Delegation im Team: Tribünen-Verleih für Festivals

0:00Unternehmer/Gast I sell bleacher rentals to festivals and fairs. So, we do around 4 and 1/2 million in revenue and about a million in uh profit, EBITDA. >> Congrats. What's stopping me is having my leadership team delegate fully some of their responsibilities. And I think it has to do with um creating processes that are followed by all. If we need to hire key people and we don't have the processes, then we can't delegate properly. So, how do you train leaders?

0:30So, this this is a this is a good question that I'm going to chunk up one level cuz I think it'll be valuable in in general. Um which is that fundamentally when we're hiring anyone, we look for the smallest skill deficiency possible. Fundamentally, you've got traits, as people call them, and then you've got skills. Now, based on Alex's worldview, uh this is not a thing.

0:54It's just that. A trait is just a series of skills, right? And so, when you hire a CFO, for example, you're going to try and hire for the smallest skill deficiency. And so, if the CFO is uh a dick, for example, but they're exceptional in all these other things, then you're like, maybe I can teach them to be kind in these ways. Now, that'd be a big That's a lot of skills to just have someone like go from not kind to kind, right? A lot of sub-skills underneath of that. And so, if it's 2 days to train sales and 2 months to train kindness, take this person who's kind and then train them on sales. Later on, sometimes you have people who you're like, "Okay, this person's a little different than our vibe. They're not going to be, you know, oil and water, um but they have this massive skill set that we can use and this tiny deficiency that is around this stuff that we can be transparent with them up front that they need to fix." I've seen this happen like again and again and again where a manager or a leader talks to somebody else and says, "Hey." And then uses amorphous terminology that's very hard to pin down to basically say, "Change your behavior." And they're like, "But how?"

1:56And they're like, "Change it." And you're like, "Okay, I don't know what that means." And so, the reason I'm so obsessive about operationalizing terms, like, "What is patience? What is courage? What is, you know, what is humility?" Like, "What are these What do these terms actually mean in terms of behaviors?" Like, patience is figuring out something to do in the meantime. Like, if you do figure out something to do in the meantime, you're by default being patient, right? And so, it's telling someone what they actually have to do, not who they have to be. "Stop being lazy" is very hard for someone to solve. It's like, "I keep telling her to not be lazy, and she just keeps being lazy." But you have to break the term down into what behaviors you describe as lazy. Cuz when you talk to, you know, your your partner or you talk to somebody else, you say, "Hey, Sarah's kind of lazy. Have you noticed that?"

2:34There are things that she did that you observed that you ascribed the label lazy to. And so, you have to think more deeply, like, "What did they do to deserve the title?" And it might be like they don't respond quickly to Slack messages. These are things that if you said, "Hey, Susan." Instead of insulting her and saying, "Hey, you're a lazy." Instead, we'd say, "Hey, you don't respond to Slack messages quickly enough. You aren't responding, you know, after hours, and our hours keep going till 9:00 p.m., and you're not responding until after, you know, after 5:00." And so, for this week, I want you to focus just on responding to Slack messages. So, let's turn on notifications. Let's turn it on both of your phones and and turn it on your computer so that you can see it. Is there anything else that's going to get in the way of you responding quickly?

3:13Now, when we ask that question, we might find out that Sarah's overwhelmed cuz she's doing somebody else's job who we laid off, and we haven't backfilled. It's like, "Okay, well, now we have context." But until we get to there, we can't appropriately measure Sarah's inherent value or traits, rather, behaviors to give her a a label. So, to your question, how do you train leaders? I think that attracting good leaders So, one of it's recruiting, right? So, um Chick-fil-A's head of people said this.

3:43She said a lot of people are trying to fix process when they really lost the championship in the draft. And so, a lot of people are trying to to figure out what playbook they should be using with a team that's never going to win. So, the big framework that we use for training in general is document, demonstrate, duplicate. And so, first, you figure out exactly what the checklist is. And I like checklists more than quote SOPs, that's a a personal preference. And so, it's like And you want to be able to break it down into behaviors. And I think this is where a lot of training goes wrong. I think most companies aren't very good at training.

4:16They're just They basically hire a bunch of people, see who's got the skill, and then fire the rest. But if you do get good at training, it's like, "How do you train kindness?" Well, you say, "Okay, well, people who are kind when they come on a phone, they they smile, right?" And they nod their head when people are listening. And they repeat back what someone says, and they, you know, raise their voice when uh when uh they walk into a room, right? And so, if you boil it down to some of the behaviors, then the onus is on us as leaders to be more specific with what we tell our subordinates to do. And I think a lot of times if you're struggling to train some of these key traits with leaders, it's because you're not being specific enough about what you want them to change. And so, it's like, "You're just not getting it." It's like, "Well, no one can do anything with that." And so, it's like, you have to And this is where the work comes in from the top down. We're like, "Okay, when you do this, and so, the easiest way to bucket this, That's a key. There we go. Is Sarah, I need you to stop doing this. I need you to start doing this, and I need you to keep doing this.

5:20And so, just being more granular about what behavior you want them to stop or what behavior they're not doing that they need to begin or combination. And so, um giving someone the feedback of I need you to do this instead of this has been some of the most effective way that I've been able to change people's behavior, and it's the about around the specificity. And so, if your leaders aren't doing what you want them to do, document, demonstrate, duplicate. This is the step process. Let me show you how I do it. Now, you do it in front of me. And this is what we're going to have you stop doing. You're going to now do this instead and keep doing the other stuff that's good. So, if you've hit a revenue ceiling or your entire business relies on you to grow, then I'd love to invite you out to our headquarters here in Vegas to learn how we scale. It's uh my team spends 2 days with you to identify the thing that's holding your business back. And so, if that sounds interesting, click book a call, and if you're a fit, we'd love to potentially see you out here in Vegas.