We had the pleasure of bringing to Mackay a leadership session hosted by Mandy Johnson aimed at helping businesses attract and keep the people who make our businesses profitable.
Mandy talked about catching the highly sought after ‘barramundi’ – the most person that fits perfectly into your culture, is technically proficient, is personable and our clients love them. In all businesses, the barramundi is what we hope to catch when we are recruiting but more often than not we aren’t getting the opportunity to even interview them.
Mandy challenged the business owners in the room to:
Think about what employees want eg, flexibility, brightness of future, challenging work and to feel inspired
Create a point of difference in their business over their competitors – what do they offer that is attractive?
Sell this in a Job Ad – write an inspiring ad that appeals to the ‘barramundi’s’
The discussion then led onto, where do we advertise? How will the barramundi see our Job Ad? Are we hunting for our Barramundi where the Barramundi is spending its time?
Mandy had many creative and simple ideas for the businessowners to implement in their recruitment and discussed the culling of resumes, the interview process and hanging onto team members once they are employed and it provided fresh ideas and thinking, particularly giving everyone the chance to bounce ideas off other business owners in the room.
The Business Owners walked away from the session with an action plan on what to try in their recruitment and how to improve the offering to catch and keep that Barramundi!
LEADERSHIP UNPLUGGED!
Inspire also hosted Mandy’s second event, Leadership Unplugged, which provided Leadership training to business owners and managers. Mandy challenged each of the participants to personally reflection themselves as leaders and gave them strategies to improve their leadership each and every day.
Some key takeaways from the session included:
Ask your team members what they need to make their work better. Often it isn’t more money that they are chasing, it’s likely to be proper tools, training and coaching to do their job well. Your team are often scared to ask the boss to spend money to make their day better and more efficient. Although money isn’t everything, it is important that their wage is fair in the market. Pay peanuts, get monkeys!
The onboarding process (the employees first day) has to show the employee you care, are organised and you are excited to have them on board. On their first day, have a full kit of things ready for them to start work eg computer logins, a uniform, a key to your premises, induction forms, even a welcome morning tea to give them a chance to meet the rest of your team more casually.
Set clear goals with your team and remember to check in at least monthly on their progress towards the goals set. 6-12 months between appraisals is far too long and employees lose track of what the wider goal is and get bogged down in the day-to-day tasks.
Not every team training and performance review needs to happen in office. Some of the best coaching sessions happen outside of the office over lunch, coffee etc in a more casual environment.
Let your employees guide the review system, ask them how they feel they are tracking against their written goals, ask questions along the way before launching in on your feedback.
Take care during the performance review process for less-than-ideal performance to identify the underlying reasons for not hitting the goals, identify the on-flow of performance hurdles not being met and set clear direction on how the team member can overcome them.
How you communicate matters – although you may not say the words, the tone of your voice or your body language are always communicating, and you need to ensure how you are feeling is being shown in your words
With the pace our businesses operate at, it is becoming more and more impossible for the leader to do everything and relying on their extra team is extremely important, as well as upskilling them on their own niches so that across your team you have experts within your business.
Mandy also challenged the participants to look at how they are spending their time, what distractions they have and whether they are working on the right tasks or should they be delegated. It was a great opportunity to take a step away from being IN the business to taking the time to work ON themselves and ON their business!
Investing leadership training in yourself is as important to the success of your business as is training your team. If you aren’t growing and becoming better leaders, your businesses aren’t growing. How are you improving yourself as a business owner and manager?
