This week I was able to witness some killer management moves by Clay and Jonathan Kelly. Without getting into all the details of the issues, Jonathan was trying to get to the root of a particular problem and when we found out how the mistake was made and who made it, me and another co-worker started to think of ways to prevent that problem from happening again. Jonathan told us that we have a system that works, so he will fix this person or he will replace them but he will not redo the system because we know the system works when it is followed… BOOM! This is a concept that I have taught to many business coaching clients because more often than not it can be a struggle to hold steadfast when everyone around you suggests something new or gives feedback while you are trying to implement a new system. I have always thought of this in the big picture, you know, changing company-wide policies, ignoring entire checklists etc…but the way Jonathan handled this situation got me thinking about the smaller picture. Just because we weren’t suggesting a huge change to the way things were being done doesn’t mean that that small change won’t have an affect on the whole company. As a business owner, once you start making small adjustments to your business coaching system to “help out” an employee, those requests and adjustments are just going to keep getting bigger and bigger.
You cannot listen to the voices of the average, in your business or personal life, if you do you will only ever be average.
Clay said something just a few days later that goes hand in hand with this. He was talking about working with alpha personalities and how to best deal with them while business coaching. He said you should be straightforward with those types of people and say “I am so excited that you are alpha but I will do nothing different to help you, I will make zero accommodations”. It is so important that you have this attitude with clients and employees because if not they will walk all over you with requests that would require you to change the way you do things. However if time freedom, financial gain, and peace of mind are not goals of yours, then, by all means, bend to everyone’s wishes. Now, on the other hand, say you choose to stand your ground and not change anything, simply enforce your system and the client or employee still will not follow the rules, then do not be afraid to get rid of them. There are other employees and other clients.
It can be easy to get sidetracked by everyone’s requests or opinions, especially if you do not know what you want or what you are working towards. As a recovering people-pleaser, it was hard, at first, for me to make the switch to saying no and not feeling bad. I used to spend hours trying to make sure my husband and I were at every family gathering, keep in mind that I come from a family of eight and he comes from a family of nine, so there are a lot of family gatherings. I would try and fit in any request from a friend, even if I wasn’t that close to them. Then one day I realized that by saying yes to everything I was only distancing myself and Ben from our goals. So I started saying no. It felt like I was being mean at first but now I don’t even think twice about it. I know we have scheduled family and friend time each week and because I have stuck to my business coaching “system” it has given my husband and I the ability to buy a house, start looking at investment properties, go on fun dates, read, go on overnight trips, and hang out with people we actually like. Once we started saying no to everything, of course, everyone had an opinion on how we should live our lives and what we should do with our time and money. The point is you cannot listen to the voices of the average, in your business or personal life, if you do you will only ever be average.
