way of success. And then your job is to motivate and support them in their problem-solving efforts. Remember, a huddle is not a pity party where they give you a list of things to fix.

There are two things to keep in mind as you are designing your 15-minute routines.

Find out more at www.powerupyourteam.com/22

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As you grow your business and step more into a CEO role it is important to keep every team member engaged in the work. They are doing the work you may have done yourself when you started out as a solopreneur.

Welcome to episode 21 of Power Up Your Team podcast. Today, I want to remind you of three unintentional habits that undermine employee engagement.

The days go by fast and you are rushing from one important meeting to the next or you are hovering over reports and spreadsheets to keep up with critical work. It’s easy to forget a couple of small things that make a huge difference in how your employees are engaged at work.

1. Masterminding plans and keeping them to yourself

In the early stages of owning your business you had to make all plans by yourself and there wasn’t anyone around to share them with.

And keeping everything close to your vest is still ok if you have a few part-time resources who perform repetitive tasks for you.

But the moment you are expecting your team members to make decisions you have to provide them with information and context.

They need to understand the big picture as to where you are headed with the business. Check out episode 3 “Don’t lose your team on the road to success” where I discuss how you can make sure your team is aligned to your strategic direction.

Get into the habit of pondering your ideas with your employees and create transparency even as your plans take shape.

2. Forget to invite and act on employee ideas

Once team members understand the general direction you are taking with your business, you will be amazed. Because what happens is they actually come up with great ideas of how to get there!

So, keep that in mind and ask for their ideas – formally and informally. Consider them seriously. Allow people to act on them and explain in case you chose not to implement a certain idea.

See, if there is transparency in your vision and strategy you have the context in which you can explain why you follow or don’t follow an idea.

I have worked with managers who rather didn’t ask for ideas because they were afraid of having to reject one. And I worked with manager who asked for ideas but didn’t do anything with them.

Both habits are a guaranteed recipe to kick employee engagement to the curb.

Get into the listening habit. Listen to your employees like you listen to your customers.

3. Forget to give feedback and acknowledge great work

People want to do good work – and that has to be the operating assumption for any leader. They want to know what they did well and where they can do better.

Feedback doesn’t need to have the formality of a 1:1 meeting or a recognition event. Just a friendly “well done” as you walk by someone’s work place or start a meeting online will go a long way. Of course, constructive feedback is important, too, and is better given in private.

Get into the conscious habit of really seeing each and every one of your team members and the contribution they make.

I once had a leader who thought that the pay check is all that’s needed to acknowledge the employee and his or her work. But here we are talking about a contractual obligation between employer and employee.

Recognition and feedback are human interactions. They create buy-in and trust. You as leader communicate to your team that their presence and their work matters. You are giving them a sense of belonging.

Find the complete show notes online at PowerUpYourTeam.com/21.

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You have chartered your business through ever-changing territory and you always think ahead and know when to hit the brake and when to make a sharp turn.

But you recognize that your team is getting tired and paralyzed in the face of constant change. What are some measures you can take to create emotional safety for your team?

Welcome to episode 20 of Power Up your Team podcast.

Change is inevitable in today’s world. However, it is difficult for most of us. Our instincts are trying to keep us safe and that often means we avoid the unknown. We experience change in our personal and professional lives.

And it is often the compounding effect of change that wears people out.

Additionally, we all react to and deal with change in our own unique ways. If not implemented thoughtfully, constant change can freeze your team.

So what can you do to keep your team motivated and inspired in the face of frequent twists and turns in your business?

Change – large or small - occurs everywhere: in strategy, people, process and tools.

Some changes are driven by outside influences such as regulatory requirements and outside of your control. Others are required so you can achieve your business goals:

You may decide to exit a market, stop offering a service a producing a product. That might have implications on people’s jobs, their roles and the relationships they have built inside and outside your organization.

You decide to implement new technology that offers new processing capabilities. While some team members are excited, others may worry if they can learn quickly enough to adjust.

You added a completely new department and hired a leader from the outside. You feel great about it as now you have more time to think strategically. But some of your team members may be worried sick over having to report to someone new.

A change you are excited about as business leader may cause woes and worries for team members.

Here are four steps to consider when introducing change:

Set context

1. Explain what is changing and how it aligns to the strategic direction of your business. Check out episode 3 “Don’t lose you team on the road to success” where I talk about how you can bring your team along so they understand where the business is headed.

2. Explain WHY the change is occurring and how it helps to get closer to strategic goals. People will quickly figure out if change is for better or just for sake of change.

3. Explains when the change is happening and what it means for your team members. Different roles may be impacted in a different way.

Be authentic

1. Be transparent and acknowledge that change is part of business. Share how you are dealing with change. Admit that it sometimes can be overwhelming and it’s ok to feel that way.

Give space

1. Help people fully understand how the change is impacting them.

2. Give them time to process. Create forums so people can ask questions and discuss amongst each other.

3. Be approachable and take time to understand concerns.

Read on at www.Powerupyourteam.com/20 to find out about step 4!

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Your business has been growing steadily and your organization has evolved organically. Now you realize that too many people are waiting for your direction.

But how do you create an organizational structure that can be augmented and works well as your business is growing?

Welcome to episode 19 of Power Up Your Team podcast where I share threes pillars of a functioning organizational design. The show notes can be found at PowerUpYourTeam.com/19.

Depending on the situation, you may need to add new members to your leadership team or create additional departments with new responsibilities.

To set up your team for success, it’s not enough to just write another job description or tell the new leader what to do.

Here’s the truth: To build a successful organization you need to think about structure, process and people!

Let’s look at each pillar separately:

1. Structure:

This is the typical organizational chart where we see boxes and lines that describe who reports to whom. It also includes the job descriptions that outline scope of role, expectations, and decision authority.

Earlier in my career, I was in the quality manager role for a startup production facility that grew from inception to over 250 people in less than three years.

So, the work that was formerly done by one person – in this case the production manager – needed to be divided up as more and more different roles where created.

In the early stages, every new person meant a different department like quality management, purchasing, production planning, shipping and so forth. Each new employee had a completely different role compared to everyone else.

Soon, the production manager needed a to hire supervisors to oversee the growing amount of production associates.

Documenting each person’s responsibilities and reporting relationships on paper is the easy stuff.

What’s more important is to define how these different roles collaborate to get work done

1. Process and Collaboration

People’s roles cannot stand in isolation. People need to understand how they are expected to interact with each other. Providing documentation and training creates clarity on how the whole business system is supposed to function.

When we established the role of production supervisor (in the earlier example) we needed to decide and communicate how that role relates to the production manager and the associates on the shop floor.

For instance, when do personal or production issues need to be escalated? And to whom? Now put the quality department in the mix: Who can start up production after an issue was raised and addressed? Quality Manager or Production Supervisor?

We had quite a few - let me say - collisions and each time we learned new things that needed to be clarified. I think that’s part of growing pains of every organization. Learning by doing.

So each time you add a new role, keep a system mindset and a perspective of the organization as a whole to ensure the role fits in.

It’s very tempting to say “we have good people” and they will figure it out. But soon there are just too many issues related to work flows, processes and decision authority that boog your whole system down.

Read about the final and most important aspect of organizational design at www.powerupyourteam.com/19

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This episode is for solopreneurs who want to optimize their workload so they can take on new clients. Welcome to episode 18. The show notes can be found online at www.powerupyourteam.com/18.

You are successful and now there is too much stuff to handle everything soup to nuts. Your attention is scattered across many tasks and it seems you can’t focus on what really matters.

Your business is not big enough to build a leadership team or recruit high-caliber full time staff for functions such as operations or account services. There is not quite enough work just yet.

But you need to find a way to free up your own capacity for revenue generating efforts and the question is: How can you prioritize what you spend your time on? At the end of the day, everything is important and needs to get done to keep the ball rolling.

So which task are best to peel off so you can focus more on growing your business?

Here’s a new perspective I invite you to try on. Look at all your activites through the lens of your customer.

Gain clarity on what it is that the customer really paying you for!

In this context I like to suggest three categories:

Value added work are the activities that the client has hired you for. Examples:

• Law firm: defending someone in court, sitting with a couple to create their estate plan or finalizing a real estate transaction
• Software Implementation Firm: on-site engagements to understand a company’s processes and customize the software to their needs.
• Coaching business like mine: time spend with individuals to help them gain new perspectives and insights that lead them to try on different approaches and achieve their goals.

In the service industry, value added the time we spend with our customers where we either co-develop solutions or present recommendations they are paying us for

Value enabling work are critical steps to tackle so we are prepared to impress our client. They typically happen before or after we meet with them and are very important.

• Law Firm: research required to offer a legal opinion, completing legal filings on behalf of the client.
• Consulting Firm: researching a company or consolidating stakeholder input to be able to customize the software solution
• Coaching business: compiling resources or preparing materials to use in a session

The customer expects a level of knowledge and proficiency that allows us to complete these tasks at a high level of quality and efficiency.

And the third category is non-value-added work that should not exist at all. It’s mistakes, rework or inefficiencies that occur for many reasons. The client would not be willing to pay for it. Who would?

Here are a few examples:

• Scheduling and rescheduling meetings with multiple parties
• Following up on information that you should have had all along
• Spending massive amounts of time on doing your own accounting.
• Dedicating a lot of time training yourself on social media marketing

Keep in mind you are looking at work through the customer’s eyes. For instance, spending hours and hours trying to become a pro at social media marketing might be highly valued added for your personal development. But it is not of value to the client who is coming to you for legal, consulting or coaching services.

So, what to do with these insights?

Read on at www.PowerUpYourTeam.com/18

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You have brought your business idea from concept to reality, build a robust service and a strong client pipeline. You are past being a one person show and have a small team of collaborators either as full-time employees or free lancers.

You enjoy working with your team. You can create, ideate and bring new ideas to market quickly. Your revenue is climbing constantly and you can see the fruits of your labor. That’s what entrepreneurship is all about. Collaboration is fun!

But suddenly you realize that your team has gotten too big to work without any structure in form of processes, procedures or job aids.

And just a thought of sitting down and drawing a process map tanks your mood.

Welcome to episode 17 of Power Up Your Team podcast where we talk about how you can implement processes without losing your entrepreneurial stride. The show notes can be found online at PowerUpYourTeam.com/17

Process and structure can come with a bad taste that of bureaucracy. Just the thought of it takes the swing out of your stride. Maybe that’s precisely what you escaped when you left your corporate career.

As entrepreneur you want to create, ideate and be with customers . The last thing you ever want to do is to write procedures or create process maps that describe the standard and repeatable tasks within your organization.

Here’s the point: Just because it’s your business, doesn’t mean you have to figure that out by yourself. You just have to stay present in the work. So, what does that mean?

Set context to make process documentation easy

Instead of documenting processes and procedures yourself, focus on setting the context so that others can do that for you.

1. Identify the 5 – 7 key customer facing process steps at a very high level

a. Example for a lending business:

Marketing – Sales – Underwriting – Documentation - Servicing – Collections – Closure

b. Example for a consulting firm:

Marketing – Sales – Scoping – Execution – Closure

There is no right or wrong. It’s all about the high-level work context you are setting for yourself and your team. Think about an airplane that’s flying at different altitudes. This is the 30,000 feet view. A work instruction would be the 1000-feet level. Alternatively, take the analogy of a map and think about a country map versus a local street map.

1. Identify the key critical internal process steps

Typical internal processes include HR, Finance and Accounting work. They often run independently of you customer facing activities.

Prioritize which processes need documentation

Typically, in a growing business not all processes need to be documented at the same time. Processes where collaboration and coordination are required need attention first. Despite all good efforts, this is where things can fall through the cracks.

Sometimes there are important intersections between internal and customer facing processes. For instance, when customer payments come due after completing certain client engagement milestones. They are important to document as well.

Read the complete transcript at www.PowerUpYourTeam.com/17

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This episode of Power Up Your Team podcast is for women business owners who want to broaden the great reputation associated with their name to their whole organization.

In the early stages, you are often the face of your organization. You are the only interface to your customers. Especially in consulting or project-based businesses you are managing all accounts yourself and delivering the work.

Over time, you have created trusted client relationships, repeat business and a strong pipeline of work. You are very busy and ready to let your team take over important customer facing work.

But you realize that your customers translate the promise of high touch, high class service to receiving personal VIP delivery from you. And only you!

It’s easy to get into this situation as business owner or founder: To get your business off the ground you had to roll up your sleeves and deliver all services yourself.

You know how critical it is to free yourself up from being involved in every detail so you can guide your business at a strategic level. It’s important that your reputation is not just tied to your own name but to that of every member of your organization.

So how can you create this new reality? How can you ensure your clients don’t feel let down when other members of your team step into account service or project leadership roles? You might be worried that you lose a valuable client.

Here are 5 tips how you can pivot your engagement strategy with your key accounts.

1. Engage team members for training and development

There is a good chance your clients will not only understand but appreciate that. That’s because they know how important development is for their own employees or even their kids. It also strengthens your reputation as a leader – not just as a doer.

Once your customer has agreed, you delegate aspects of the work. That includes follow-up calls, obtaining information, giving a presentation or other tasks.

You are servicing the account as a team. On first sight that sounds like extra work. But soon, you have someone who has built a relationship and can manage the account independently.

1. Build a team of experts

Another way to make the customer feel valued is to build specialties on your team and introduce them as experts on one aspect of service delivery.

Think about all facets of your services and leverage opportunities to elevate the individual talents on your team.

1. Raise prices for your VIP services

If people are really vested in their VIP status, they will gladly pay the higher price. Then you have more revenue to be proud of but you are still burning the midnight oil to get all the work done.

1. Create relief through work structure

In this scenario, you remain front and center to the customer. You level up by structuring the work and identifying non-customer facing steps such as research, information gathering or proposal making that your team can handle. You supervise the work so you can represent the collective work to the customer.

1. Be upfront and re-define your role

Introduce a team approach where your team delivers the services to your customer and you take on the role as a mentor and coach. You stay engaged and get feedback from the customers on how you team is doing. You are present in a different way.

If this episode resonates and you realize that this issue is holding you back from the results you want, let’s book a strategy session.

Read on at www.PowerUpYourTeam.com

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So, where do you like to shop for your next outfit? Do you enjoy getting a super deal at Nordstrom Rack? Or, do you like shopping in an exclusive high-end boutique?

Where do you like to have dinner? Do you prefer the quick meal at McDonalds where you get a burger for $1.99 in a brown paper bag? Or, do you prefer a $30 made-to-order burger in a fancy five-star restaurant?

While we have our own subjective expectations of price to value, we are generally willing to pay more for superior service or high customization.

But what would happen, if the fancy restaurant served us the one-size-fits all burger in a brown paper bag? Or, if we needed to dig through a pile of sale items in a fancy boutique just to find our dress size?

We probably would not be happy because the price to value ratio has gotten out of whack.

Welcome to episode 15 of Power Up Your Team podcast where I share three considerations so you can build a business model that dazzles your clients.

Where does your business model sit on the trajectory between

• same service at low cost, or
• high customization at premium price?

There is no right or wrong as long as price-to-value is fair in the eyes of the customer. As you are scaling your business, build your operating model with that intention in mind.

Three Considerations

1. Design Your Customer Interface with Strategic Intend

Have you designed your business for

• low cost/high efficiency, or
• high touch/customer intimacy?

Consulting services or project-based businesses fall typically into the 2nd category, because the organization tailors each deal to the needs of a specific customer. In this model, account executives develop intimate knowledge about the client over the course of the relationship. In a small organization, you as owner might end up in this role for all major accounts.

Then there are organizations that cater to a vast number of customers with the exact same service. Examples are printing, social media, recruiting, online trading, or marketing services.

We can find both models in one and the same industry. In the travel industry, for instance, there are boutique travel agencies that book your trip soup-to-nuts. On the other end of the spectrum is Expedia, for instance, where you do everything yourself.

Both models need great service to ensure customers feel they get their money’s worth. The difference lies in how that is achieved.

1. Avoid the Murky Middle of Wanting to be Everything to Everybody

In this spot, you are not making any customer happy and don’t make much profit. Customers may perceive your offering as too expensive if they seek boutique services, or, not convenient enough if they pay for efficiency.

An Example from my Experience Leading a Portfolio Management Company :

Find out more at www.powerupyourteam.com/15

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So over the past couple of years, you have built a nice team to support your business. You have found the right experts who complement your skills and take on tasks that weren’t quite up your alley.

Generally, you are happy with the people you hired. They are reliable, execute their assignments on time, improve their own work and so much more.

But on some days, you are wondering why they can’t be working effectively together as one team. You are acting like a traffic cop when more than one group is involved:

• routing a lot of information,
• handling inquiries and sign-offs,
• solving problems and getting work unstuck.

You have a lot of superstars with high individual performance but your team as a whole is not yet coming together.

Welcome to episode 14 of Power Up Your Team podcast where I share three attributes of a resilient team and give you key insights how you can develop one.

3 Attributes of a Resilient Team

1. Can effectively collaborate and has …

2. an understanding of the work and mutual dependencies between tasks and jobs. They know where to go for information and understand each other’s roles in the process.

3. the skills and capabilities to support each other

4. Trust each other so that …

5. They share a true appreciation and care for their team members.

6. Everyone feels safe to share new ideas, call out things that didn’t work.

7. As a group, they are willing to take risks and try new ways of working to achieve better results.

8. Able to improvise and solve problems because they are

9. resourceful and can deal with unforeseen circumstances, independently

10. able to rebound from setbacks quickly and move forward

As a result of that resilient teams are successful!

Wouldn’t it be great to have a team like that?

Here’s the truth:

It’s not just about hiring the right people. It is all about creating the right environment.

You as CEO set the stage that allows your team to become resilient and deliver high performance on a regular basis.

Prerequisites to Develop a Resilient Team

There are a couple of prerequisites you have to put in place. Go to www.powerupyourteam.com/14 to find out what they are!

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I am sure you have read some or the countless books and articles on leadership. Many CEOs who are leading successful companies have been interviewed, analyzed and observed

We learn about how they ideate genius new products nobody ever thought about or inspire their teams to reach for the stars and make the impossible possible. They shape the culture of their organization and enable results without being involved in every detail.

But you are wondering how you can step more into this space after you have been hands for so long. In episode 8 of Power Up Your Team podcast, we covered that stepping into the CEO role is a process by which you change the way you interact with your team.

In this episode, I am sharing a key insight about the concept of fairness that I had when I crossed the bridge from managing to leading.

I started my career as an individual contributor. I led project teams before I was given a small staff to supervise. With a degree in engineering, I dabbled in quality management, application engineering and process improvement.

All these disciplines are rooted in science and logic. As manager, I was focused on creating structure, guidelines and procedures. I felt so at home in that space. And that type of work in indispensable for the functioning of an organization.

• How well would computers come off the production line if there weren’t any procedures for how to build them?
• How well would software – even open-source code – function if there weren’t any protocols and standards?
• How engaging would a football game be if there weren’t any rules for how to play the game?

Every business needs to ensure people can collaborate well and deliver excellent products and services. Check out episode 7 where I discuss governance as a vital ingredient to ensure your team can deliver.

Does Fairness Mean Every Team Member is Treated in the Exact Same Way?

In my early years as Manager, I was guided by the believe that fairness meant the same for everyone. Same rules, same goals, same amount of attention, same training and so forth.

As I progressed into leading larger teams and businesses, I had one key insight. Team members have different needs based on their personality, work style and career aspirations.

Therefore, the perception of fairness is very subjective.

Let me give you some examples:

1st example:

I was bent out of shape if some employees didn’t want a weekly check-in meeting. They said every other week was enough. How could that be fair? I need to give the same amount of attention to everyone. That’s the manager’s perspective.

As leader, I became more flexible and collaborated with the team members to design a meeting cadence that fits their needs in frequency, duration and content.

2nd example:

As manager, I worried that sending just one team member to a training program would automatically be perceived as unfair by everyone else. That wasn’t the case. In fact, some people were relieved that didn’t have to go.

As leader, I made sure that team members had individualized development plans that were co-created with the employee based on their current capabilities and their career aspirations.

Here’s the Aha:

Fairness is created by giving everyone a chance to succeed.

Three Steps to Create a fair Work Environment

There are three steps you can take to foster the perception of fairness in your organization. Find out what they are at www.PowerUpYourTeam.com/13

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To step more fully into the CEO role, you have to relinquish some of your decision-making power sooner or later.

But you are still responsible for all decisions that are made in your organization.

That can be pretty unsettling.

Welcome to Episode 12 of Power Up Your Team podcast where I’ll share an idea how you can design good decision-making processes that empower your team and give you peace of mind.

It’s always good to invite different perspectives before making a business decision. You have done that all along. With your involvement there was never any doubt who had the last word.

And of course, you want to stay involved and make the most critical decisions yourself such as a major capital investment or a new product launch.

I am talking about the many day-to-day decisions that can easily become noise and distraction when you are trying to focus on strategic matters.

· Coding or setup on a new piece of technology

· Triaging a customer issue

· Improving work processes and practices

· Planning and prioritizing work

But how can you create peace of mind that your team is making good decisions in a timely manner?

In the past, you may have:

· Delegated all decisions to the same person who is now as overwhelmed as you were.

· Asked a couple of team members to make decisions and you are wondering if the person with the loudest voice wrestled everyone else to the ground.

· Experienced those times when your team is swirling around and can’t seem to make a decision at all.

Well-designed decision-making processes capitalize on the different experiences, functional expertise and perspectives of your team and allow the work to move forward in a timely manner.

Here is a simple context you may consider:

VOICE, VOTE, VETO

Voice: Belongs to the many people who have input to a decision.

Vote: Resides with the few people who make a decision by finding consensus.

Veto: Is reserved for the person with the ultimate decision-authority.

This person with veto rights can stop the work, ask for additional information or request a new direction. Ultimately, the Veto authority lies with the CEO of the company.

Here’s the point:

The smarter your decision-making processes, the less frequently you have to step in and exercise your veto right.

For example, you have a situation where your operations and customer service teams are raising red flags left and right because the sales team accepted a deal that they are not equipped to execute. The sales department has Voice, Vote and Veto rights.

Here are three options to reduce the likelihood of that situation to occur:

1. You pull in the reigns and review every deal yourself. You exercise your Veto right on 100 % of all deals coming in. That means you are back in the weeds.

2. You require the sales team to solicit input from operations and customer service giving them Voice in the process. The sales team still has Vote and Veto and sole discretion over which deals to accept. You find out after the fact, if there are issues.

3. You design a process where all three teams have Voice. Operations and Sales together can vote on accepting a deal. You keep Veto rights. This means that you have to get involved on exception.

Read on at www.Powerupyourteam.com/12

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It’s easy to wind up in a complex organization when business is growing fast. You are hiring more people and have started to define specific roles and departments to keep things organized.

But how do you keep the entrepreneurial spirit and agility of your team?

This is episode 11 of Power Up Your Team podcast. Today I want to give you three tips to keep your organization simple and flat.

1. Build Transparency into The Work

Help your team understand the business beyond their immediate tasks. Educate them on the key steps between identifying your next client and delivering your service.

Each team member needs to have clarity on how their specific work fits into the bigger picture and requires more communication about what’s happening outside their immediate role.

That positions them to navigate the organization themselves instead of escalating every question or issue up to their manager.

People can operate in a flat structure when they understand the big picture which includes:

· Clear articulation of where you want to be in 1 – 5 years

· Approach you are taking to get there

· Measurements indicating you are heading in the right direction

Check out episode 5 where I talk about vision statements and the measurements that help make them real.

2. Create Autonomy So Your Team Can Make Decisions

Instead of making all decisions yourself, let people lead a decision-making process that you defined.

Start with simple day to day decisions such as waiving late fees, changing team members on a project or creating and delivering a sales proposal.

Explain all considerations that go into making decisions and delegate them step by step so you can help people stretch into new responsibilities. Check out episode 8 where I discuss that moving into the CEO role is a process and not an event.

Invest in professional development and training for your staff. To do their job well, they need to have

· good understanding of the business

· tools and resources to perform their work

· access to information so they can make good decisions.

Ensure team members can cover for each other so that there is no single point of failure.

3. Develop Real-Time Feedback Mechanisms

You have been measuring business metrics such as revenue or profit margin all along. They are telling you what has happened in the past. You are looking in the rear-view mirror.

It’s time to assess quality and timelines of work as it happens.

And here is an important mindset shift for you to take on:

You are developing these metrics so your team can be successful.

They need to have a collective understanding how services for your clients are coming together. Examples: Lead time for a quote or time to respond to a customer request.

Set the expectation that metrics are reviewed frequently and give your team permission to make changes to improve the work.

Read on at www.Powerupyourteam.com/11

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You have grown your business to a point where you can’t directly supervise all your staff. It’s time to hand off not just tasks but a whole area of responsibility so you can further grow your business.

Maybe you …

• enjoy doing sales and want to hire someone who runs end-to-end operations
• need someone to take over the customer service or marketing department
• want to hire a CFO who can oversee all business finance and accounting matters

To hand off a big piece of your responsibility, it is critical to find the right match.

How Do You Assess Candidates for a Critical Leadership Position?

It makes sense to look for people who have the right abilities based on what they have learned and done in the past.

An operations or customer service leader ideally has several years’ experience leading people in similar operations. For finance related jobs, there might be mandatory qualifications such as a CPA or a FINRA license.

But basing you hiring decision merely on work experience, industry knowledge and existing skills can lead to a lot of trouble down the road.

There are two additional aspects to consider when evaluating candidates:

1. Personality and Fit

A person’s work ethic, leadership style and communication habits will determine the level of change your team will experience. Make sure you have clarity and are intentional with your questions when interviewing candidates.

Maybe at this point, it’s important that she has the same perspective on leadership and a similar engagement style with your team so you can maintain a level of continuity. You are looking for someone who has the exact same “wavelength”.

At another time, you want someone who is different from you. Maybe you are too formal and want to loosen things up. Or, you are seeking someone who stands for more structure.

Know yourself and have clarity before you start the selection process.

During the interview ask the candidate how she handled specific situations, such as:

• engaging with a direct report who has made a mistake
• developing team capabilities so they could handle different work
• dealing with office banter that got in the way of productivity
• celebrating with her team

Ask the candidate to provide a specific example to illustrate the point.

2. Right Motivation

Your business is too important to be a 2nd choice or even a gap filler for someone until something better comes along. Figure out WHY a candidate wants to join your company.

Is his heart in the right place? Does he want to make a difference now and in the long run? Can you detect true passion for the type of service you are selling? Does he have tenacity or is he looking to coast along?

To evaluate motivation, ask the candidate to tell you about a time when he

• had to deal with setbacks
• realized old solutions didn’t work
• quickly had to learn new skills
• handled a crisis

Inquire about his least and most favorite jobs and what specific interest he has in working in your business

Obviously, there are no universal wright or wrong answers. That can only be decided in the context of your business and what you need right now.

Here’s the important thing to keep in mind:

Skills can be developed - personal fit and motivation cannot.

Let me tell you – I made several not so good hiring decisions throughout my career.

Find out which lessons I learned at PowerUpYourTeam.com/10

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Welcome to episode 9 of PowerUpYourTeam podcast where we talk about celebrating wins AND setbacks.

You are focused on your business and barely have a moment to catch a breath once a big business milestone is accomplished. You are immediately setting your eyes on the next one.

That’s what I used to do. I was laser focused on execution and results. I was blessed to have leadership teams who always reminded me of a critical responsibility: CELEBRATE

You may ask “Why would I celebrate a setback?”

The truth is … There are golden nuggets in everything that happens in your business – good or bad.

More importantly, you can leverage any setbacks strategically to drive the long-term success of your business.

Here are 4 reasons why celebrating wins and misses with your team are so important:

1. Creates Excitement

People spend a significant amount of their time working in your business and you expect them to contribute to your success. Make their experience enjoyable by acknowledging their efforts.

Get your team together to celebrate a big contract you just won.

Reflect with you team on what made this deal come together. Maybe it’s the great collaboration between sales and operations, or, a key insight into the competitive landscape from your business partner.

And, pull your team together to celebrate that new account you didn’t win but everyone worked so hard on.

Reflect on what caused the loss. What can you learn from it? Maybe your pricing was too high or you were lacking a key capability that you realize you need to implement.

Both, results from your success and learnings from your setback are worth celebrating.

In times, where many people are working remotely, you can celebrate in a virtual meeting and raffle off a family dinner for a couple of employees in their home town. Your employees will get the message of appreciation.

2. Provide Psychological Safety

You signal that it’s ok to make a mistake and that it’s not ok to sweep problems under the rug. You create an environment where your team is encouraged and not afraid of raising issues. They are motivated to contribute their experience and creativity to change things for the better.

A couple of weeks after I had stepped into a new leadership role, I found hundreds and hundreds of returned mail envelopes in our file cabinets. I had found one reason why our customers weren’t paying invoices on time.

“Wow”, I thought, “If that’s the culture I inherited, what other problems might be hiding out there?”

We fixed that particular issue and put a formal continuous improvement program in place. We celebrated issues raised, new ideas and improvements made with equal enthusiasm. Over time, we re-engineered our processes, improved team moral and customer satisfaction.

What forums and mechanisms do you have in place so that your team members can share and act on their ideas.

3. Allows Your Team to Learn and Grow

Involve everyone in reflecting why things did or didn’t work out as planned.

Maybe you lost a deal because your team missed the proposal deadline. Out of that experience may come ideas for a standard template and components so that next time around the proposal can be put together much faster.

Reframing setbacks as learning opportunities will eventually create organizational knowledge and experience that can develop into a strategic advantage in the market place.

Albert Einstein ones said: “Failure is success in progress”

Read on at PowerUpYourTeam.com/9 and find out the 4th reason whey celebrating wins AND setbacks is so important.

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Today, I’ll share three ideas on how to step more into a CEO role without losing your grip on the organization or completely switching persona overnight.

You have read countless articles on leadership and management. They all make sense but you are wondering how to level up after you have been hands-on for many years.

Of course, as a leader you should focus on …

· vision and strategy - but who takes care of the daily work?

· the big picture - but who makes sure monthly results looks good?

Your team depends on your guidance since you have been functional expert and key decision maker for many years. Your customers want to speak with no one other than you because you have been their contact person in the past.

How can you stretch out of doing so much yourself into leading more strategically without risking daily operations get out of whack.

The Key is to Slowly Change How You Interact With Your Team

Here are three steps you can start with:

1. Ask Questions Instead of Giving Direction

Most of the time you are in a rush. It’s easier to tell people what to do in the moment than curating their ability to handle situations themselves.

Next time, when an employee asks for direction, simply ask what they would do in this situation. Listen and dig deeper to understand their rationale especially when it’s different from what you would have done.

This kind of interaction builds trust. It allows you to better understand your employee’s capabilities and gives you opportunity for talent development.

As CEO you can’t make all decisions yourself, instead you have to manage how decisions are made.

2. Raise Your Expectations of Your Team

Stretch them into thinking beyond following your direction.

A business needs to constantly evolve as new technologies emerge. There are new services and smarter ways to organize the work, especially when your business is growing.

You don’t have time to think about all these improvements yourself.

But someone has to! So set the expectation that everyone on your team is engaged in finding better ways of getting the work done and providing better services to your customers.

3. Talk About the Big Picture

Give your team context about where you want to take your business next.

How much do you want to grow, what new services, markets or geographies do you want to expand into?

Understanding the big picture will help your team come up with the ideas and solutions that support your strategic direction.

Here’s the truth … if you want to secure the long-term viability of your business you can’t get consumed by every detail.

If you take these steps, you will see your team in a different light. You’ll have insights into who you can delegate more responsibility to and who would be a great leader of people.

Now you can slowly build the support system that you need if you want to level up.

If this episode resonates and you realize that this issue is holding you back from the results you want, let’s book a strategy session.

It’s 90 minutes where we can brainstorm the steps you can specifically take to level up.

Read more at www.powerupyourteam.com/8

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This episode is for women business owners who want to be less hands-on while feeling confident that daily operations are running smoothly.

I will introduce one critical element that you need to have in place once more hands are on deck.

Over the years, you have built a solid team and managed to put yourself in a position where you can spend more time on strategic matters such as scanning industry trends, attracting new customers and ideating new services.

You know these activities are important to ensure the longevity of your business.

But repeatedly there are issues and you realize that your team struggles with making decisions when several departments or groups need to get involved.

You hear the scuttlebutt about struggles on finding consensus on what to do in certain situations. Team members are telling you about their peers who are difficult to work with. You can even feel the thick air when you are back in the office.

No matter who you ask you can’t get to the bottom of the issue.

You wished you knew when and where to get involved to drive swift action. On some days you are asking yourself “can’t they just grow up and figure this out’?

The key ingredient is Governance.

That may be a big and scary word for you especially because it can lead to bureaucracy if it’s overdone. What I am talking about are fundamental rules for collaboration and decision making among your team members.

The truth is: Governance is a critical aspect of your organizational design. The larger your team, the more critical it is.

Here are 5 steps you can take to that allow you to level up while you team is servicing your current customers and taking care of routine operational tasks.

1. Identify key steps along your value chain

Look at your business end-to-end. What are the key steps that need to happen between securing a deal and getting paid?

Examples are: negotiate statement of work, assemble account team, set up billing, train staff, engage business partners, create project plan, schedule milestone events with client. Each business is different.

1. Decide what key decisions need to be made

They range from deciding to accept the statement of work to selecting the account team, or, managing tradeoffs that occur during scheduling.

And then there are countless small decisions such as how to react when the customer is not paying on time, or, a vendor is late with their delivery.

In one business, I had to deal with the consequences of selling services that could not be delivered effectively with our operational capabilities. The sales team was incentivized to sell. There was no governance designed between sales and operations.

That was a painful experience. We ended up transacting primarily on spreadsheets because our processing systems were not setup for this type service. That made the whole market segment unsustainable for us and we decided to exit.

1. Decide who needs to provide input

As your organization is growing you have team members that are experts in their field and know more about an aspect of your organization than you do yourself.

I learned my lesson in the example I just gave. The approval and final signature of the statement of work was a critical decision point that my team had to get right.

Instead of pulling in the reigns to review and approve each SOW myself, I made sure people from customer service, operations and IT were involved in evaluating each opportunity

Read on at www.PowerUpYourTeam,com/7 to find out step number 4 and 5.

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This episode is for business women who are trying to squeeze time for themselves into an already packed schedule.

You love your business and you spend every waking minute making it the success you want.

You are trying to be there for everyone – your employees and business partners, family, friends and neighbors. Over the years, you have managed to build a tight schedule to accommodate all people you care about. Meetings and obligations are stacked up and you are feeling always behind.

· But what about you?

· Do you feel selfish when you take time for yourself?

· Do you make plans to exercise but then something more important pops up?

For many years, I was focused 100 % on work and neglected everything else. After all, I loved my job. My favorite boss once said in a performance review “You need more work-life balance”. And I answered with a smirk: “It’s balanced. It's 100% work and that how I want it.”

I remember the bad conscience that crept in when I took time for myself during the workday. Even important appointments such as a dentist or doctor’s visits made me feel like an absentee.

I thought as the senior person on the team I have to be present all the time.

Whenever I got promoted, I often spend weekends working to get a handle on the role. With hindsight, it really was my way to justify the promotion to myself.

Over the years, I realized that being always there, multitasking or over-subscribing does not make me a better leader. What does make a better leader is thoughtfulness, new perspective and positive energy.

I started to honor my workout routines and arrived at the office 30 minutes later. That was ok.

As a business owner myself, I have more leeway to design my work day. I deliberately build time for exercise and getting fresh air into my schedule so I can be at my best serving my clients.

As a business owner, you also have the flexibility to design your work day as you wish.

Try on this new perspective:

Taking Time to Yourself is an Investment into New Ideas and Perspectives that Benefit all People Around You.

If you enjoy playing an instrument, playing team sports, reading or walking outside then build it into your schedule. Take time for activities that lift your heart up and bring you joy.

Joy is the feeling we are after here. It gives us a return on investment in such that we come out with fresh thoughts, new ideas and different perspectives. They may be simple things such as the birthday present for your son or solutions to large business problems you have been stewing over.

The state where we become fully immersed in an activity and are able to tune all distractions is called Flow. During that process we automatically make space in our brains to produce to new ideas and perspectives.

This flow state can happen at work, too.

I always loved to solve business problems related to people, process and technology and make them work better. I would lose track of time when I saw a pattern in data or information that led me towards figuring out why things weren’t working as they should.

Which activities do you enjoy so much that you are losing track of time? Maybe it’s…

· Selling your services and get energized by winning a deal

· Meeting new prospects at large conferences

· Snuggling into your office and dreaming up your next great service.

So instead of counting the minutes or hours you are not there for everybody else, here’s what you should do.
Go to www.PowerUpYourTeam.com/6 to find out more.

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In this episode we discuss how you can turn your aspirational vision statement into a reliable operational compass for your business.

Welcome to episode 5. Show notes can be found online at PowerUpYourTeam.com/5

Your vision statement serves as your guidepost and speaks to the hearts and minds of your employees. For your suppliers and other stakeholders, it’s a convincing testament to your ambition and focus.

Maybe your 5-year vision is to:

· become the go-to resource for your services in your industry

· be the most trusted business partner in your niche market

· emerge as a recognized brand in a new geographic area

It is the qualitative part of the vision statement that captures attention and solicits followership.

But how do you know you are on a reliable path towards achieving your vision?

What do descriptions such as “strong brand”, “go-to-resource” or “trusted business partner” translate into from an operational perspective?

• To measure brand recognition, you can measure social media engagements, web site traffic or even speaking engagements.
• To gage a level trust, you can measure your client’s willingness to recommend, their repurchase intention, or, operational measures such as on-time delivery.

By defining the financial and operational underpinnings for your vision statement you can elevate it from a nice-to-have to a primary management instrument.

There are four groups of metrics you can use to define your future state:

Go to www.powerupyourteam.com/5 to learn more.

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Today’s episode is for women business owners who want to make their business work splendidly well with employees working from home. I have several tips how you can keep your fingers on the pulse even though not everyone is physically in the office.

Welcome to episode 4. Show notes can be found online at PowerUpYourTeam.com/4.

Over the past two years, work from home has become a necessity as a result of the pandemic and has proven to be a feasible option for the long haul.

Large companies are downsizing their office footprint realizing that work from home is cheaper and equally productive. Employees also recognize they are more productive and have a better work-life balance.

You clearly see a trend as remote work becomes more popular for large and small companies across all sorts of industries.

And yes, you can empathize with employees who have a long commute. Generally, you are open to helping them balance personal and business life. And after all, you want to have a modern company and attract great talent.

But you’re wondering how you can hold things together when people are not coming to the office

• How do you replace the water cooler talk and the little chit chat here and there that used to make the office so lively when people are working from home?
• How can you make sure your team continues to stay aligned, collaborates well and gets the job done when they are not on-site?
• How do you supervise the work?

In Episode 2, we talked about how you manage your whole ecosystem including suppliers and business partners. Just think about how you manage to pull all of them together to deliver great services to your customers.

How You Can Supervise Remote Staff:

1. Ensure everyone has the proper environment & technology to work effectively

For instance, they may need a private space to concentrate and participate in business calls without being interrupted. In addition to standard work systems, they need technology to connect with each other via video

1. Schedule 15-minute morning calls

That can happen daily or at another frequency depending on the rhythm of work. Discuss priorities for the day and ensure everyone is set up for success. If you have an organization with several layers, ask your direct reports to do the same with their teams.

1. Schedule frequent one on one check-ins with your remote staff.

Yes, you have to ramp up the 1:1 touch-points since you don’t see them in the hallway. Each employee is different. How much interaction do they need to do their work AND feel included? How much information do you need from them?

In most of my roles, my staff was geographically dispersed. No matter which location, I would see maximal 25 % of my team. I always had to ensure that the team stays aligned and everyone feels seen and heard through extra travel and touch points via phone or video.

1. Make sure your staff has a way to reach you quickly

That could be via text message or an e-mail with a certain headline that communicates “Need attention now”. You don’t want work get stuck because people don’t know how to reach out for support.

Maintain a Strong Community

That’s the one number one thing that gets most often lost by working remotely.

You have to replace the visual element that employees had when everyone was in the office. They saw you go about your day, meet with customers, participate in staff meeting and so on.

Continue reading at www.powerupyourteam.com/4

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Your dream of owning a business has become a reality. You designed a killer service and built a respectable client base. You masterminded a terrific strategic plan and can clearly see the road ahead. You feel accomplished, full of energy and have so many more ideas.

But you feel as if you are doing the heavy lifting alone. So here is the key question:

Does anybody on your team understand your strategic plan?

It’s time to make your team your most powerful alliance! In this episode I will let you in on the secrets for how to do that.

Welcome to episode 3 of Power Up Your Team podcast. Show notes can be found online at PowerUpYourTeam.com/3.

Your strategic business plan with markets research, customer needs assessment and operational requirements impressed key stakeholders such as your banker. You secured funding based on your ability to present a convincing vision for your business.

You are ready to roll!

Sadly, you find yourself supervising your team more than you want to. They are clocking in and are reliably following instruction. However, they are falling short of thinking ahead or anticipating what needs to get done.

They often ask you for instruction and you are thinking: “Shouldn’t that be clear?”

Sometimes it’s hard to remember to communicate why you are doing what you are doing and keep your team informed about the bigger picture beyond their immediate job.

Well, unless you have super natural powers, your great thoughts are not automatically transmitting to the minds of your employees. Even if you share your strategic plan once or twice, the graphs and numbers that are meaningful to your banker mean nothing to your team without more context.

Go to PowerUpYourTeam.com/3 to read about 4 tips to ensure your team is fully on board.

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It’s been a time of great ups and downs. Hopefully now you’re setting your sights on a new set of goals and delegating priorities that you’ve been juggling yourself.

Not really? I get it. Most business owners struggle to stop putting out fires.

It’s high time for you to step more fully into the CEO role and that’s part of what this podcast is about.

I’m so excited you are listening to my first podcast. Find the full transcript for this episode at PowerUpYourTeam.com/1.

There are endless things you can do to scale up and grow your business. For example:

Create a completely new IT infrastructure to more effectively connect with suppliers, business partners and customers

Expand geographically to have a physical presence overseas

Initiatives like these are critical to drive business growth. But, often forgotten, are the people who make things happen in your company.

My passion is about building and leading resilient teams. In this podcast I’ll share all my secrets.

First, let me share a bit about my career.

Listen closely for the BIG TAKEAWAY I’ll offer you before I’m finished with this episode. It will be the first of many valuable insights.

For 30 year I’ve worked for family-owned businesses and also large Fortune 100 companies in various executive roles such as Strategic Program Leader, Head of Business Operations or President.

Change Management for teams was the big theme throughout my career — ranging from small changes in departmental processes to new processes across entire organizations.

I launched programs that helped every employee in the company build new habits to continuously improve how their work gets done — as small as a more user friendly spreadsheet to as large as implementing a new technology or designing a new product.

I’m all about ensuring that people have the tools and skills to engage and their leaders have the ability to create an environment that supports those activities.

There was one instance in one of my roles where internal stakeholders had absolutely unreasonable expectations of the team. I dug under the surface and discovered that the technology was not adequate to produce the results expected of them.

In another role, the customer facing teams pursued a one-size-fits-all approach across different market segments. I communicated the specific strategies to all employees and solicited their support to fundamentally re-engineer operations front to back.

That enabled them to meet customer expectations. More about that in another episode.

I’m grateful for the different roles I’ve held and I enjoyed leading those large transformation programs. But over time, I felt as if I was starting over again and again.

I was ready for a big change and decided to start my own business called Power Up Your Team where I help women business owners like you to scale up and win in the marketplace. How do I do that? You guessed it … it’s all about building resilient teams and helping you lead them.

Looking back … one thing kept me going all those years — my teams.

I know first-hand that it takes so much more than a job description, a pay check and a friendly pat on the back now and then. More of that in future episodes as well.

A great team is the heartbeat of any organization large or small.

It doesn’t matter how smart your product, service or technology is or what savvy deals you’ve done with suppliers. Your company will stand and fall with the team that works for you.

See more at www.PowerUpYourTeam.com/1

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You’ve worked hard to make sure you have an awesome service, a responsive team and smart processes in place so that your business is running smoothly.

But still, you are dealing with constant issues and fire drills. Where are they coming from?

Most business owners think about their team as the people who are on their payroll!

It’s high time for you to look at your whole eco system and that’s what I will cover in this episode.

As a small business owner, it is impossible to have all sorts of specialty skills on your full-time staff. And therefore, you are outsourcing certain tasks or even whole functions that are critical in providing services to your customers.

If you think about it, there are so many more contributors to your business than the people reporting to you. For instance:

· The IT company who installed and services your CRM system

· The call center you have outsourced routine customer service calls to

· The media company who does all your digital marketing campaigns

· The printing company who prints you monthly statements or marketing material

There are so many dependencies to ensure a seamless experience for your customers

Sometimes, it seems it takes a whole village.

Here’s the point: Your ecosystem goes far beyond your immediate team.

Now … How can you make sure that your business is the number 1 priority for your vendors and business partners? As a small business owner, you may not be their highest priority based on revenue.

Listen closely for the 4 things you can do to proactively build strong relationships that help to prevent fire drills.

Negotiate Service Level Agreements (SLA)

An example for an SLA for call center contract, for instance, specify the maximum time you want your customers spend on hold or in the voice response unit before they get to speak to a live service representative. The SLA would be something like: Hold time less than one minute.

After all it’s your reputation that’s on the line!

Identify a Team Member to be the Point Person at the Tactical Level

Request regular SLA reviews between both teams. It helps them to stay on top of day-to-day operations and it builds relationships. Define the type of issues that you need to know about ahead of time and decide how you want them escalated to you.

You don’t want to be the last one to find out about a service interruption or any other hick-up that sends you into a tail spin.

Have a Personal Contact at the Strategy Level

Meet regularly and build an ongoing relationship. Share your company’s mission and vision so they become more familiar with you and your business.

Make sure you are more than an account number to your vendor!

Recognize Your Own AND the Vendor’s Team for Excellent Work

Nothing makes people feel more included when they are being recognized for productive collaboration.

See more at www.PowerUpYourTeam.com/2

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Power up your team podcast offers ideas for women owners of small businesses who have created a successful company with a lot of hands-on work. Now you are wondering how you can step more into the CEO role. You know that you need a strong team so that you can delegate the day-today-day stuff and focus on strategic matters to secure the long-term success of your business.

We will cover topics that can help you to develop your strategic road map, design a flexible adaptable organization, lead your team with authenticity, and build smart processes that allow you to keep the pulse on your business when you are no longer involved in every detail.

In each episode we will discuss a particular aspect, explore best practices and offer new perspectives and approaches you may try on.

I am Martina Kuhlmeyer, Team Building Strategist and host of Power Up your Team podcast.

For over 30 years, I have led different organizations with teams as small as 5 to hundreds of people. I learned how to create strategic alignment, build effective structures and processes, and foster environments that empower teams to do their best work. Most recently, I became a certified professional business coach.

I understand how much thought and effort needs to go into building teams that can work through the toughest challenges and are motivated to continuously deliver excellent services.

Listeners will walk away with new insights on how to build a resilient team, step more fully into the CEO role and lead their business with confidence and ease to the next level of success.

More at www.PowerUpYourTeam.com/0