1. YOUR EMPLOYEES CANNOT CARE ABOUT YOUR BUSINESS AS MUCH AS YOU DO.
A lot of questions arise from business owners and founders asking how to motivate their employees to care as much as they do about the business.
The crazy and obvious answer here is “Give them half the company.” Truth is, if your employees were like you, they wouldn’t work for you.
At some point, you have to understand that they don’t work for you. You work for them. It’s about understanding what every single person in your company wants, and doing your best to deliver.
For example, an employee might want a raise in salary when he’s 25. But maybe he falls in love at 28 and decides that he wants to spend quality time with his family. Another one might be interested in a promotion.
There are a million different variables, and it’s on you as a leader to adjust to reality as it changes.
2. IF YOU HAVE TO FIRE SOMEONE, MAKE IT FEEL LIKE AN OPPORTUNITY, NOT A PUNISHMENT.
One of the toughest things to do as a business owner is firing employees. So when you have to do it, do your best to make it feel like a liberation rather than a punishment. Because, that’s what it is most of the time.
And also, be willing to help your employees transition out of your company into another field where they could be successful. You should be more interested in how you feel about yourself and what those who know you say about you than the profitability of my company, that’s much reason why you should try to keep strong relationships with your employees even after they leave or got fired.
People often talk about why employees shouldn’t cut ties with employers, but not a lot of people talk about the opposite of that. Not many people talk about employers keeping relationships with employees even after they let them go. It’s also practical when running a business.
Keeping those relationships has led to actual business. It’s something that most companies don’t think about.
3. HIRE SOMEONE THAT IS THE SOLUTION TO YOUR PROBLEM IN BUSINESS.
I’m a huge fan of rooting on your strengths and not caring about your weaknesses. The key is to know something well enough to know whether someone is doing a good job, but let them do their thing at the same time.
When deciding who to hire, it always comes down to pick between a jack-of-all-trades or specialist. From my own perspective, I believe the one that will help your business far more is the jack-of-all-trades.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s important to balance the different types of people who work for you. You need to have specialists but you also need the jack-of-all-trades. It’s beneficial for the task at hand, both personality types work. I’m not disputing that fact.
But I don’t think that you should focus on one particular skill. Do not limit yourself to that.
The point is: If that person was a specialist, do they have the ability to see beyond their one skill? Are they curious to learn? Can they turn their strengths into more skills?
Keep your business running!
