Hire the Right People and Grow Your Team

Kathy (host):

Hey there, and welcome back to Help! My Business is Growing, a podcast where we explore how to grow and build a business that is healthy and sustainable. I’m your host, Kathy Svetina. I’m super excited about this episode because we’re not just gonna be talking about how to hire the right people but also how do you bring them into the company the right way. And once they are there, how do you manage them well? My guest on the show is Talmar Anderson. She has a lot of energy, and she’s super fun to listen to, as you’re going to be hearing in just a second. 

Kathy (host):

But before we dive into the actual interview, I wanted to give you a little bit of a preview of the topics that we’re going to be covering. We’re going to be talking about how to figure out who to hire, and how to effectively vet the people you’re considering hiring. Should you involve other team members in your hiring decisions and how to go about doing that in the right way? What not to do when you’re onboarding, your new hire. And we’re also going to be touching on the proper management of teams when you’re starting to add layers, and you just do not have the capacity for those one-on-one meetings with everyone anymore. There are going to be detailed timestamps of every topic that we are covering in the show notes. So you can always go and reference those and just jump into those directly if you want to. And as a reminder, this episode also comes with a blog post with resources as well, and it will direct you to Talmar’s website and her programs. 

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Kathy (host):

Here’s a little bit about Talmar. Talmar Anderson has over 30 years of experience leading growing and designing kick-ass teams for small businesses and entrepreneurs. She’s also a published author, the thought leader of the Boss Muse, and CEO, and founder of Boss Actions. Talmar believes that any business owner can learn to build a kick-ass team to grow their business. In fact, it is required. Through her groundbreaking Bossification program, she’s led over 100 entrepreneurs to do exactly that. Her message has been featured on a national television show that aired on Amazon Fire, Roku, and Apple TV. Join us!

Kathy (host):  

Welcome to the show, Talmar.

Talmar (guest):  

Thank you. I’m so excited to be here with you, Kathy!

Kathy (host):  

Oh, I’m so excited you’re here. And we’re going to be talking about hiring and when it comes to hiring my philosophy is that if you hire the right people and manage them well, no matter what’s happening in your business, you can always figure things out. And that’s simply because you can tap into other people’s expertise and other people’s point of view. And as an owner, you also even have options there, you can hire an employee, or you can have an outsourced person. But it really all boils down to having the right people in the right places and having the proper management in place. I wanted to ask you, what’s your take on it? And what do you think that so many business owners struggle with these two parts?

Talmar (guest):  

Well, I want to be clear that I predominantly speak to small business owners, right? I do think that there’s different hiring strategies for different sized companies, but my sweet spot, my heart belongs to small business, right? Now let’s be clear, small businesses are still 50 million and under. It’s not doesn’t have to be that small. But when I talk about my strategies and recommendations, it’s for that small business owner, whether they’re just starting out and getting ready for their first hire, or they’re reorganizing their teams. 

Talmar (guest):

But I think the best, most actionable insight I can give any small business is that they really have to stop hiring for potential. And that’s like a big deal. That’s not what they’re being told, they’re being told, get out there, find young people train them up. But small business doesn’t really have the capacity yet to afford the time to wait for somebody to learn how to do the job, or to afford the resources and money and time and energy to train someone to pay them to learn. It doesn’t serve our small business growth, to really look for someone that still is learning their job. We really need to be able to identify what we need today, what our business needs today. So that we can learn how to attract it, and vet it and make sure that we’re bringing on the kind of people that are going to rock for our business from the get-go because that’s what small business needs to be able to take advantage of that growth.

Kathy (host):  

Yeah, that’s such a good point. Do you have any recommendation of how would someone that’s getting ready to hire and especially hire multiple people to figure out who should they hire? How should they hire? And what are they actually really need in the business right now?

Talmar (guest):  

Wow, that’s a whole, girl. That’s a whole program, which we want all of that, but let’s just talk about where to start. The first thing you really have to do is you have to be able to look into your business and identify what you need, right? The first thing is, I need help, you need to learn how to identify what your business needs. And that can be a whole series of steps. And sometimes people guess, but I do recommend that taking the time to get clear on what your business needs, is the only chance that you have for successfully hiring, right? If we hire for what we think is nice, or wouldn’t it be great if I had someone to help me with this if we don’t take the time to really think about the time that we’re putting in on what we want to outsource or delegate, or what we consider would be a successful result. 

Talmar (guest):

If we don’t take that time to really identify what would be successful for our business, then we have nothing to measure against when we go to see if someone’s the right hire. So because somebody says they can do something, we’re gonna want to put him through a vetting process. We can’t build that vetting process until we know what we’re looking for. So the first thing I really want everybody to do, once they’re thinking, “I think I need to hire,” create some time on their calendar, where they can really sit down and understand where they’re spending time and energy, and what’s going to be best for their business if they look at hiring. 

Talmar (guest):

And I also want to be clear that hiring includes your vendors, your independent contractors, and your employees. I hear from business owners all the time. “Oh, I’m not hiring yet.” Yeah, I just and I say really, you don’t have anybody you work with on any of your projects, you don’t have a bookkeeper or outsource your social media or have somebody that helps you deliver projects once in a while. “Oh, yeah, but they’re not employees.” Let’s be clear boss, the minute you’re bringing somebody in to influence the success, or how you deliver for your clients, you are hiring, and you are a boss. We have to take the time to start to think about what we need from those relationships in those roles. Before we go out and we hire people, get them on the payroll, whether that’s through paying an invoice or paying payroll itself. Let’s make sure they can do what we need in our business.

Kathy (host):  

Yeah, and that’s a good point. And I always also say to – you have to be proactive, not reactive, because it takes time, right, to find those right employees to find the people that you really need, not just what you need in a business right now currently, but taking a look where your business is going to be six months from now, a year from now? Absolutely thinking about what are the type of talent that I really need in the business at that particular point so that you can start hiring, start looking for those people right now.

Talmar (guest):  

Absolutely, absolutely. I do love that. And that’s one of the big shifts that we tell our bosses is the CEO role. The reason overwhelmed business owner is how we, most of our clients, I am overwhelmed, there’s so much going on. And usually, it’s a good thing, right? We have lots of sales or potential sales, and we’re just convinced the business could be so much bigger if we had the right people we could trust to deliver. If that’s ideal, we’re a little busy when we start to hire. It can be frustrating. But if we can take the time to create the space to really focus and do this correctly, then our role shifts into that thriving CEO. And what that role does include is always be recruiting to your point, right? We’re always- 

Talmar (guest):

Once we start to get clear on what the business needs, what the roles will look like, what kind of sales or projects need to come down before we trigger the next hire, we call it hiring triggers at Boss Actions. We start to create these, these forecasting, and these ideas of what our next steps could be. So that once we start to see those trends coming down, right, our sales are trending up, maybe or we know that we’re getting ready, a project’s going to say yes, we want to start that recruitment process. If we’ve been clear on what, say a great project manager, it’s going to be and we met one networking, now we can start giving them a call. I call it flirting, but it’s business flirting, and flirt and says, “Hey, how are things going? Or would you ever consider looking for another gig because let’s have a conversation?” That’s not a full recruiting process than seeing if they’re interested in a potential opportunity with your company, then when they say yes, or if somebody refers you when you’re ready, that still has to go to the front of … your vetting process it. 

Talmar (guest):

I always make the joke, if you’re hiring your mom, as a project manager, she has to go to the front of the vetting process, because you know her as your mom and you like and trust her as your mom, but you don’t know how detail-oriented she is about following up on things. You don’t know how she isn’t about inspiring other people to get their work done in a timely manner, which is oftentimes a project manager role, right? We need to understand that even the people we think we know and even the people that we get referred to, they still have to go to the beginning of your vetting process, which if we’ve taken the time to identify our business, what it needs, learn how to attract the right people, right, whether through our own recruiting or through traditional employment, ad placements in different places, then we can set up all those people into our vetting process, which can be a repeatable process that’s specific to your business and this role. We have a reasonable expectation that they can do the job before we start paying them. And I’ll tell you, there’s some great people out there that want to work for you. And there’s some people that are just gonna lie to get the job, and having the confidence that you’ve really turned over all the rocks, and you’ve been really specific to you what your needs are, gives you that confidence that this is the right person, and it gets to be exciting when you’re hiring and growing.

Kathy (host):  

How would the vetting process look like how if you are getting ready to hire a couple of people, and you know that you need that vetting process in and you’re currently struggling with it? How would that look like? How would a successful vetting process look like?

Talmar (guest):  

Girl, you’re saying my talk, because now we’re talking process? I love a good process!

Kathy (host):  

I love processes!

Talmar (guest):  

The one thing that we found, so we created a program called Bossification and the first thing we found is that most people believe that your vetting process starts with like writing an employment ad or job description, right? Just trying to attract the right people. And then they’re like, “Yeah, you got to ask the basic interview questions. And don’t even bother with reference checks, because you know, they’re just gonna send you people that liked them.” How are we supposed to vet them? 

Talmar (guest):

And so our program, we really specifically after we’ve done the identifying, we’ve taught you how to attract the right person, the vetting process is pretty much the same steps in the same order for us, but it’s always specific to the role. And what I mean by that is Kathy, if you were hiring a customer service representative for your company, and I was hiring a customer service representative for my company. You might care more about somebody who has is very good at scheduling and deadline management, maybe that’s critical for your CSRs, right.? They have to be able to get things up for the customer, get that detail in and get people moving through a schedule. Maybe that’s really good for you guys. And maybe my CSR is really all about making people feel heard and listened to and cared for, right? We can’t have the same vetting process. We can’t ask them where they want to be in five years. And we’re going to get the same answer. But that doesn’t tell us which one’s the right one for us. 

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Talmar (guest):

Getting strategic about how you write your interview questions and how you write this is the bomb drop, I mean, the mic drop, get excited about how you write your reference check questions. Yeah, I want you to start doing these more specifically, people. But you write this question is more specific to what you’ve identified as a success for your business. And that’s about knowing the kind of people that are going to do the job the way you want to do them, that will serve the clients that you serve, and that will bring the skills and experiences to you that they can do the job from day one. 

Talmar (guest):

And that’s I mean, it’s a lot of moving pieces, which is why we made the program but if you can take the time to develop this for you, if not working for me, you can do this. But it’s creating the time energy and space to create a strong vetting process for every position you have, right? When you go now and you hire, you have your CSR- customer service representative. But now you’re ready to hire somebody, you know, that’s going to be I don’t know, Vice President of Marketing, that vetting process can’t be the same. It’s not the same success markers. It’s not the same skill set. It’s not the same. Yes, the same clients. Yes, the same boss, but it’s still going to change. And we’ve got to be really mindful about hiring for every position. Does that help?

Kathy (host):  

Yeah, it does. What I’m hearing is also embedding your company culture in the vetting process, embedding it in there. And if you’re interested in more details on our company culture, I actually did an episode specifically for that. Episode one with Lindsay White. So go ahead and listen to that, and you can take some of those gold nuggets that Lindsay shared with us and marry it with Talmar’s hiring process, and you’re going to have a booming, booming hiring process. And I love that embedding that into the vetting process because it’s so important. What I really like about it is that it really is specific to a specific role that you hiring. You’re not doing, you’re not applying a paying job to every single job. You’re looking at it from a different point of view and making sure that it matches where you really want to be.

Talmar (guest):  

But because different, I mean, they are different roles, and they have different needs. But it is the alignment part. The alignment parts, not just about hiring, what you’re really doing, when you’re clear on your culture, and why you like the people you work with, and what you guys are, why you’re serving this client. When you pull that into your vetting process. Here’s the best part, that affects tenure and tenure how long somebody stays on as an employee. If we can find somebody that’s a great customer service representative but has a big chip on their shoulder with corporations, and my company serves like Coca Cola and big corporations. It doesn’t matter how great a CSR they are, they’re always going to be a little unhappy, they’re not going to be they’re bringing their best game. And they’re not going to get excited that Coca-Cola had a big win for our services if that’s what we did. 

Talmar (guest):

That alignment allows people to not just rock what they’re good at and do well for your business. But that alignment of the culture and the people you serve and why you’re doing what you’re doing is about teamwork, and feeling like you’re on the same mission and rowing the boat the same way as they say. But it also lets them find more satisfaction in what they’re doing. If you’re a luxury business, and you have a lot of wealthy clients, and there’s somebody that’s fearful of money or thinks that rich people are evil, they’re again, that could be brilliant, that could be the best technician, whatever you hired for that thing. But that’s it’s gonna be a little disconnect because in their mind, they’re serving something that they don’t connect with. And that keeps them from staying longer. It keeps them from helping in those times when we all kind of pitch in for each other, it really kind of pulls them away. It can just create that kind of ‘poison apple person’, right? That one who’s like ‘rah rah rah rah’ and your “Boy, Talmar is always in a bad mood.” But it’s because Talmar is misaligned with the mission, probably. They could be great at their job, but they’re not happy because they don’t love what they’re doing yet. And that’s why that passion purpose, mission culture piece is so critical for really good team development for strong hires. It’s really important. Thanks for tying that in Kathy.

Kathy (host):  

When it comes to team and selecting team members, how important do you think it is to involve other team members into this vetting process, especially and know the difference between the levels that you’re going to be hiring for. If you’re hiring a director or a VP level in your company, it’s going to be a lot different than hiring a service representative. But how important do you think it is to involve the team members in those hiring decisions in general?

Talmar (guest):  

I love this question. And boy, girl, we could talk about just this question itself for like the next 35 minutes, because there’s a lot of different pieces to that, right? The first piece is, are you bringing them in because you don’t trust yourself in vetting their qualifications. And that’s not necessarily about bad things, right? A boss may not be an expert at marketing copywriting. So I want somebody who is to tell me if this person’s writing well or not, right? I don’t know. It’s okay to bring experts in that case. If we’re going to ask people to be a part of that process, we have to be clear about what we’re asking them to look for. 

Talmar (guest):

And if they’re just part of the team, meaning not another owner, and not going to be the boss of this person, it’s critical that you explain to them you’re asking for their input, because I think one of the biggest mistakes bosses make is they’re like, “Alright, we’re going to do team, we’re going to hire for our team. And I really want everybody’s opinion, so everyone’s going to interview them.” And the truth of the matter is, you’ve gone through the process, this is the best person, you’re not bringing in somebody that they don’t align with. But maybe two of the employees have a friend that’s also in consideration, in which case, they’re always going to do your people know how to vet do your people know how to interview? What is the point? Are you looking to see if they all click together? 

Talmar (guest):

Again, if you’re hiring for the aligned mission, and you’re hiring for aligned business practice like you’re happy, we’re professional, we like dogs laying in our feet if we can identify that the likelihood that they’re going to get along is key. You have to be clear why you’re pulling somebody in and what you are expecting them to read into. And then you have to set their expectation for how you’re going to take that because, at the end of the day, you might be like. “I am convinced Kathy is the bee’s knees, I need to have her”, and the rest of the team be like, “She was okay. But Mary was so perky. I really liked her energy.” Well, that’s fine. But Kathy’s qualified. Kathy’s, the one and as the boss, I have to look out for the business. 

Talmar (guest):

My job is to be the business champion. If I am not the person that can stand if I haven’t set the expectation with the rest of the team. Now I’ve created chaos, I pulled them into something. And I took their opinion. And I didn’t set the expectation correctly, as I will consider it in the totality of things. And now you’re spent, you’ve either offended them, because they’re like, “She didn’t even really want to. She was just playing us”, or you’re spent defending yourself to your team, which is not a place that a boss should ever be. It should be, “This is my company, I do believe it’s correct.” It’s not that you couldn’t explain, but you have to be really, you have to walk that line between explaining your decision so that they can all work as a team and defending your action to not take their input. That’s a different line. And that’s part of that communication management that we work through with you in Bossification It’s a sticky wicket. That’s why it was like, depends.

Kathy (host):  

Yeah. And also what about in situations when, if you have a growing business, there’s so many moving pieces around and there’s only so much time in a day? How about outsourcing and I call this outsourcing it to your team, them vetting the person and then having these layers in place so that if a person let’s say they really, really love two people, and you’re the final decision maker, you can go that way too, as well. Right?

Talmar (guest):  

Well, maybe, do another vetting process. Are they asking them what their favorite M&Ms are? Or are they asking them, what are the types of industries they’ve done their content writing for? It sounds great. But again, you have to vet the people that you’re going to trust in these positions as the boss at the end of the day, right? It’s okay. You can learn how to identify your business needs, develop the process and understand all that and outsource it to somebody on your team. But you want them to be hiring for your company, for your client, and for your team. And if we outsource too much, they’re going to build a great team, but it may not be the team that you and your business need. We still need to get that boss, CEO, business owner involved in understanding the process and why we need to be clear on what success looks like so that we can step it through and you can hand it off to other employees to use the process that we know is going to build you your team. Does that answer your question?

Kathy (host):  

Yeah, it does. I do love that. 

Talmar (guest):

Yeah, yeah. 

Kathy (host):

Let’s say that we’ve found the right person, they’re the bee’s knees, as they say.

Talmar (guest):

Yeah, I love that. 

Kathy (host): 

And we hire them. Now, what happens now? We have to onboard them. 

Talmar (guest):

Yes. 

Kathy (host):

How does that look like? How does a good onboarding process look?

Talmar (guest):  

Oh my gosh, can I start with please don’t do this? 

Kathy (host):

Yes. Please.

Talmar (guest):

Okay. Please don’t do this, please don’t bring your hiring on – you’re overwhelmed, you’re slammed, and you go, “Oh my gosh, Kathy, I’m so excited, you’re here, I beg you for it for you to start. You see that pile over there, if you’ll start by just organizing that, that’s gonna be your desk. As soon as that’s organized, let me know and I’ll find something else for you to do. Because you know what they just decided, I’m going to be looking for a job in six months, you are expecting these people to start working with you. If you don’t take the time and energy to make a plan and understand how you’re going to bring them into your company, prepare what they need to be successful. When they’re starting, if you need an extra week push to start date to the right date, so you have time to prepare. It’s inexcusable to hire somebody to come in and rescue you when they need to know from you how to be successful in your company. And if you’re not prepared for that, it’s not fair to them, that you’re disappointed that they’re sitting around waiting for something to do, because you didn’t get organized enough to understand how best to use them, and how to let them impact your success and your business. 

Talmar (guest):

Of all the things I see small business owners do, it’s not taking the time to prepare. Now, if you don’t know what to do, you don’t know how to do it, Bossiffication, our program, find a business coach, go to the SBA, it doesn’t have a lot of stuff. But the Small Business Administration does have some resources on how to start onboarding that you can get to for free, but if you know you want to learn a process, they’re out there, but you really need to prepare for them. You need to think about where they’re going to sit. 

Talmar (guest):

And again, whether that’s remote or in person, you still have to have a plan. What is that first day going to look like? How will they know that you plan for expected and give them the tools to be successful? And that’s a thing I think that people underestimate because that first day they’re going home and they’re either like, “I can’t wait to rock it for this person”, or they’re like, “We’ll see what’s gonna happen.” And that’s where the tenure of people who do jumping, right, sometimes it’s not their fault. Sometimes it’s bosses that aren’t organized, aren’t ready, or haven’t taken the time to at least try to have some kind of a plan, right? 

Talmar (guest):

You don’t have to know everything yet. You don’t have to have all of your SOP is completely done, it would be helpful. These are Standard Operating Procedures. That’s how you do what you do. You don’t even have to have the whole policy manual done yet. I get it. We’re starting to hire when we need it. But we do need to have a plan for how am I going to teach them the vocabulary, right? In my company, we say things like Boss Specialists and Bossitude and then teach them that Bossification. We like the word boss, we use it a lot. As I have to teach my new employees what all those words mean, and how we use them. There’s a vocabulary that they need to learn that that’s something that is very specific to my culture, and very specific to my company, and not an industry standard. Sometimes people come with a vocabulary understanding. If we’re in health insurance, those people are going to understand the words having to do with open enrollment and the kind of vocabulary but there are things that people need to know to be successful, and a boss provides the tools, the team build success. And those tools predominantly have to be ready so that when they walk in the door, they can just make a huge difference right away.

Kathy (host):  

Yeah, and I just hired someone recently, and I was surprised by how many things need to happen for someone to be correctly onboarded. It wasn’t just, “Here are tools go have fun with it.” Does it have to be a structured procedure of where do you find things? What is a policy? What are what is the code of conduct? How do you ask for vacation? What happens on occasion? 

Talmar (guest):

Communication.

Kathy (host):

Yes. How do you communicate? How do you communicate with me with my clients, all of these things? And I mean, at the end of it, I was surprised by how much needs to happen. What do you think are the minimum things – the minimum of the minimum documents or the process needs to have for this onboarding to be successful?

Talmar (guest):  

It is gonna depend on the skill set. Sorry, the experience level that we’re hiring, right? A more experienced person needs less from you but will expect more process in the background if that makes sense, right? Because they know what you need, and they’ve had it in other companies. They walk in and your CRM system or your project management system isn’t being used or you don’t have one and that particular kind of role has had it in the past. They’re going to be like, “Where do I put the work? … How do I know when you want me to do stuff?” 

Talmar (guest):

I think the minimum that you would need is I think you need to have a training schedule, right, calendar time. You know they’re coming again, this should not be expected. You should be countering time was your training their training with you or they’re training with companies you work with that they need to learn from or with other employees. You should have that laid out. You should have management meetings planned, right? When you’re doing one-to-ones when you’re doing team meetings should all be on their calendar, the day they start. They should not wonder when they’re going to talk to you. 

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Talmar (guest):

But the other thing I think you need to really be clear on is how to do the job. Let me tell you, girl, I want a job description on the first day. And again, this is not a procedure manual, it’s not we walk in and turn on the lights, although you may teach them that that’s not on your job description. A job description one uses correctly, is a management tool. The very first day, we take out our job description, now we turn it for sitting across each other, we’re sharing it on the screen, and we go line by line. And this is where you as the boss, get to tell them how to be successful. Because if we don’t tell them what that line means, and what it looks like for us and what we expect, maybe they get it, maybe they don’t. But if what we say is, “Weekly meetings with the principal of the company.” We let him know that weekly meeting with the principal, that’s me, I’m the boss, I’m the main person. And we’re going to do those on Tuesdays at 10 am. You should see it on your calendar if you don’t let me know. But those are we’re going to commit to being there for each other, and we’re going to do those no matter what. 

Talmar (guest):

Now let’s go-to line number two, right? Follow up with all your customers by the end of every day. We have a protocol that we always contact our clients back on the same day. Yes, after 4 pm. If somebody emails us, you’re allowed to bring it as your first call in the morning. But we contact them even just to say, “Hey, I got this. I will follow up with you tomorrow at 10 am.” We always respond in the same day. I mean, whatever your protocols are, you have to explain that. And then you say, Kathy, do you have any questions on that? Do you think that you know, you’re gonna be able to make sure to check your email before you leave every day? And you ask for your new employee to buy in and by buy-in – understand and accept. And if they’re like, “Yep, I can do that. I don’t have any questions on that.” Then you go to the next line. 

Talmar (guest):

You do that if you use a job description, and you give them the space to understand, and you really clear what that means to you. Because we have to understand what daily emails mean to me, because maybe for some people, they’re like, “Well, it’s not 24 hours yet, so I haven’t till 3 pm tomorrow to get back with them. That’s not what I mean here, right?” We have to be clear in our communication, we go through the success, we give them access to ask us questions and understanding. And now we can reasonably expect them to do the job. But if we don’t ever actually walk through that job description, and they’re like, “Yep, you’re gonna answer the calls. You’re gonna enter in the system, and you’re gonna help us you know, schedule that. Good luck!” Right? Here’s how you use the computer system. That’s not really telling them what success looks like, you know, is it entered in the same day? Do we write it on post-it notes and then have to get those in? Right? How do we do it? And taking that time can be really, really helpful.

Kathy (host):  

In the job description that you were talking about right now, it’s not the same job description that you would be using when you’re hiring when you’re posting it to get the people in. Correct?

Talmar (guest):  

That’s a different document. That’s excellent- I love you, Kathy. Job description is a management tool. And again, we started that we’ll talk about more about that in a second, the employment ad is not the exact same structure. The thing you need to remember in an employment ad is about attracting the kind of people that want to work in your company with your kind of clients with you as a boss, right? You can make jokes about yourself, right? 

Talmar (guest):

My ads will say something to the effect of, if you can keep up with a fast talker, and it doesn’t give you a headache, then you’re not going to mind this job or something to that effect. Because I speak quickly, all the time. And that’s my workflow and that’s what I like to do in my company. I’ll slow down. Yeah, this is the slow-down version for interviews or speaking or with my clients. But when I’m in my team, I want to go as fast as I want. And so that’s part of my vetting process. But I also just put it out there in my ad, I put out the words I want them to know if we work long days, but we take long vacations, right? If we have dogs in the office, but we start very early, put it out there so that people can really self identify and use it to attract the people that you want to work with. We’re an award-winning company, right? People who value being part of an award-winning company are now more likely to apply. People who whatever that is just attract them. Employment ads are about attracting the person. They’re similar but not the same. 

Talmar (guest):

The job description is about letting people know how to do the job successfully. After you’ve used it as instructed, you can go in and you can hold them accountable to that because we told them if you do this you get to go home and sleep and know you did the job. If we have to go over two or three things here, you’re not doing the job. And let’s talk about that during the performance meeting.

Kathy (host):  

Now that we’ve hired the right person, we onboarded them, how do we manage that person? Is the management of someone who’s been recently hired and onboard and different from someone who has been in the business  for a while.

Talmar (guest):

I think so.

Kathy (host):

Okay, yeah, I do that the same thing with my company as well is, because I know that the person who has been with me for just a little bit, need a lot more handholding. They’re going to have a lot more questions, we’re going to need a lot more check-ins, a lot more meetings. Building that into the management structure, I think it’s really important, because that, again, ensures the tenure of your employee as well. 

Talmar (guest):

I agree. 

Kathy (host):

I would love for you to talk a little bit about that. And, you know, how do we manage these employees well, and how does that look like?

Talmar (guest):  

Well, you’re correct in that. I agree that the first six weeks, 90 days depend on the job, your industry, their experience, that you’re going to be in front of them much more frequently than you will later on. But I think that it’s a false belief that you don’t need to check in with your business, your employees because you see them every day. Talking to the boss. Yes, you’re a lovely boss, everybody’s nice, I’m sure you’re the very approachable person in your mind. However, you’re the boss. You’re very busy. They don’t want to interrupt you. They’re worried you’re going to think badly of them. It is critical to consistently have with all of your employees, one-on-one meetings on a regular basis. 

Talmar (guest):

Let’s be clear, a one-on-one meeting is not about the work. It’s all about them. A one on one meeting, whether weekly or monthly, is about you talking to your employees, to find out what’s working with them, and what’s happening with them and how they think they’re doing and what you, boss, can do to help them be successful. It’s not about you telling them what they didn’t do wrong. It’s not about you telling them that they need to do this other new project. That’s not what these are about. If you’re using your one on ones correctly, whether somebody has been with you for 10 years, or they’ve been with you for 10 minutes, you’re going to know exactly how they’re doing because you will create an agenda that allows you to hear, listen for patterns, and what they think is successful or challenging. It allows you to be more … quicker about responding to issues that may be coming up. 

Talmar (guest):

Even though the people have been there, please don’t think you can’t have meetings with them, you really need to be in front. And because their priorities will change, right Kathy? People come in that first day, and they just want to be the best possible boss they can be. But life changes and their priorities change. Somebody who was a rockstar for 18 months, all of a sudden isn’t showing up. If we’re not having one-to-one, and we just try to start them now, we won’t know what’s different. If we don’t have something to measure against how they showed up in those one-to-ones to know how they’re showing up. We really can’t say, “Hey, I’ve noticed” because you didn’t tell them they were underperforming.

Kathy (host):  

And how would those one-to-ones look like? Is there a good structure to them that people can follow so that they stay on the agenda? But they also give space to the employee to talk about what’s on their mind? What’s going on in their life?

Talmar (guest):  

Absolutely. The usual question I get is do I have to listen to them talk about the cat being sick? Yes, you do. But it’s because you’re asking them to care about your business and your clients. Yeah, you have to reciprocate by giving a little caring back to them about whatever they care about. I do love on a one-to-one, allowing the time on your calendar. Even if you get through for 15 minutes, it should be a 30 minutes, if you can get through it in 30 or 45 minutes, it should be an hour. Always allow for more time so that you guys can talk about the last movie that came out or the flat tire or, there’s nothing more damaging for the boss-employee relationship than a boss that is like, “Yeah, I totally want to hear that. But first, I have to tell you all the things I need for you to do in my business.” We all agree that they’re being paid to do that. But if we want them to care about that we have to care about the things they care about, at least on some level, right? And you don’t mean care about cats, but you care that your employee has something that’s making them sad or upset. You want to give them the space to tell you about that and let you know so you can be compassionate so you can follow up. 

Talmar (guest):

If I come in the next day really crying, and I was telling you that I was going to the vet and I was worried it was cancer for my cat, you’re probably going to go, not good news. And let me come in and talk to you. I mean, a great boss would. Even though you are like, “I’m not really a cat person.” It’s not about the cat, it’s about that you have a human, that you’re asking to care about your business, that is something they care about that is hurting them. And you have to reciprocate that. An agenda allows for space. But I like to ask the same questions over and over again, because I want to them to know what I’m going to ask. I’m going to ask them, “What’s working, what’s not working.” I’m going to ask them, “What if they have questions on anything they’ve been assigned.” I’m going to ask them if they need anything. This is all about them telling you what’s going on for them. And it shouldn’t just be personal. It should be predominantly business and keeping them moving through the questions. But you do want to allow for that space to build your relationship further and deepen it.

Kathy (host):  

How about in a case when your business is really growing? And you have 20, 30, 40 employees at this point? How would you schedule these one-on-one meetings? Would you do them quarterly? Would you do them weekly? I mean, it’s impossible, because if you have 30 employees in your business for 30 minutes each, that adds up to a lot of time. 

Talmar (guest):  

Yeah, but now we’re talking about scaling baby, right? This is my favorite part. In Crisis Response Teams, there’s something called Span of Capacity. The concept is you cannot be responsible for more than seven people at any one time. Most would say five is actually better, but you just can’t be. As you grow your team, you will be starting to layer in the people that can handle those five, right? Whether you split them out by workflows, or departments, or colors. 

Talmar (guest):

However, we want to split out our teams. If you have 20 people, they’re likely not doing 20 does separate things there. There’s the marketing team, maybe. You might bring somebody to be over them in the marketing department, or there might be the customer service team. You might bring somebody over that. As the CEO and boss, we start to scale that and create those structures, so that we have people. The people we touch and I think most CEOs will press that five to seven to up to nine, but I think that that gets a little chaotic. It’s okay, if some of those nine are like vendor types, right, like an attorney that you might only talk to a couple of times a year, or that kind of thing. But you really want to have the five – your five people,  so that all you’re doing is making them successful so that all they’re doing is making their people successful. Those other people can be successful, right? How that’s what scaling is about. It’s about understanding where to break the workflows, where to build the teams, and where to place the kind of person that can help others be successful. And that’s in and of itself, defining a new need, the business needs, and attracting that person and the things that they should be bringing for success, and then vetting them to make sure they’re going to be there for the people the way you want them to be there. And that’s what we call scaling on purpose.

Kathy (host):  

What I’ve also seen work well is that you have the one-on-one meetings, regular one-on-one meetings with your direct reports. And then every quarter or every couple of months, you have one on one meetings with employees who report to your direct reports. So that you still get that- 

Talmar (guest):

You’re right. Yeah. 

Kathy (host):

Yeah. You still get that personal feel that’s a pretty good feel to the boss, and they’re not just there in the business.

Talmar (guest):  

Absolutely. But it’d be clear when you get to 100, you’re not gonna be able to do. When you get to 1000, you’re not gonna be able to do that. I think that, again, I don’t say hire and stay away from people. That’s not it. But if you’re really careful about the team you develop, I want to have faith that anyone that I have managing my team is managing the way I would, so that they feel heard. Whenever I could give outside of sometimes just being with the CEO is exciting and fun. And of course, you want to give that to your people however you can. It is about knowing what your business needs, and if they need more time and energy, it can’t always be the CEO. You’ve got to make sure you’ve got the right team members doing the right job so that everybody gets what they need from anyone that’s supporting them, and hear the difference here. The way that I talk about support people, listen to me, bosses. Support is up supporting down. I don’t hire people to help me. I hire people for my business and I help them be successful. The difference is, in Boss Actions, we say a boss provides the tools, the team builds success. As a boss, you have to make that shift to learning how to help the people be successful in the role so your company can grow because your job looking out for the company and what the business needs. And you do that by bringing in the right people? I know big stuff, right?

Kathy (host):  

Yes!

Talmar (guest):  

Yeah, It doesn’t have to be as hard as people think you don’t have to be mean. You don’t have to be an ogre. You can get people to deliver the way you want. You might need to brush up on the way you communicate or how frequently you give access to your team. You may have to change some of the players on your team right now, who sometimes who got us here is not the people that go there, and that’s a boss journey, too, right? When we start our businesses, we think we want this kind of a team, and maybe the role wasn’t right, or the experience level wasn’t right, or the culture has changed and really is defined now. We know who we’re serving, and this person isn’t a match so that can be part of it. Learning how to have this conversation with our underperformers or mismatch hires. That’s all part of it. That’s why we have our company so we can help people figure that stuff out.

Kathy (host):  

Awesome, Talmar! This was so so helpful. So helpful to me! 

Talmar (guest):

I love that. I’m glad I can help. 

Kathy (host):

If someone is getting ready to hire right now, and we talked a lot about this, but what is the one thing, one tangible step that they can take in the next week to get them closer to that perfect hire?

Talmar (guest):  

Well so, to the perfect hire. If you want to get closer to the perfect hire, you really have to sit down. Once you’ve identified, this isn’t the first step because you’ve got to identify what you need, right? Let’s say I need social media help, I know I need social media help. You need to be clear what that help will do for you, right? I need them to take over that posting. I can’t get it on my calendar, I can’t make it happen. I’m not getting it done. You need to be clear about what the result looks like. And that’s how you back into what the right person will look like, and how they can bring successful experience education or personality traits. Does that make sense? It’s not just identifying what you need, but be clear the results you want, and that’s how you have a chance at hiring the right person.

Kathy (host):  

Great, thank you so much. 

Talmar (guest:

Of course, I’m happy to help. 

Kathy (host):

Talmar, where can our listeners get in touch with you.

Talmar (guest):  

Thank you for asking. We are at bossactions.com, not ww, just bossactions with an S .com. And if it’s okay, I’m happy to offer a free assessment we have. It’s called “Which boss are you?” Right? There’s different kinds of bosses out there and you guys are really hard on yourselves. You might call yourself a micromanager or “let’s be friends” boss or an overwhelmed boss. But if you go through this little assessment, it’ll help you really get clear on the one that you’re leaning towards, and it’ll give you three actionable steps that you can start doing immediately to make a difference in how your team is showing up for you. If that’s okay, I would love to offer that to people and they would just need to go to bossification.com/which-boss – which has W-H-I-C-H so I’m going to spell that one more time because it’s long and painful. I apologize. Bossification – B-O-S-S-I-F-I-C-A-T-I-O-N.com. Which – W-H-I-C-H/boss. Then if you go there, you’ll get that assessment. We’ll send you some great tips on how you can really show up for your team in a way that isn’t overbearing, isn’t harder is doesn’t make you work more but get to the results you’re looking for.

Kathy (host):  

That is so generous and a great offer. And I’m also going to be linking the link into the episode show notes. And it’s going to be in the blog. If you’re interested, you can go there as well. Thank you so much for being on the show. Very insightful, Super helpful. Thank you.

Talmar (guest):  

I love it. I love it. I just want everybody to be wildly successful. That’s all I want!

Kathy (host):

Thank you.

Kathy (host):

Thanks for listening to this episode. If you didn’t catch the link to the resource that Talmar mentioned, don’t worry about it. You can find it in the show notes of this episode along with the link to our website and the programs. You also find the detailed timestamps of the show and a blog post as well. So if in the future, you need a refresher on what we talked about, you can always jump straight to that section or you know, read about it. And hey, before I go I do have a favor to ask if you’re listening to this on Apple Podcasts. If you could please go to the show and tap the number of stars that you think the show deserves it helps other people find it and benefit from it, too.  Thanks so much until next time