Employees, employers, and entrepreneurs everywhere all have one thing in common. When they wake up in the morning, they have an expectation of how their day is going to go. This expectation can be one of the greatest or one of the worst aspects of an entire business. One that can bring it to amazing heights, or send it is crashing down to bankruptcy. Gary Henson of BusinessCoach.com found out many of the reasons why around 25 years ago when he took some courses on transformation and personal growth.
One of the missing elements in the world of business is for people to understand how to create and develop potential in the workplace. A friend of his invented a concept of coaching that could eventually lead a company to a complete transformation. Management and business owners are they key to making a company successful, but these leaders are in the way of productivity and the ultimate goal and vision of the organization. The reason most entrepreneurs fall short is because they don’t know how to relate to employees. He typically works with businesses that have 15 or more employees. Now they have gotten to that point, of having many employees on the payroll, there is a plateau effect. It’s elusive; it’s difficult, and it’s hard to know where to go from there. Holding employees accountable, team building, leadership, strategic planning, customer service, and excellence is a few areas that push organizations into the upper echelon. These areas are some of the main points of focus in business coaching.
A few other areas where entrepreneurs/business owners make mistakes are working too many hours, not knowing how to lead or delegate. Every human on this planet has expectations. The employer obviously has very high expectations from the employee, but obviously doesn’t do a very good job communicating it, or trusting the employee to do it. More often than not, with very good reason, but that’s not necessarily the employee’s fault. Most of the time, the employee has a very different set of expectations for themselves. They think they should get a paycheck, leave at a certain time, get 2 or 3 or 4 weeks vacation, get no demands or uncomfortable communication from their superiors and no true form of accountability.
The problem, then, is that there is a quality disconnect in communication, accountability, and trust between leadership and employees. The resolve is to delve into each area and solve the lack there of.
Working with the senior leaders the first step is to understand that the problems have all been created over time. If they created it, they can undo the damage. The mission is to develop a culture not by default, but to develop a culture that uses language, communication, and accountability. One can write a plan, a mission statement, and core values. All of these are great, but if you don’t know how to implement them, and you’ve just done the work of creating documents and putting them in a drawer, then employees are not better off, you are ALL actually worse off.
The best thing to do is have very frequent meetings with every single member of the staff that hammers home the reason that everyone is there. What the company provides, and their place in the company. Delivering this information on a regular basis to the employees increases the level of communication. And if done correctly, this will directly cause accountability in employees. They buy in, they see something in it for them. They see what it is they are being held accountable for. Show them the design and true purpose of the company and their place in it, remind them on a regular basis, then they will understand and hold themselves accountable.
How did we get to this point?
Nearly every company in our society deals with these issues, but it hasn’t always been this way. Our society has gotten softer and softer on ethical behavior, taken on 40 – 60 years of political correctness, and the rise in awareness of protection of employees has made leaders become soft on accountability and trust and communication.
Anyone can come here to the USA from any third world country with the slightest bit of drive, make small amounts of money, save it up, and open up any kind of business you can think of. From making shoes to changing tires, we are a capitalist society. Because we are, the employees needs are greater and they expect more and more from their employer, but less from themselves. This leads down the path of an absolute train wreck. The great recession came along, and people were shocked. They thought because they own a business, that they knew how to run one.
We have uneducated, unsophisticated entrepreneurs who got lucky, and now have 250 some employees, and have no idea how to properly run them. The employees increasingly want less accountability, more pay, but work the same amount of time, and it gets out of hand fast. People don’t understand that when they go into business for themselves.
Where is the industry Headed?
The challenge for leaders is that these issues are a simple thing to identify, but very complex to work around and with. With a lack of discipline, they don’t understand the vastness of their own business. They focus themselves as the center of the organization, and put everything on themselves. They then can become jealous of the leaders of their own business because they get normal lives, leave at a decent hour, and don’t have to think about the company when they’re away from it. Administration, operation, marketing, customer service, sales, and everything else is a lot for one person to handle or think about.
Plenty of them say they have the drive and commitment to make it grow, but need someone to help. They can’t talk to the employees because they feel like the employees are the enemy. They can’t talk to the managers because they’ll think “You are not a good leader.” So who would they look to?
BusinessCoach.com has interviewed over 7,000 business leaders around the world and word is starting to spread. The ideas of having employees hold themselves accountable as well as management working together for one common goal is the key to a successful business, and one that is being shared and implemented all over the world.
Is there a reward factor for the employees?
According to the Department of Consumer Affairs, financial rewards are number 7 of the top 10. Number 1 is surprisingly enough security in the workplace. People want to feel secure, clarity, and they want strong communication. Entrepreneurs think that employees want money and vacations. What they really want is to know they don’t have to worry about losing their job, their home, or their family.
One of Gary Henson’s clients said that his business was down 15%, so they offered a salary increase to his employees as incentive to increase sales. The employees didn’t want it. They wanted security. They wanted to know that if the company is down 15%, then the leaders are going to tell them that their leadership would be enough to lead them to bring that 15% back up and exceed that mark.
A great example of incentive that would really work is say, if we hit this month’s goal, we’re all going to get 50 bucks and take off early on a Friday and go to the mall and a movie. A compensation from work in the form of money, but something that we don’t normally get to do without the stigma of spending money we can’t afford to spend from our spouse. This way, employees and leaders get to hang out with each other when they’re not in a work environment. This builds comradery and a family type atmosphere among the group. This will make them want to work harder from each other as well as themselves, providing a feeling of security AND accountability.
A client of his introduced core values to his staff. The second one was “We are committed to being a sales driven company.” The operations manager spoke up and said “What did you say?” Then he repeated himself. The operations manager was really offset, saying “Sales, I hate those people, I don’t like them, and you’re saying we’re a sales driven department.” The leader said “Let’s look at this whole chain of how work filters in and out. If these guys don’t make a sale, we don’t need you guys to manufacture the goods and ship them out, then the admin, they have to bill it, collect the money, and put it in the bank. That way your paycheck doesn’t bounce.” The guy didn’t say another word. All he knew was that the orders came in and he shipped them out. He didn’t realize the accountability that he already had.
In closing, most of us in the world are not interested in transforming or changing ourselves to get ahead. It takes someone to tell us all of the counter productivity we’re placing and creating in these areas of our life and business. Mentoring, consulting, business coaching, and creating feedback and care groups work… And that’s what’s missing in the world of business today.
For more information visit http://www.businesscoach.com