EP # 184 - Leadership Strategies for Service Business Owners: Building Teams That Drive Growth

In this episode, business and leadership coach Maggie Perotin shares valuable insights on building and leading high-performing teams in service-based businesses. Drawing from her extensive corporate leadership experience, Maggie provides practical strategies for service-based business owners looking to scale beyond solopreneurship and grow high-performing teams.

Key Topics Covered:
• Why team building requires more than just hiring talented individuals
• The crucial difference between leading and managing teams
• Essential recruitment strategies for service businesses
• How to build trust and avoid micromanagement
• Keys to effective team performance management

Key Takeaways:

1. Recruitment Best Practices:
   - Define clear role requirements through strategic planning
   - Assess both skills and cultural fit
   - Create multiple touchpoints during the hiring process
   - Use AI recruitment tools with caution

2. Leadership vs. Management:
   - Leadership focuses on vision, inspiration, and empowerment
   - Management ensures efficient execution and results
   - Both skills are essential for business growth

3. Building Strong Teams:
   - Develop individual relationships with team members
   - Understand personal motivations and goals
   - Implement clear communication processes
   - Provide necessary training and development

4. Essential Leadership Requirements:
   - Self-confidence
   - Strong leadership skills (hiring, delegation, communication)
   - Ability to trust and empower others

Related Episodes:
- Episode 167 (September 20, 2024): 5 Indicators Your Small Business Team Is Underperforming

Resources Mentioned:
- T.O.P. CEO High-Performance Team System
- Consultation booking available for personalized guidance

Perfect For:
• Service-based business owners looking to scale
• Solopreneurs planning to build their first team
• Leaders struggling with team performance
• Business owners wanting to improve their leadership skills

Connect with Maggie:
Book a consultation to learn more about the T.O.P. CEO High-Performance Team System 
https://stairwaytoleadership.com/

Transcript

[00:00:00] Building a high performing team doesn't just happen on its own. It requires skills, intention, and work. Just think about athletes in team sports like NBA or NFL 

At the pro athlete levels, if you just have best players put together, they might still loose to maybe Less skilled or talented players who play well as a team. Team building, it's more than just putting great employees together, great players together, showing them the rules and letting them go.

It requires a coach, a leader, who brings the best out of individuals, but also knows how to get those individuals working together towards the common goal and win.

So if you want to take your service business to the next level, past the [00:01:00] solopreneurship, if you want to grow it and scale it, And if you want to also enjoy life and be able to take time off, go on vacation, and maybe down the line have an asset you can sell, you will need people to help you.

And in order for you to have the best people ever helping you build your vision, your mission, and your legacy, you will need to become that coach and leader of the team. And that requires skills. I believe leaders are definitely not born, they're made, those are skills you can learn and as long as you invest in developing them, you'll do really, really well.

My name is Maggie Perotin, this is Diamond Effect podcast, episode 184, and today we'll be talking about building high performing teams, strategies for small service based businesses. Welcome, tune in, and let's go.

In my corporate career, [00:02:00] I've led many teams, many people in different sizes of teams and different composition of teams. I had teams of two people, five people and 30 people. The teams of entry level employees, but also more senior employees, that are very different. And what I learned throughout those years, I'm going to teach you a little bit today. 

Now, of course, we can't do it all in one 20 or 30 minute episode, but what I've learned is that when you're a great leader with great skills, you can really turn around even low performing teams with the same people to high performing teams. That's what I did with one of my roles, where I was a mid level manager, and I was hired to take over a team that was really low performing.

They were impacting other departments with that, and the company wasn't happy with them. And those people had multiple managers over a short period of time, [00:03:00] and everybody was blaming the team. Then I came in and within a year, that team became cohesive, highly performing and saved company quarter of a million dollars and enabled the department to grow further.

Now before I share with you what I planned for today I want to refer you to episode 167 from September 20th, 2024 that talks about how five indicators that your team is low performing. It's a great complimentary episode to today's episode, so definitely listen to it after this one. 

Okay, let's get to the main content of our episode. Of course, we'll start with recruitment. There's no team without hiring, right?

Even NFL, NHL, NBA, they have their drafts to recruit. players into their teams. And you as a [00:04:00] business owner need to get good at recruiting the right people for your business. Not only for the role that you need right now, but overall for your business. Here are a few things that you want to consider and implement in your hiring process.

First of all, when you determine that you need help, you need to understand what type of help you need, what kind of role. Will is needed the best for your business and the best way to determine that is during your strategic planning. When you plan strategically your business for the next year, next two and three years, part of it should be the organizational chart and think about what kind of role do I need to help me achieve those goals.

Once you know that, then you can start defining the responsibilities of that role. And then thinking about who or what type of person is needed that would be [00:05:00] successful in that role and that would really fulfill the role requirements. So thinking about their skill set, their knowledge, and the background, whatever is needed.

You also want to make sure that as you're thinking about what type of person would be the best for the role, you're thinking about their values and what would motivate them so they can stay aligned with the mission and vision of your business. That's why it's also important during your recruitment process to ask questions about it.

Not to just ask questions about their Experience and their skill set, but also ask questions that will help you assess their personality. What are their values? What they're motivated by? Just to see if there are overall fit with your company's culture, with other employees, if you have them, and also even with your vision for the business.

Couple of things, how you can do that outside of [00:06:00] asking specific question for it is, first of all, Always make sure that you have more than one touchpoint with the right candidates. So you kind of filter the candidates as you look through the resumes, you maybe have a first touchpoint, the candidates that are qualified and they're good, you're moving them and have more than one touchpoint because this allows you to see a person more than once.

They also get more comfortable with you, so they will show you more of themselves. You do want to get to know the person for who they are, not for who they're pretending to be because they're trying to be on the best behavior because they're applying for a job, they want a job, and then they know you're their manager.

The way to do that is put them at ease. Don't make the interviews stressful and very staunch and formal because that puts people into survival mode and then they're not themselves. You want to relax them, put them at ease. I can't tell you [00:07:00] the amount of times that when I was interviewing, I found out things about the candidates that they would never tell me if they weren't relaxed.

And B, it's also a great experience for the person. I always got, positive feedback from the candidates saying: "Oh my god, it was one of the best interviews I've ever had. I felt very relaxed. I felt like I could be me". You want your candidates to be them. To show who they are and their authenticity because it's the best way you can accurately assess them if they're a good fit for the role.

Now, nowadays, there's a lot of talk about AI tools that help with the recruitment. And as much as I'm saying, of course, use them if they save your time. Just make sure they're not going to put in biases against the candidate and filter out some great candidates. So use AI tools with caution, make sure that you're not eliminating yourself from the [00:08:00] process and you are delegating the whole process to the candidate.

the machine. Those people will work with you. They will work with your team. They will, help you achieve your business goals. You want to get to know them before you hire them.

Now, there is other two important things that I wanted to talk about in terms of skill sets. There is a difference between Leading your people and managing your people, and you need to learn how to do both. Because leading is all about vision, inspiration, motivation, and empowering employees and growth.

Managing is about getting things done effectively and efficiently, creating results. Both are important because one moves your business forward. The other also moves your business forward but in a more strategic way and builds engagement and dedication in your team.

Through my [00:09:00] internship student, we've been doing some research on business owners and I want to read an excerpt from a business owner posting on Quora about their struggles. I think it's a great excerpt just because it showcases challenges that most small business owners that are growing and hiring have, but also misconceptions about leading people.

So here it is." it's always managing because you as an individual and business owner know what you want out of that business, but you can't split yourself. So you take on employees. First, you have to see if they're competent. You have to train, educate, and work with them. You have to be motivating and encouraging.

Encouraging them and listening to their grievances, which you have to do. It's your responsibility for employees who share your vision, dedication, and commitment. You don't get frustrated, however, you always have someone who plays politics and power plays and creates tension in an organization.

It usually points to the fact that you don't share your vision, dedication, or [00:10:00] commitment, and hence come up with excuses and problems and become more difficult. Just managing can become a huge frustration." 

What I want to say is that it is up to you as a leader to lead and manage your people properly and if they don't fit the vision or if they turn out not to be a good fit it is also your responsibility to sort of let them go and usually That's to the benefit, not only to you and the business, but also the person.

Nobody wants to be a failure. Nobody wants to feel like they're not doing a good job. And if they are not a good fit, when you let them go, hopefully they'll find something when they can actually thrive. So as a leader, your job is to sell People on your vision and get them bought in just the same way you're selling your customers on choosing your [00:11:00] services over your competitors.

It's your job to educate your customers why your services are a better fit for them the same way it's your job to sell your employees on a vision so they can share it. They come to you as an employer, they don't necessarily know your vision. It stays yours until you know how to sell it to the employees, get them bought in, get them excited.

And when they are, they will be working very hard for you because they will want your vision to realize itself and succeed. Now, delegation, training, that's more of the managerial skill. You also need to learn how to properly delegate and train your team members in order for them to be successful.

All employees will need it, even if they're experts in what they do. Just imagine, again, a sports team when you [00:12:00] have Experts, professional sports basketball players, let's say they come to the team and of course they know how to play basketball with the same way you can have a bookkeeper employee or employee in this designer or whatever that is where they know their craft.

What they don't know is maybe your processes and certain things that you do differently from your competition. Your secret sauce, your competitive advantage that you would need to teach them. They might not know certain methods that you use that also are part of your competitive advantage that you need to teach them.

Maybe you're using a different system. It's a system that it's not a standard system into your industry that they will need to learn as well. And then building a team and getting people to work together. It's your job as a leader and a coach and sort of manager to make sure you're playing to their strength, you're building [00:13:00] that collaboration.

The same way it's the coach's job to create a team out of individual players, to share with them a strategy. To get them bought into that strategy. To get them working together.

Part of management and leadership is also not micromanaging. So let's address this. Imagine a coach Trying to play a basketball game for its players in and out, in and out, from one player to another, from one player to another, just because they made a mistake, or just because they didn't follow the strategy, and so on.

Impossible. First of all, he would never be able to do that. Second of all, you can't coach and lead if you're doing individual's job. We don't micromanage. And if you have challenges with that, there's a couple of things. One, you don't trust your people, and that's a problem.

Maybe you have the wrong people on your team and you need to review your hiring process. Or two, [00:14:00] You don't trust yourself or you maybe have some confidence issues with yourself where you have to control everything. And that's a self development problem. That you need to fix through self development, building confidence, releasing control, and trusting your people and using their brain to actually better your business.

Now, leading and managing people, as I said, there's two components. On the individual level, when it's important to build relationships with every one of your employees. And of course, as your team grows and you go from 20 to 50 to 100, you're not going to have deep relationship with all of your employees the more you have them.

But you should know them. at least their names and basic stuff, and then your managers will know them better. However, if you're just starting and you have one, two, or five, or even ten, you need good relationships with them. Not only, at [00:15:00] the professional level, just knowing their skills and experience, but also their human level.

Knowing a little bit more about them as Humans. Knowing what motivates them, what are their goals long term, so you can help them and coach them through to achieve them. Because when you show that you care about another human being, you care about them and you want to help them get to where they want, they will work harder for you.

They will be more dedicated. Now, there is a management component to it, meaning Every employee you hire, you hire them for a concrete purpose. They have responsibilities, they have goals that you should set, that you want them to achieve, and that is performance management. With that, they will need some trainings, they will need some coaching.

They might make mistakes that they will need coaching on. There might be some issues that you will need to address in different ways. There is [00:16:00] progressive performance management where you're coaching people on certain things, but if the behavior is not changing or it's really a destructive behavior for the team and for the business, then again, management might need you to let a person go, and not because they're not nice people, but because they might not be the right fit for the role.

And it takes a leader to be able to overcome or deal with negative emotions that, of course, the human levels come up. Letting people go is never a fun thing. It's always a sad or difficult moment, but when the situation demands it, you still need to do it because as the business owner and leader of your business, your primary responsibility is the health and growth of your business.

Once you know your employees at the individual level, also as a manager and leader, there is a team building. So then [00:17:00] learning how to get those people work together. So the sum of individual parts, It's much greater, so as a team, they deliver amazing results, much, much greater than if you took them individually and got them work just individually.

That's the power of highly performing teams. And that requires setting the rules, setting boundaries, training on soft skills, like effective communication, like sometimes building relationships, having processes and structure in place. Especially that's even more important as your team grows.

Again, it's very easy to collaborate within two, three people environment. The moment you have 10, 20, 50, and over, then the processes and structure helps with that. A couple of years ago, I did some communication training email to get for a fast growing [00:18:00] nonprofit.

They grew from a very small team to a big team, and then their communication started lacking. Started breaking, which created a lot of issues, additional work for the leaders that were getting bombarded with inquiries and so on. And three hour, two session training solved so many problems for them. Not only it was a training for the employees, but also for the leadership team.

And thanks to that training, A, they learned how to communicate in a larger team. They established some processes and a lot of those problems went away. So sometimes training doesn't need to be extensive. It's some basic stuff, but don't expect your people to know it, especially if you're hiring more junior people.

It's different maybe when you're hiring, experienced leaders or experienced people. Junior people that those things are not taught at school. You need to invest in them. And even with more senior people, sometimes it's needed because as the [00:19:00] dynamics of the business change dynamics of the team and processes change. Training is very valuable.

Think about when you manage and lead your people. It creates a win win situation. You have a relationship with them that's a win win for you and for them. And those are best types of relationships. And for you, I mean for you as a leader individually, but of course, predominantly for your business.

When you help people succeed as individuals, they're more dedicated for you. They work harder for you, but also they get value of it. They succeed. I remember having, you know, multiple employees, but couple when playing to their strengths and helping them develop skills that then would help them with their future career, made them even more loyal.

To our team, more dedicated, wanting to work really much harder for me than they would ever do for anybody else. And then [00:20:00] managing their performance, setting goals, getting them successful in their job creates results in your business. Because they're focused, they're doing what you hired them for. And they're getting compensated for it.

One myth that I want to debunk here that sometimes as business owners we think that oh, you know, our employees They will see what we're doing and then they will go out there and create their own business and maybe some can but what I Want to say is not everybody wants to be an entrepreneur business owner.

It's a very unique path and journey. It's not easy. It's hard. And some people don't want to do it. So they do want to be employed by somebody else. And at the same time, they want to do a good job so we can empower them to be the best that they possibly be. And through that, our business benefits.

So just to sum up, what a highly performing team [00:21:00] requires from you as a leader to become a highly performing team. One, self confidence. Hiring great people, often better than yourself, for the roles that you need, requires to be Secure in your own skin and not be threatened by great people because when you have individuals that are threatened by others, usually those people will hire C and D players, people who are not fit for the job.

As a leader, you need to be self confident. You need to be secure in your own skin. And that happens through self development and those, you know, the, the self, if you think about emotional intelligence, this is one part of emotional intelligence, self awareness, self management, which builds that self confidence.

The second thing it requires from you is leadership skills. Hiring, delegation, [00:22:00] communication, training, performance management, but also empowerment by building relationships, which some of them are part of that emotional intelligence. And third is you trusting others, building trust and releasing control.

And yes, of course, trust is built over time. It's not like we'll trust a brand new employee at the same level like with somebody who's been with us for years and we know them well and they've proven themselves and they're loyal. In business, I always say trust by check, meaning. When you trust somebody, it doesn't mean that you never meet with them, that you never performance management them, that you don't set goals or, you know, check if whatever they're doing is creating results that you expect.

That is carelessness. They're leaving things and not caring about them, but as a business owner, you do need to have certain KPIs that you track even in the [00:23:00] team leadership or people leadership and that you check on them while you're trusting people to do their best and do their best job and not micromanaging them.

I hope this was helpful. I will definitely be creating more episodes on team building and team leadership. I think even hiring itself could be a separate episode. But there is some other episodes in this podcast that you could refer to. As I mentioned, the episode 167 from September last year. And As you grow your business and you realize that you do require help to build your leadership skills, maybe to turn your team around or build a team, and you don't want to do it alone, I can help.

My T.O.P. CEO, High-Performance Team System will help you build amazing teams. Even if you're a small business, even if you're in a service industry that maybe it's hard to hire for, there are people [00:24:00] out there who could do an amazing job for you and can help you, your business grow and scale. All you need to do is reach out, book a consultation call with me, and let's talk more about it.

Have a fantastic week. See you next week.