I’ve always seen it as a necessity to grow as a leader. Why wouldn’t I? No one is the same from one year to the next – neither is the economy.
Translation: You can’t meet your client’s needs if you don’t grow with the changes in the evolving market that they are dealing with.
A wake-up call to small business leaders
I used to follow the old blueprint for managing my team. Well, if I had a blueprint. Let’s face it, most entrepreneurs start alone and then slowly build a team of employees afterward. So I didn’t exactly have a blueprint. What I did know about employee management was what I learned from my first job in a corporate atmosphere, and I’ll be blunt: It was Hell.
Traditional leadership includes leading with fear, intimidation, and/or stoicism. The result? Lots of insecure – and therefore ineffective employees. Employees who are, for all accounts, running your business. Your team is the face of the business, they produce your offering, and they communicate with your clients and customers. They are the foundation of your business. I know, shocker, your business doesn’t revolve around you. It revolves around the people working to drive your revenue and are working toward your mission and goals.
It’s never been harder building successful teams. With challenges of work-from-anywhere, flex schedules, and generational divides, business leaders bend over backward searching for solutions that work. From food perks and ping pong tables to endless team-building exercises and training – nothing sticks.
I think small business owners focus on the wrong things when it comes to their employees. So much so that I wrote a book about it. We’ve made some major upgrades in my business, and I want to share them with you as a resource that you can implement – and get the success I have seen come from it.
To start, I want to introduce you to the FASO model. I know, another acronym. Remember the DAD method? Someday I’ll figure out an UNCLE method. But I digress. The FASO model is what I want you to apply to your business so you can build the unstoppable team that I found I now have.
- Recruit in the right way the right talent
- Transform struggling employees into superstars
- Match individual abilities to client and company needs
- Promote a culture of caring where employees and leadership are equally invested
You want a thriving workforce that shines and sticks around. One that takes full responsibility for their work and outcomes. I’m building a community of employees who love our organization and are invested in its growth through the FASO model.
- Fit– Adapt roles. Don’t look for a person who can do it all. Look for the person who can do best at what you need most.
- Ability– Unleash potential. People who want to do a job always outperform people who need to do a job. Seek the want. The desire. The thirst.
- Safety– Cultivate security. People do their best when they’re not worried about the rest. Protect your team and set up conditions in which they feel safe, enabling them to lean into contribution.
- Ownership– Empower ownership. When team members are designated ownership over aspects of their job, the natural tendency is for them to put everything they have into it.
Build a world-class team. One that you love to work with. One that your customers and clients love to work with. (And let’s face it, one that your accounts love too.)
Stay tuned for more insight and easy steps you can apply to your business now in the blog and our social media channels. I can’t wait to see your company thrive.
Wishing you health and wealth always.
-Mike
