Raise Your Standards + Business Coach
Business Coach Explains The Importance Of Setting High Standards
Take responsibility for your mistakes. When you make a mistake, you must own it. Although you need to focus on holding yourself accountable to a higher business coach standard, you still are a member of the human race and you will mess up from time to time. It’s important that you take 100% ownership of the mistakes you make as opposed to simply skipping over that agenda item or making dishonest excuses. Although it is hard to do, you must publically take responsibility for your mistakes.
Story Time: On the Thrive15.com platform, I did not feel that having a community forum or discussion portion of the website was a good idea. I have worked hard for years to develop a massive business coach network and that has never included engaging with people actively, anonymously, or transparently on any message boards. Frankly, I just don’t like interacting on social media for the same reason that I don’t like watching figure skating. It’s just a preference thing. However, after thousands and thousands of Thrivers all around the world reached out to us asking for a message board or a community section, I publicly acknowledged to Deedra Determan (our publicist) and our entire team that I was wrong. In fact, my exact words were, “Deedra, in my face. I was an assface. I was wrong and you were right.”
Make sure that the ball does not get dropped as a result of poor communication or handoffs between team members. My friend, at the very second that an action item is dreamed up and discussed, you must specifically assign the action item to a person who will be responsible for getting the action item done accurately and by the deadline. To quote Tim Redmond, Thrive15.com Mentor and the man who helped to grow Tax and Accounting Software from two employees to over 450 employees, “Someone on your team must clearly own each action item.”
When you assign an action item to a member of your team, you must make declarative and clear statements such as, “Greg, you need to get the video edited by Thursday at 1:00 PM. Sarah, you will then need to quality control the video and have it up on the website in time for the 5:00 PM news. Is everyone clear about this?”
“If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time – a tremendous whack.”
-Winston Churchill (former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom who stood up to Adolf Hitler)
To begin using the Time Management System and Delegation Station developed by Thrive15.com Mentor Lee Cockerell (the man who once managed and effectively delegated to over 40,000 team members when acting as the Executive Vice President of Operations for Walt Disney World resort), visit www.Thrive15.com/TimeManagementMagic
Never delegate a business coach action item to a group of people. An individual on your team must solely be held accountable for the successful execution of every action item. Too often in meetings people say, “Susan and I will have this knocked out by Tuesday.” Then when the Tuesday executive meeting rolls around, Susan says, “I thought Josh was going to handle it,” while Josh says, “Oh, I was waiting for Sarah to clarify what needed to be done.”
Don’t allow vague and non-action items that sound like action items to be assigned to members of your team. Constantly, I see businesses delegate tasks like, “Discuss the possible options and do research by Wednesday.” Because the action items are so vague, when the follow-up happens and management asks the question, “Steve, did you discuss all of the possible options and do the research,” Steve says, “Yes, I did.” Yet in reality, nothing was accomplished; Steve didn’t do any work and another week has passed. Your action items must call for tangible and measurable results: “By Wednesday, Steve, I need you to have created a spreadsheet showcasing all of the available options that we have for installing a new metal roof. I want side-by-side comparisons of the pros and cons of each option and I need to know the bottom line all-in costs of each option, including installation. Steve, do you have any questions?”
As a person who has had to learn how become an effective delegator in order to effectively grow my wallet, watching people assign action items that are not actually business coach action items causes me to literally experience high-levels of stress and anxiety.
Four Effective Tools for Effective Team Accountability Management
Require Everyone to Use the Same Business Coach System
Today there are many time management and business coach systems out there. I sincerely believe that the system Thrive15.com developed in conjunction with Lee Cockerell is the best because I believe that Disney World is the best resort in the world. If this system is good enough for the man who managed Walt Disney World, I believe it’s good enough for me.
However, at the end of the day, it’s super important that everyone on your team use the same system so they can be physically and digitally on the same page and project management platform. When I go into work with businesses that need help growing, I often find that no one knows what they are supposed to be doing. When I am asked to audit an employee’s performance, 95% of the time employees will say, “Oh, I didn’t know Kim even wanted me to handle that. I thought she was handling that.”
To begin using the Time Management System and Delegation Station developed by Thrive15.com Mentor Lee Cockerell (the man who once managed and effectively delegated to over 40,000 team members when acting as the Executive Vice President of Operations for Walt Disney World resort), visit www.Thrive15.com/TimeManagementMagic
Ample Example:
Many moons ago, I sat down with the owner of an electrical company who wanted to hire me to help him dramatically increase the number of online leads he was getting for his commercial and residential electrical company. As I went through each one of his online marketing and Internet advertising systems, my team and I discovered something that was TERRIBLE yet GREAT at the same time. Can you guess what it was? Oh yes! Nobody had been checking the inbox the leads were being sent to for over seven months. This client literally had over 1,200 inbound leads sitting there in his inbox. Over one thousand people had reached out for a quote and not a single person on his team was responding to them. Why was this?
[1] Ensure that one, and only one, team member owns each assigned action item
[2] Add the first five action items to the Time Management Magic Action Items System
[3] Ensure that non-specific items are purged from the assigned action items