Happy Sunday Everyone:
These Sunday Thoughts are a blessing and a curse. A blessing in that it helps me gain some clarity by putting thoughts into words. A blessing in that hopefully you get something out of it and can relate to my issues…..but a curse in that most of the thoughts come from the weekly recognition of what is wrong with me, my business, or both.
My question to you this week is this; is your team crystal clear on their roles/responsibilities. Are they crystal clear on your expectations of them? Are they crystal clear on the attitudes you expect them to have? Are they crystal clear on what they need to be doing in their current role in order to advance to the next role? Every single one of you should be having a Monday team meeting tomorrow. If I was in there with you, and asked every single team member what their top 3 job responsibilities were, would they be able to answer? If we then asked them how do we measure those responsibilities, would they be able to answer?
I love the people that are on my team, but last week I had a lead come in, the lead was toward the end of the day and I asked who wanted to get on the loan app. Nobody “jumped” at the opportunity, which put me into a mental tail spin (although I did not react). The next day I had a hard conversation with my guys about what it takes to be in sales, if that’s where they want to go. The conversation was brutally honest and hard but what came out of it was a crystal clear conversation that will never be forgotten about what I expect out of them, and what they need to expect out of themselves if that is in fact where they want to go. Granted, it was more emotional but the reason it came down to that is because I had not been crystal clear originally on what it takes, both in attitude and execution. My list of roles/responsibilities, my teams understanding of those, the metrics of which they’re being measured, and the attitude I expect them to have while they’re measuring them, would be considered “tight” by all of you. Where I’ve been off is the consistent review of them, the verbal communication about them, and helping my team understand the importance of the consistent execution of all of them i.e. TRAINING. If we are not discussing the importance of the metrics and our expectations, we are failing our teams, we are literally setting them up for failure. It’s easier to just be annoyed at what happened and resent the actions of a team member and push it under the rug for future frustration. it takes more energy to sit down and have hard but fair conversations when things are out of alignment. What came out of Wednesday’s conversation is the boys are 100% clear on what I expect of them when a lead comes in. I’m also clear that I need to review, update, and train on all of my role/responsibilities so that all of this is top of mind vs. pulling out of the closet.
I believe my team is totally committed to our clients, and one another, but if I’m not crystal clear on everything I expect out of them, how can they succeed in those roles? if you want to try this I would highly recommend doing the following:
1. Without looking in your notes: Write down what you think each team members top 3 roles/responsibilities are.
2. Tomorrow in your team meeting ask each team member what they think their top 3 roles/responsibilities are.
3. review the disconnect and train on them by Friday.
4. Same exercise next week.
Have a great week. Finish strong.