Are you constructively nosy

What did you study? Where did you graduate? Where do you stay? Are you married?

I’d just started working with a new company and every meeting started this way. I felt like I was being interviewed all over again! But it was just their way of getting to know me – it was a way to get to know me and establish some common ground.

And after a while I realised that it was perfectly fine to be curious, I found out things about individuals that would have taken me months in other companies because we English people can be a little too polite.

I was at a virtual networking event last week and the host asked us to introduce ourselves and say what our special power was and I said: “I’m nosy”.

Now I’m not nosy just for the sake of it, I like to understand how things work and why things are done the way that they are done. Ask me to do something and nine times out of ten, I’ll ask you a question to make sure that I truly understand what you want and why you need it.

It’s because I’m aware that we don’t know what we don’t know, so if you tell me the background, I’ll be better placed to give you the solution that you need. The same applies to when I communicate with my team, I could make assumptions about their knowledge and aspirations but it is better to ask the question and be sure.

I had a client who was grooming a member of her team to become her second in command and was crushed when he left to pursue a career in secondary education; she’d assumed that his insight and interest in her pre-school meant that he wanted to continue working with under 5’s, but she hadn’t asked, it meant that she’d wasted time and hadn’t given the opportunity to others in her business. The good thing is that once she started asking the right questions of her team, she was able to identify those who wanted to progress and create a training plan to support them.

So before you start succession planning, have 1-2-1’s with your team, you might get a surprise.

Some good questions to ask are:

• What do you enjoy about your role?

• What would you like to delegate?

• What is your ideal role?

• Where would you like to be in a year?

• What support do you need to achieve your aspirations?

You don’t have to wait until it’s performance review time.

If you need assistance with your people plan, schedule a 20 minute FREE Team Strategy Call and get some actionable tips from us.

Establishing business and individual needs

When I decided that it was time to move my business from my side hustle to my full time gig, the first thing I did, was to up-skill. I invested in my development and achieved Chartered status for the CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development). It was a way to ensure that I had the paperwork to support my skills, I knew that I could do it, but I wanted to be able to prove it.

The other thing I did was sign up with a business start-up service and attended all of their courses to make sure I learnt the basics of running a business. All of this played into my business plan, helping me to do my research and set the business goals.

Now, we all know that our business plan is a live document, we have to constantly review and update it to keep up with the needs of our clients and stay ahead of the competition. This means learning new skills, developing our offerings and making strategic partnerships, so that you can scale and grow your business.

It’s important to know where you want your businesses to be in the next year to three years, so that you can put a plan in place to be prepared for the increased clients and the changing landscape.

To do this effectively, you need to know what skills you currently have within your organisation, the skills you would need to execute your plan for world domination and then see where any skills gaps would be. You can then look at adding to the skill-sets of your team and yourself to make sure that you are ready.

You may also consider recruiting new staff to help give you capacity. For example, I plan to recruit an apprentice in the autumn, I’m excited about mentoring and developing an individual to become an effective HR Professional, but I’m also excited about building the capacity within my team, so that I can take on more clients and take a break, knowing my business baby is in safe hands.

Developing staff has always been a challenge for small business owners. We are typically small and lean and so can often need to develop staff while keeping them doing what they do best. Then there can also be a fear that staff that have been developed may take their new shiny skills and go and work for someone else.

However, studies show that staff who feel appreciated and invested into, stay with an employer longer.

“employees who are ‘engaged and thriving’ at 59% less likely to look for a job with a different organisation in the next 12 months”

Gallop Research

So what are you doing to develop your team? To keep them 'engaged and thriving'? It doesn’t have to be a traditional classroom based course, take them out of your office for days at a time or cost a fortune.

When I first started studying HR we used ‘Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs’ to discuss motivations for individuals, if you’ve never seen it before, check out the image below. The theory is that there is a set of basic, psychological and self-fulfilment needs, for each individual and that you need to start with the basics as a foundation and then add the other elements.

It’s a good argument for why a good salary and benefits package isn’t enough to retain your staff, but also why fulfilling work is the key.

For the rest of the month I’ll be looking at how we can build our teams, increasing their capability, motivation and happiness.

Let us know if you have any questions in the comments section below and we will try to address them this month.           

Why you should treat your employees like customers

I spend a lot of time deciphering issues between managers and staff, and also colleagues through mediation. Sometimes it’s a breakdown in communication, sometimes its lack of understands and sometimes it’s one person thinking that the other is a mind reader!

We are often surprised at someone’s behaviour or response to things, but to those who know them best, it is virtually impossible that the individual would have reacted in any other way.

While we invest a lot of time in the recruitment process, finding out about the persons experience, management style and even psychometric testing; what do we do after they are employed to understand the way they work and what motivates them, beyond checking they have achieved their targets?

If we treated our staff in the same way that we treat our customers, making sure that we understand as much as we can about them, it makes even the difficult conversations easier as you can adapt your style to your audience and prepare better for the reactions you might receive.

Here are a few tips to help you:

Build relationships

It goes without saying that in order for someone to open up to you they need to have a relationship with you. You have to create a safe environment so that if a staff member has an issues inside or out of work, they fell comfortable talking with you. You can start by really listening to them when you ask what they did at the weekend or how their family are, remembering their favourite band or the ages of their children can go a long way.

Know what makes their faces shine

I once had a HR Assistant who loved working with entry level staff, she really enjoyed getting graduates their first job and supporting them as they navigated their way in the corporate word. Working with them truly made her day. Knowing this made it easy to motivate her and I knew that I never had to worry about my graduate programmes once she was involved. Understanding what makes your staffs face shine is the key to retaining your key employees.

Don’t make promises that you cannot keep

The saying “under promise, over deliver” springs to mind! Be clear about the conditions for promotions, pay rises, working from home, etc. A lot of hurt feelings and resentment can be avoid if we are clear in our communications, with a customer you document what they receive from you in return for a fee. You start in the same way with your employees but do you continue that in your 1-2-1’s and performance review meetings?

Show your appreciation

When you have a great customer, you offer them exclusive deals and keep in touch to ensure that you are front of mind when that need your services. Your staff are the key to your customer’s satisfaction, make sure that they feel that appreciation, it doesn’t have to be a financial reward but something well thought out.

Need help engaging with your staff, our management fundamentals course is a great place to start, find out more here.