EP 201 - How to Lead Your First Team: 5 Principles Every Business Owner Must Know

Are you transitioning from solopreneur to a small business owner with a team? This episode is your practical guide to effective leadership, whether you're hiring your first virtual assistant, building a small team of contractors, or hiring a few full-time employees.

🎯 Perfect for you if:

• You're about to hire your first team member
• You've started building a team but leadership doesn't feel natural
• You want simple, proven leadership principles that actually work
• You're looking to scale your service-based business with a team

💡 In this episode, I share five essential leadership principles drawn from:

• 15+ years of hands-on leadership experience
• Building teams from scratch
• Transforming underperforming teams into high-performing ones
• Leading hundreds of team members successfully

🔑 The 5 Essential Leadership Principles:

Lead by Example (00:04:00)

• Why actions speak louder than words
• Common leadership mistakes to avoid
• How to build trust through consistent behavior

Know Your People (00:08:00)

• Two crucial levels of understanding your team
• How to motivate different personality types
• Building genuine connections without crossing professional boundaries

Have Their Back (00:13:00)

• Creating clear operational guidelines
• Supporting your team while maintaining standards
• Removing obstacles for your team's success

Avoid Micromanagement (00:16:00)

• Why controlling everything limits growth
• Setting outcomes vs. dictating methods
• Building trust and encouraging creativity

Address Performance Issues (00:21:00)

• Why keeping underperformers hurts everyone
• How to handle difficult decisions
• Creating a high-performance culture

💪 Key Takeaways:

• Leadership isn't about being perfect; it's about being consistent
• Your role shifts from doing to enabling
• Clear guidelines create freedom within structure
• Trust and empowerment drive business growth

Ready to level up your leadership? Book a free consultation HERE

Connect with Maggie:
https://www.stairwaytoleadership.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/maggie-perotin-business-and-leadership-coach/

https://www.instagram.com/maggie.perotin.s2l/

#DiamondEffectPodcast #LeadershipTips #BusinessGrowth #TeamManagement #SmallBusinessSuccess #ServiceBusiness #BusinessCoaching #EntrepreneurshipJourney

Transcript

Welcome everybody, Diamond Effect Podcast, Episode 201, and this episode is for you. If you are about to build a team or maybe you are already started hiring help for your business. And it doesn't matter if you're hiring contractors or actual employees, it will help you whether you have one person helping you part-time.

Or a team of five. And even if you are thinking about expanding your business or you are noticing that you struggle with people leadership and it doesn't come to you naturally because maybe that's what you expected to come this episode. In this episode, I will share my five principles that guided me throughout my people leadership experience.

The idea came to me from a question that I [00:01:00] received not so long ago from a brand new manager, somebody who wanted to grow their leadership skills, and I thought I would share that with you because many business owners. Or in the stages where they're going from solopreneur to now expanding their business and getting help from other people.

Leadership is a huge subject. There have been thousands and thousands of books written about it. Many people, consultants, other leaders have advice and all of that can actually overload you. When you are just starting and thinking, I just want some simple things to help me navigate my early journey, sometimes when you start digging into leadership, certain advice is contradictory

or it can be confusing or it's applicable to large team and large corporations. And you might wonder, how do I [00:02:00] actually apply it to my small business? How do I apply it to my first virtual assistant or my first two service providers that will deliver services with alongside with me to my clients? If that's you are in the right place.

What I did for this episode is I took my theoretical knowledge, not only from business studies and leadership studies, but many, many leadership books I've read. And combined it with my practical knowledge. I've actually been a people leader for over 15 years. Not only have I built the teams from scratch, so hired people, trained people, and so on, but also turned some low performing teams around to high performing teams.

I've. Led hundreds of people over those 13 years, motivate them, train them, help them grow in their [00:03:00] careers. And I also performance manage them. And I did let people go in my career so I combined that into five simple principles that will really help you step into people leadership journey that can guide you, and I promise you, they work.

No matter how advanced you are in your journey, or how early you are and how many people you lead, whether they're your contractors or employees working for your business, those principles are valuable. Those principles can save you a lot of time and a lot of headaches. So let's get started. The first one is lead by example.

I'm a huge believer in that there is too many people out there in the world, especially in politics, who call themselves leaders and they say one thing and [00:04:00] do completely different things. That's not leadership. At all, and I don't wanna get into this topic, but let's focus on the principle since we're kids.

As human beings, we're really wired to observe others and build our trust based on not what other persons says, but what they do. Because what we do is a true reflection of who we are and what we believe in, right? And we as human beings have this. Sixth sense about it, and you see it in children, right?

Children don't do what parents tell them to do. They're mimic their parents, and that doesn't go away. As we age and as we become adults, it becomes this subconscious thing. So people do not trust leaders. Who say one thing and do something different. If anything, they become very weary of those leaders and [00:05:00] cynical when the behavior contradicts the words that are being said.

If you want your employees to be punctual, you have to be punctual. You cannot be coming late to the meetings, whether it's team meetings or meetings with them, or even to work if you're in a physical location. If you want your people to be engaged, you need to be engaged. I had somebody tell me once that they're working for this nonprofit company and the executive director of the nonprofit was meeting with their team on Zoom with a camera off, or they weren't present during the meeting.

If that's you as a leader, you can't expect your team to be engaged during the meeting. You can't expect your team to really listen to what you're saying if you're not present when they're talking.

If you want your team members to be reliable, you have to be reliable [00:06:00] not only to your clients, but especially to your team members. So let's say if you're promising them a party at some point, no matter what, that party has to happen, if you are promising them a. Pay raise at a certain time or when certain conditions are met that needs to happen when that time arrives or the conditions are met.

What Leading by example does not mean is you doing the job of your employees, showing them that you can do it and so on, right? Sometimes, yes. We hire employees to help us with something we've done before and we're able to show them and do them. But sometimes we hire people for their expertise that we do not have, and we pay them for that expertise.

Therefore, we cannot do that job because we just don't know how to do it. That's why we're hiring them. So leading by example is not about being able to do exact job [00:07:00] that you're hiring somebody to do, but it's. You showcasing in your behavior, the values and the principles that you want to see in every single employee of yours, no matter their role or technical skill.

The second principle is know your people. You are not a leader. If you do not know who you lead. If you do not understand and really deep understand people who you lead, if you have so many people under you that you're not able to get to know them, that means your org structure should change and maybe you should get help.

In leading people in, the form of hiring team leads or managers, right? You always need to have enough direct reports under you where you'll have time to spend with them to get to know them. And there's two levels, of you knowing them as [00:08:00] professionals. So understanding what are the strengths, what are their skill sets that you can play to and utilize.

For them to be successful in their job and through that help you grow your business and achieve the goals. You also need to understand what motivates them. There are some people who get motivated by external praise and they love it. Some people actually hate that. All they want is you recognizing that, let's say they're doing a good job, but they want it to be done quiet and just in conversations.

Knowing your people will allow you to lead them better, will, allow you to increase retention, increase their satisfaction, and get the best out of them, which ultimately translates to them contributing the best or the most in to growing your business. And I can't stress the importance of that.

If you read books, they [00:09:00] give you an idea of how to retain and motivate people, but they do it like a brush all everybody's the same. And of course, yes, if you are a large corporation, there's 80% of what motivates people. That's. The same for everybody, right? So that 80% can be structured into processes and proper pay and bonuses or other things.

But there is always 20% that it's individual to each team member, and it's up to their direct leader, their manager, and if you're a business owner, small business owner, you to figure out and know your people to then. Help them be the best they can be, because ultimately that serves you. The second layer of you knowing your team or team members is you knowing them as.

Individuals as human beings. So going [00:10:00] step beyond the professional level, understanding who they are as humans. What are their passions? Who is their family? Do they have family? What do they like to do outside of their professional life? What that does, it builds connection.

Trust the relationship that you have with them is stronger. It builds better loyalty to you and your business because every one of us wants to be heard, seen and understood, and wants to mean more to their employer than just a skillset or just. And taking time and effort to get to know your people for who they are as individuals achieves that goal.

That does not mean you have to be best friends to everybody. That does not mean you have to think of them as your family and invite them to your, private or [00:11:00] personal events if you don't want to do it, but it means is you have a deeper connection with them and therefore stronger relationship.

I found that in my career, it helped me so much. My team members with whom I built that relationship were not only very loyal to me, but they were willing to go above and beyond they were passionate. About not only the roles, but just being able to help the team and myself because we had such a strong connection.

People work with people. People work for people, and if anything, the mission and vision and ideas and impact, they don't work just for paycheck. Paycheck is. The foundational basic. Of course, once people are able to fund their [00:12:00] basic needs with the pay cheque, they look for more, they look for fulfillment, for purpose, for connection.

And if you're able to create that environment that gives them that, they become very loyal and you can really retain your best people this way.

Rule number three is have their back. You always need to have the back of your people. And here's what I mean by that. You need to establish a clear set of rules in how to operate in your business. So the rules in terms of how to behave in our business, right? What's important to us, the mission and vision are also set of rules for each role, what's allowed, what's not allowed.

What are their goals and so on. But once you have that and it's clear and you train your team members to understand that, then have their back, if they're [00:13:00] operating within those rules and within that structure, even if, let's say they might handle a situation differently to what you would do. An example is, let's say.

You had a team member who dealt with a customer and there was a challenge with the customer. A customer was complaining and they handle that situation. Maybe not the best. Or maybe not exactly how you would like to handle. And at the same time, they still stayed within the rules that you established in that moment.

You have to have their back. You cannot throw them under the bus in front of the customer, or even if it wast private, tell them that they did something wrong. If they operated within the rules. Yes. There's always opportunity for coaching and saying, you handled that well and maybe that option could have been better, but you can't punish them for using their discretion and [00:14:00] using their creativity, coming up with a solution as long as they didn't, let's say, break the rules that you established.

That also creates safety for your employees in doing their job, safety is one of the most important feelings that your team members need to have in order to operate at their highest level, and help you grow your business.

So let's just say if the customer wasn't happy with a resolution that your team member given, you would not want to tell the customers, oh, they did something wrong and I don't agree with them, which you wanna tell the customers. Okay. My employee handled it within the parameters of our policy and so on.

Then if you still wanna give customers something more, depending on the situation, you can say, right? But there is a difference in how to handle, you want always to have their back. Another way you show that you have the back of your employees is by [00:15:00] removing obstacles that they might encounter. On their day-to-day, on their path to achieving the goals of the business that they cannot solve for themselves because the obstacle is too big, it falls outside of the role, or it's too challenging, too complex, or it falls outside of the parameters that you set for them that they can operate within.

So let's say your team members are not as effective as you would like them to be, and it's not because they don't know how to do their job. Or they don't know the process or they're not being creative with how to improve their effectiveness. It's, let's say, because they don't have proper tools for technology to be even more effective.

It's your job then as a leader to figure out what technology and tools they need to give you the effectiveness that you are expecting of them.

Rule number four is do not micromanage [00:16:00] your team members. You are hiring people with skillset to help you grow your business. They have a set of experience, set of creativity and skillset that you will never have because there are just different humans, right? Use that. To further your business. Don't constrain your people to doing exact steps the way you would do their job, because that is impossible.

There are just different people, and then that means you would have to make or manage them. And if you are doing their job, what's the point of you hiring them? And then just knowing you cannot do everything in your business if you wanna keep growing it and scaling it. So if you find yourself having to micromanage somebody, you need to ask yourself, are they the right person for the role?

And maybe they are, but maybe you haven't trained them properly, they haven't got, or they don't have a [00:17:00] proper tools, or maybe they're not the right person, the role, and then you have a decision to make. Or another thing is you might be having the trust issues or control issues, and that's not the fault of your employee.

That's something you as a leader need to handle, and this is your growth area, your personal development leadership skills that you need to expand on. I very often talk to small business owners and they're like, nobody can do the job as well as I can do, and I find that not true 99% of the time. From my experience, very often I found employees who were better at what I used to do and brought their own perspective and therefore improved whatever that was than me

I like to hire people better than me, but also different than me so they can improve on whatever I built. And as a CEO, you always want [00:18:00] to be focusing on 20% of activities that deliver 80% of the results. And those activities will change for you as you scale your business. So the another 80% of activities:

some of them don't have to be done, and you can, delete them completely, but some of them will have to be done. And that's what you keep passing on to your employees, to your team members as you grow your team. And trust me, if you have the right people in the roles, not only they will improve on what you were doing before, but there will be also more creative and can take those portions to the new levels.

How not micromanaging looks like is you giving your team member an outcome that you want them to achieve? And certain set of rules if they're important to that, and then leaving it up to their creativity to achieve that outcome. Because there's many ways, [00:19:00] always, many ways to achieve one outcome. You might see only five, but then.

Your employee will see another 10. So for example, you would like to increase customer retention by 20%, and you hired somebody, or you're promoting one of your existing team members who's just giving them that. You might set a rule where you say, okay, we wanna achieve 20% in customer retention, but we don't want to achieve it through discounts and giving people discount just to keep them right.

But then, and so that can be the parameter you set, but then how we are gonna achieve them and so on. You might wanna leave it. To your employees, and then just check on it in regular meetings and check-ins that you have with them to see what they're coming up with. You can help them brainstorm, but you don't want to impose on them every single idea.

Another example could be. Maybe you're hiring somebody to help [00:20:00] you with the social media. Again, setting a goal, okay, what do we wanna achieve? Maybe we wanna achieve more following, better engagement and so on. The parameters around could be whatever we post needs to be in alignment with. Our brand and what we're all about and our values and so on.

However, then individual posts or individual engagement on ideas, you leave it up to whomever you hire to help you with this, because hopefully if you're hiring you're hiring an expert and a creative person who can bring your social media presence to the next level.

I promise you, nobody likes to be micromanaged because micromanaging means you don't trust the person to do their best work. And when people don't feel trusted, it affects them negatively and they're definitely not gonna care because they'll be like, what's the point of me trying to do my best and be creative if I can't do it [00:21:00] because I'm being micromanaged?

So again, if you find yourself, when you need to micromanage, you wanna ask yourself, do I have the right person in the role? Why don't I trust them to do the right thing. And if the answer is maybe it's me, I have control and trust issues, then you need to work on yourself. And if it's the other person or not right in the role, then you also have a decision to make.

And that brings us to rule number five. Do not keep low performance or toxic people in your team ever.

I find that small business owners sometimes keep P wrong people in their business for two reasons. Usually I. Reason number one is when they say, but they're such a nice person, so they have a nice human being in a role, but it's a wrong role for them. So the person is not really [00:22:00] performing well and they're probably stressed and not feeling good, but the business owner doesn't wanna change the role or let them go if they don't have any other role because they're like, oh, it's such a nice person and I don't wanna hurt them.

The second reason why sometimes. Business owners keep other, especially like toxic people and the wrong people together, is that they as business owners want to be perceived nice and they don't wanna think about themselves as somebody who's maybe hurting somebody else by letting them go, right? And they don't wanna feel the discomfort and negative feeling that unfortunately comes with letting somebody go.

There's a couple of things I wanna mention here. First of all, it's normal to feel. Sad and have some, negative feelings or feel discomfort when you think about letting an employee go. Only a [00:23:00] sociopath would not feel anything because of course as a compassionate leader, you know that you letting somebody go will affect them negatively, even if it's just short term,

when you let a person go because they were just not the right fit for the role, or especially if they're toxic, you are actually doing them a favor. If somebody's not performing well in a role and you cannot reallocate them to the role that they would perform well. You are freeing them. You are allowing them to find something where they will be able to succeed at, when they will feel amazing about, and then hopefully have actually a better career rather than them getting stuck.

And just be there because they're, they might be thinking, oh, I need the paycheck, I have the role, so I'll stick with it. Even though I hate it, I don't feel good. It stresses me out. So as a leader, you are actually doing them a favor. [00:24:00] When you are, letting go a toxic person, you're actually doing a favor.

To your team, to your best employees and yourself and your business because they get affected by the toxic person. And if you keep a toxic person in your team, you are actually pushing out your best people. 'cause your best people will never wanna work in an environment that's negative, that's toxic, and that's rewarding the wrong people, right?

Because they're thinking maybe why do I even try? If I have this other person sitting next to me who's to, and they're being kept and rewarded and maybe given, some basic benefits or bonuses when I'm here doing my best in receiving the same treatment,

because true leadership, it's not about you. Being a leader as opposed to individual solopreneurs or individual [00:25:00] contributors, your focus shifts from you to your team members and your team and your investment, right? Your role is to empower them to achieve and help you achieve business goals and to do everything you can for them.

To be the best they can be because in the long term and short term, it benefits you. It benefits your business. It's no longer about you. So as a leader, we need to be able to put aside, the fear or the feeling of discomfort when we need to let somebody go. For the good of the business, for the good of the team members that are actually doing well.

It's not that much different than when you're a parent and you need to tell your child something they don't wanna hear, because they're doing something that doesn't serve them. And in the moment you might feel like a bad [00:26:00] person, but it benefits whatever you are teaching your child in that moment.

Benefits them in the long term. To become good, kind human beings that contribute to this society, right? If we let our children eat all the crap in the world they wanna eat, it wouldn't serve them long term in their health. So our child might not like what do we tell them in the moment, but ultimately they'll appreciate it down the line.

And leadership with your team is. Very often the same. Sometimes we need to, say the things or do the things that a person in front of you might not appreciate in the moment, but they're just the right thing to do for them or for the team and the business. I hope this was helpful, that those five principles, if you just take them and apply them, you will be a much better leader.

That creates not only strong, high performing teams, but those teams create better [00:27:00] results for your business, and ultimately your business grows. Now, if you want more help. In your specific situation in your business, I invite you to book a free consultation with me and I'll share the link in the show notes to book it.

Have a fantastic week. See you soon.