Know Your Staff’s Talents

I’m not saying I have all the answers, but I’ve been in this business a long time and I know what I’ve failed at and what has made my staff and myself successful, so that is what I want to share with you with the “Ten Days to Be a Better Boss…Day 1 – Know your Staff’s talents

Knowing your staff will allow you to know what their strengths and weaknesses are and this is important because then you will know what tasks will make them successful and in turn making you and your business successful.

Look back on projects that they have done, where did they thrive and where didn’t they.  Watch them when they do their jobs.  Does Jane love talking to people, but Bob would rather be alone…if so, then let Jane build those customer service relationships and give Bob the opportunity to do something else.  He might be great at organizing things, so let him organize something for you.

Is there an area in your business that needs help…is there an item that just won’t sell?  Is the closing procedure way to complicated and time consuming?  Is marketing a problem?

Find an area that is weak in your company and then find the employee best suited to help fix it.  Do you have an employee that could sell ice to an Eskimo?  Then maybe that person could figure out the best way to market your business.

If marketing is your problem, then brainstorm with your employees to find a way to market your product, business, etc. better. Pay attention to which employee keeps coming up with creative ideas (not far fetched ideas, but creative ones).

Now here is where I get a lot of strange looks.  If Jane is coming up with some great ideas…one after another…but Bob is only coming up with one or two…pair them together…Let them balance each other out and bring out the best in each other and see what happens.  I know most people would rather have their two strongest employees working on a project like this, but then you have two people with very strong ideas and you might find that neither is willing to give in…which means you never get your marketing strategy done.  But I never recommend putting the strongest with the weakest either…then you have a strong personality that will just overrun the other person and you have a weak personality that will become a little weaker with each day.

You need balance, so that you can keep people working together for the greater good, so give your staff a chance to build their balanced teams.

Start small – you want your staff to build the confidence they need and you want to be confident that your staff can handle each job before giving them even more to do.