How to Motivate, Direct, and Manage Your Team

Designed for owners, managers, and anyone in a supervisory role, this Yelp webinar featuring industry expert Madeleine MacRae will help you identify and sharpen key management skills. Whether you’re part of a small business or a large company, this video will help you:

• Know the difference between leadership and management and recognize the unique responsibilities of each position
• Understand how to win in management, even if you’ve never managed people before
• Learn one simple tactic to help motivate teams organically
• Leverage a game-changing tool called “The Money Test” to help make important management decisions
• Know what to do (and exactly how to do it) when a team member falls short of expectations

Emily: Hello, everybody. Happy Thursday. For most of us, morning, maybe mid afternoon. Welcome. Today we are going to be doing a leadership webinar featuring Madeleine MacRae. I’m super excited for you guys to see this content today. As we let folks jump on the call and give everyone a chance to settle in, let me do a little bit of housekeeping and walk you guys through some of the Zoom buttons you’ll see.

Emily: And then today we are going to utilize the chat function throughout. So Madeleine might do a couple questions in the beginning, see who we have with us on the line, but then we will use the Q&A function for the latter half of today’s presentation. So Madeleine is going to go through her information and then we’re going to do live Q&A. So if you have questions throughout the presentation, or if you have questions for us to answer during that live Q&A, you can use the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen, it looks like two chat bubbles.

Emily: We’ll give everyone a little bit more time to hop on today. I know as cities and states start to open up and as we get into summer, hopping on webinars is a little bit harder than it used to be in the early days of the pandemic. But kudos to all of you guys for taking some time for yourself to get some education. I’m going to quickly actually show you this little promotion we have going on Yelp right now for business owners and then we can hand it over to Madeleine, but this will be great while we allow some more folks to join us.

Emily: So Yelp for Business has been working on a mentorship giveaway package. It’s entirely free to apply for this. All you have to do is hover your camera over that QR code and it’ll take you right to the little Google Form application. You can also follow us on Instagram and they’ll be posting about it there. The deadline to apply is the end of this week so you have today and tomorrow.

Emily: But this package is going to be a total of $3,500 worth of value in mentorship. You’ll get a small business session either with myself or my colleague, Allie, or the small business experts at Yelp. So we’ll help you with your Yelp listing. We’ll also be helping with some other online listings on how you can get visibility through those free pages. We’ll have a social media session with our specialists at Yelp, giving you some tips and tricks on how to do social.

Emily: Jeff Toister who has presented with us and is a guru in all things, reviews and gleaning insights from customer reviews, as well as how to get the best customer service practices, he’ll be doing a one-on-one session. And then you’ll also have six months of free page upgrades on Yelp. So that allows you to change the way your listing looks, prioritize some things, have some direct buttons for customers to call or connect with you, and you’ll get a $300 Yelp ad credit.

Emily: So if you’ve been looking to get a little bit of guidance in any of these areas, we’d love for you to apply to the mentorship program and we’ll be announcing the winners, I believe first thing next week. So definitely take advantage of that. And now, without further ado, let me run everyone through housekeeping one last time, and then I’ll hand it over to Madeleine.

Emily: While you are looking at your screen right now, if you take your cursor to the bottom of the page where you’re looking at us, you’ll see a little toolbar pop up. On there, you have the option of the Q&A bubble, it looks like two chat bubbles connected. That’s what we’ll be using to answer questions at the end of the presentation. And then we also have the chat function.

Emily: Madeleine might use that a little bit in the beginning, see who’s on the line and make sure you guys are following along with the great content she’s sharing. So I am going to now hand it over to Madeleine. I’ve been fortunate enough to plan programming with Madeleine since the early days of the pandemic. She is a specialist in all things home services, but she is also a guru in leadership and motivating your employees and your staff to do the best work possible for your business.

Emily: And I’m really excited about today’s presentation because we’ve been looking to get more and more content that has absolutely nothing to do with Yelp and a lot to do with other important things that you need to know to run your business. So Madeleine, thanks so much for making the time today, putting together this customized presentation for our audience. I’ll let you take it away.

Madeleine: Thank you so much, Emily. Thank you for that really warm introduction. I am so delighted to be here. It is a core passion of mine to help small to mid-size business owners play, fight, and win in their markets and succeed every day. And a huge piece of that is as you grow your business, learning how to be a better manager.

Madeleine: So today what we’re going to be talking about is management excellence, how to get people who work for you to do what it is that you need them to do. And then at the end, we’ll talk about what to do when they don’t. Because sometimes you’re going to have people who just don’t, right? So before we get diving into all this content, I just want to have you pop up into the chat, whether or not you’re a manager, if you’re a manager, I’d love to know how many people are on your team, how many people do you manage so I can get a feel for who’s in the room.

Madeleine: Because I’m here with you live, you are here, you’ve invested in yourself this time so I want to give you the opportunity to help me customize some elements to you. If you want to tell me a little bit about your business, if you’re in retail or if you’re in home services, you can just pop that right on there as well. And I have my eye on the chat. So if I’m looking way over here, I’m just checking out the chat.

Madeleine: So it is a really exciting thing to talk about management, but it’s not always a really exciting thing to do, right? So it can be a really difficult element of our work. And so many of us are really great individual contributors, we’re excellent at our craft. And as we have to manage more and more people, that gets a little bit tricky.

Madeleine: So what we need to be thinking about today, we’re going to look at a couple of elements that are going to help you make your team more successful. And the first thing that we’re going to be talking about is what I consider the primary fundamental of management. And it’s a little bit of maybe a challenge to how you view management today and we’re going to spend a little bit of time talking about a simple tactic that you can use to help people shift their perspective and start to want to do what you need them to do.

Madeleine: Because there’s a difference between them doing it out of obligation because they’ve got to, that’s how they earn their paycheck and they have no choice or getting to do this out of desire because it’s something that they feel connected to and something that they want to do for you and with you. We’re also going to be doing something today called the money test.

Madeleine: It’s a really fun way of looking at your time, the value of your time, the value of your team’s time, and to give you some new perspectives on that paradigm. And last but certainly not least, we’re going to be looking at how to provide constructive feedback, which means somebody dropped the ball or maybe somebody is consistently dropping the ball and you need to address it, but you don’t want to crush their spirit, right? You still believe there’s potential there.

Madeleine: So how do you bring those difficult conversations forward so that they’re received well by your team member and so that you feel good in giving it? Right? Because if we know that we have to deliver bad news and we don’t feel good about it, we’re going to skirt that obligation. And in skirting that obligation, we’re doing our business a disservice, we’re doing ourselves a disservice, and we’re certainly doing that employee, that team member a grave disservice as well.

Madeleine: So that’s what we’ve got on the schedule today. I’m going to pop through your chats. We had a bunch come through, so thank you so much for all those great chats. And it looks like we have a bunch of range of people from 5 to 20, 15 to 20. We have some construction, some flooring, siding windows. So cool, different elements. So thank you so much for popping into that chat for me. I will always be keeping you my eye on that chat.

Madeleine: If you have a question that you’d like to have answered, I’m going to encourage you to use the Q&A box instead of the chat because the chat’s going to be for us to chat together and then the Q&A is we’ll take a little bit time at the end to actually answer those specific questions. So if there’s something I’m going through and you have a direct question about it, I might it in the chat so definitely use the Q&A and Emily of course is there to help you with the Q&A as well.

Madeleine: So management. Management is one of those things that can sometimes strike fear into the heart of new and even established managers, because it’s very complex. There’s lot of things that go on that are related to management. There’s managing the business, there’s managing the personnel, there’s managing sales, there’s all different elements of management.

Madeleine: And what we really want to start drilling down to today is instead of being overwhelmed and feeling dissatisfied and feeling discouraged with management, I want you to reconsider what management truly is. Because if we have a negative taste in our mouth about managing people and if we are confusing management requirements, things you have to do as a manager with micromanagement, which is disempowering, hovering over and actually speaks of a lack of trust in your team, then of course, we’re not going to want to do that.

Madeleine: Nobody likes to feel that they’re putting somebody under a microscope and the person under the microscope doesn’t like it either so it’s kind of a lose-lose proposition. And in management, what we really have to try to create is a win-win proposition, where we are getting what we need, the business is getting what it needs and the employee is also getting what he or she, or they need as well.

Madeleine: So in order for you to feel really good about being a manager, you have to know what it is at a deeper level. And I know that many of you have large teams. I hear you, I see you. It’s okay if you’ve been managing for a long time, think about how does this apply for me, even if you’re not early in your management journey.

Madeleine: Because I’ve certainly worked with thousands of business owners, I’m a coach and a consultant. I actually speak with business owners just like you every single day. I walk them through different elements in their business, I help them get through their hurdles and I have people who’ve been established in management for many, many, many years who re-envision what management means to of them and are able to step forward to a better level of leadership and management in their organization.

Madeleine: So what is it really? What is management really? So the first thing I want to say is what it’s not. So too many people confuse management with leadership. Leadership and management are not synonyms. They are not the same thing. You can’t use them interchangeably. Even though in our vernacular use and the way that we talk about it, we often do just use leadership and management interchangeably, they’re two separate disciplines in your organization.

Madeleine: And guys and gals, you need both, right? You need excellent management in order to have excellent leadership. And it depends on how large your organization is. There may be different people who are doing different pieces of this. So let’s look at the definition. I’m all about going back to the definitions of words. So management is the process of dealing with or controlling things or people. Wow, right?

Madeleine: The process of dealing with or controlling things or people. So managing the business, controlling the outcome of the business, managing people, dealing with people, even sometimes controlling their output, making sure that they’re getting the stuff that needs to get done done. Leadership on the other hand is the action of leading a group of people.

Madeleine: So it’s being at the forefront, giving that vision, letting people see where you’re going, helping them to want to go where you’re going but management is the nuts and bolts. If you look at it in a different way, if leadership is giving the destination if you’re on a trip, management is charting the course, right? Which freeways are we going to take, which rest stops are available to us, which restaurants are we going to eat at? It’s really thinking about the detailed execution.

Madeleine: And we all know that the devil is in those details. And if we miss on those detailed execution no matter how good our vision, things start to fall apart. So you need both in your organization. You need that leadership, that visionary piece, that momentum and inspiration that I’ll walk with you to the ends of the earth feeling that comes out of having powerful leadership.

Madeleine: And you also need the disciplined execution of management and that sometimes means calling people to the carpet when they’re not doing what they need to be doing. So leadership is more inspirational and management is a little bit more practical, right? They’re both important. One is not better than the other, they’re both super necessary. No matter how large or how small your business, you should be thinking if you’re the owner operator or if you are in charge of a department, am I managing my people and am I leading my people?

Madeleine: Strategy is an outbirth of leadership and the fundamental achievement of your goals is an outpouring of your management skills. So it’s an important element to keep both in mind. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been on a discovery call with someone on a strategy call to help them figure out what’s going on in their business. My specialty is helping businesses that are doing well go from good to great, management teams that are good to become excellent.

Madeleine: And one of the things I’ve heard people say at all different stages, people who are in that good range, people in the excellent range, even people who are not yet at the good range, who are still kind of learning, is why do they keep doing this? Right? I’ve told them so many times what they need to be doing, or I’ve told them so many times not to be doing this. I don’t understand why they keep doing this. And they in this is your team.

Madeleine: Why do these team members keep failing this? Why do they keep ignoring what I’m telling them? And when you have… We all know that age old definition of insanity, right? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. When you have told someone and told someone and told someone and they have failed to do it, there’s a gap, there is something missing.

Madeleine: And so often we want to blame the people on our team that they’re not doing it, right? Maybe we think that their heart is not in it, or they haven’t bought in to our vision, mission and values. That’s the leader in us who feels unheard. Maybe we feel that they’re lazy. Maybe we look at the teams and think that there’s a disproportionate work on one load or another. Whatever excuse or reason we want to come up with, when people are not doing what it is that you’ve asked them to do repeatedly, yeah, it’s okay, it’s on them but the buck stops with you. As the manager, the buck stops with you.

Madeleine: And we’re going to assign who’s fault is it, it’s your fault, right? You need to find a better way of communicating. You need to find a more empowering way of engaging your team, right? That’s easier said than done, right? So I’m curious, pop in the chat if you have ever said this, you’ve ever heard yourself think this, like, “I can’t believe they’re still doing this. I’ve told them a million times.” Or, “I’ve told them not to do this before, why are they still doing it?”

Madeleine: If you’ve thought that, if you’ve spoken that, go ahead and say me or here, or yes or I know, I’ve done it, right? In my management journey, this is… I love Megan. I feel this in my soul, right? That’s how it feels like we’re real life here. I do not teach pie in the sky. I do not teach from so ivory tower, I teach from right here in the real present world dealing with contractors, dealing with small business owners, dealing with service provider owners all the time, right? So many times.

Madeleine: So the last thing I want you to feel in reading this and hearing me say this is that it’s like some sense of shame or blame or, oh my gosh, I’m the worst. I don’t want you to be thinking that. Because if you’ve said this, what it means is that there’s room to grow, which is always good.

Madeleine: And I’m going to give you some tools right now to help you avoid this and to do things differently because that’s what’s necessary. Your people aren’t going to change until you give them a reason to change. So let’s look at what some of that could look like. Remember that when we defined management, it was dealing with people.

Madeleine: So often as managers, we want to deal with a process or we want to deal with an outcome, or we want to deal with their actions, but it’s not the actions that really make the change, it’s the people who do the actions. When you can engage your people, when you can get your people to have that aha moment, that breakthrough moment of, “Oh, you’ve been telling us this so many times but I never really understood why.” Or, “I believe my way was better and I get it now.”

Madeleine: When you can treat your team members with the dignity and the respect that they all have as human beings and with the respect that you had for them when you first hired them, if you can remember that you chose to bring this individual human into your organization because they brought a certain skillset and you believed in them and if you can meet them as a full-fledged smart adult who has the will and the ability to do what you need them to do, things can start to change, right?

Madeleine: You have to deal with the people. I know that sounds like blinding flash of the obvious, but it’s really the people who make the difference. As a manager, sometimes one of the most important things you can do is run a campaign for hearts and souls, right? You want people to want to do it. Desire is a key component of consistently strong execution.

Madeleine: Now we’re going to talk a little bit more about that, but it’s one of the pieces that managers I’ve worked with all across the board from owners of large organizations to managers of just one or two people, it’s about the humans, right? Yes, there’s process, yes, there are software tools, yes, there are procedures, best practices, all of those things, but your best written procedures are meaningless unless your people are willing, inspired, capable to do the work.

Madeleine: So when you have team members who are not doing what you need them to do, or even worse, who are doing things you don’t want them to do, you got to pause and ask yourself, right? Have you given them these four core things? Have you given them purpose? Have you given them tools? Have you given them training and have you given them time? We’re going to talk about that.

Madeleine: Because I was in a room of CEOs the other day and one of the guys said, “You know what? I would give you money in a heartbeat. Money’s not hard. I could always make more money. But if you ask for my time, now that, I’m stingy with. That, I’m not willing to give,” right? How many times are we unwilling to give our time? Purpose, tools, training, and time.

Madeleine: Purpose. You need to allow your people to feel and to be, really, truly to be. Not just figurehead, not just talking bubbles, but truly to be part of the solution. So if there is something that your team or team members are consistently doing or not doing that you need or don’t need them to do, you need to have a chat with them and talk about what is the hurdle? Why are they not doing it?

Madeleine: And you cannot have this conversation in a confrontational way, you cannot have this conversation in a, “You’re going to lose your job or else.” You have to come at it with an open heart. You have to come at it from a place of neutrality. Whatever they tell you is good because it’s information. And without this information, you can’t make the change really work on your behalf.

Madeleine: So all data in from what I call a listening tour, when you ask your people what is working well, what isn’t working well, why is this so challenging for you, if you can have an outside resource come in and do a listening tour, we do them for our clients, it is so powerful because there’s anonymity, right? And there’s not like, “I’m going to lose my job if I tell my boss this.” And there’s a lot more transparency about their problems.

Madeleine: In order for you to help them be and feel part of the solution, you have to know what their real hurdles are. One of the things to remember is when you’re giving purpose, purpose is twofold. It’s for the organization as a whole, right? Make them feel, help them be part of something bigger than themselves, your business.

Madeleine: And it’s also really selfish, personal purpose is what’s in it for me, WIFM, WIFM, what’s in it for me? That human being has to know that in changing their behavior, which a lot of people don’t like to change their behavior. I’m the exception to the rule, I love change, but that’s not normal, I recognize. Most people dislike change so you have to assume that change is going to be difficult for your team.

Madeleine: If you’re asking them to change behaviors especially long ingrained behaviors or things they have resisted, you have to put a purpose that’s bigger than themselves. You have to show them that there’s an advantage to them. Even if it’s hard, it’s worth it. That is really critical. Without understanding, without purpose, the next activities fall short, right?

Madeleine: If you don’t know how to create purpose for them or you’ve tried, and you tried, and you tried, I want to encourage you to reach out for support because sometimes we can’t see what we can’t see, and we can’t see the forest because we’re in the middle of the trees. If you need support with that, find support, find other smart CEOs, apply for the mentorship program, do some outreach, reach out to me, right?

Madeleine: There’s lots of ways to get support, but purpose is critical because purpose is that campaign for their hearts and their souls, their minds. You want them to want to do it? I’ve used the word feel and feelings a lot in the early stage of this conversation because unless there’s desire, then it’s very hard to motivate action.

Madeleine: Sometimes they’ll do it just out of strict obligation, but do you really want a bunch of people who are just doing the work you need them to do out of strict obligation? You want them to do it out of motivation, internal desire. That’s what you really truly want. Next off, tools and training. Most people, they skip the purpose, they skip the conversations about the why and the meaning behind and the significance, which is critical, they skip it.

Madeleine: They sometimes even skip tools and they jump right to training because training is the how, right? How do we get from here to there? It’s the training, we got to know. But training is only half of the battle. Sometimes you can give them all the training that they need, but they don’t have the tools. And the tools are not just a piece of software or those actual hardware tools that you use, the things you buy for your crews at your job sites, that’s not the only type of tools.

Madeleine: Some of the tools are authority, right? Do they have the authority? Do they have the right role? I had a client who has about a $30 million business who was having one of his senior leaders manage another senior leader without promoting the first guy. Well, you can’t have a peer manage a peer, that doesn’t work. They have to have positional authority, right? So do they have the right position?

Madeleine: Do they have the right role? Do they have the right authority? Those are tools. Not just, do you have a good piece of software or do you have a good best practice? Do they understand how to do the work? The understanding and the ability to execute, that’s piece of the training. So again, just as the purpose has multiple layers, so does this.

Madeleine: Training is not just showing them it and good luck, right? Has anyone here ever been guilty? I’m asking you to call yourself to the carpet because we’re all friends here and we’re all leaders and we’re all here to get better at our leadership. So anyone ever just done one training and expected your team to get it right.

Madeleine: I’ve totally walked the walk, I’ve done it. I’ve made the mistake right early on in my management career, totally have done that. If you’ve done it, feel free to raise your hand or say me or here, or yes, or present or guilty, totally have done it. That is not sufficient. Training, information is only half of training, implementation is the other half.

Madeleine: When I was in third grade, I don’t remember very much from my third grade year, but what I do remember is I had a teacher who used to tell us repetition is the branding iron of knowledge, and he’d make us recite it. All right, repetition is the branding iron of knowledge. Guess what? I got that knowledge because I repeated it a zillion times.

Madeleine: Repetition is the branding iron of knowledge. Training is only as good as the execution thereof. If you put them through one training and then you expect them to be experts, you’ve missed a huge piece of the training paradigm, which is space to implement. And don’t just expect that them to go and do it on their own time and dig into it because you would because you are ambitious and you’re an owner, or you’re a manager and you’ve climbed the ladder.

Madeleine: Don’t expect that. That’s not the team you’re working with, right? Be realistic about who your team members are. I’m not saying underestimate them, but I am saying be realistic with your expectations and give them time to learn. When kids are learning how to walk, do we expect them to be experts the first time they stand? No. Right?

Madeleine: Adults are grown up children. When we teach someone something new, when there’s a new process to implement, when there’s a new tool to use, you can’t expect them to be good at it the first time out of the gate. Give them time to be bad at it. Let them be bad at it. Give them the freedom to fail. And then after you’ve given them that time, then you can put some parameters on expectations for excellence. Tools and training are essential to your success.

Madeleine: Last element, time, right? We all know time. Time is money. Time is a tough one because a lot of things in our business are renewable resources. So think about money is a renewable resource. Oh, there’s always more sales you can make, right? Even personnel is a renewable resource. If someone doesn’t fit the role, you find a new person. So many elements in our business are renewable resources except for time.

Madeleine: Time is one of our very few non-renewable resources in the management of our business. Because once that time has passed, you can’t get it back, right? If you’ve squandered your time, you can’t get it back. There are so many elements of time and I want to talk about three really important elements of the significance of time. The first one we talked about, it’s the time to learn and to adjust, right?

Madeleine: The time to actually be executing and trying. Like I told you, given that space to fail, they need time to learn and to adjust their behavior. That’s not just when they’re learning something new, right? If you’re asking them to do something differently and they made a little stumble, you have to be willing to call them out on their stumble and then give them a chance to do better. Give them the chances that they need.

Madeleine: I’m not saying infinite chances forever, but time to learn and adjust. And you are the one who gets to decide how much time is appropriate. When you’re thinking about how much time a person might need to learn or to master something, you have to think about how much change are you asking? Is it just instead of checking this box, I want you to check that box? Okay, that’s easy. They can master that in one day, no big thing.

Madeleine: But if it’s embracing a new CRM or if it’s changing the way you do your marketing or if it’s learning a new talk track on your sales cycle, whatever it might be, if it’s a big change, you want to give adequate time, right? And then the next piece is part two, time in their schedules to do the new work you’re giving to them or time for the learning, time to play with that new process, time to think it through, time to practice it, right?

Madeleine: When you trained someone, let’s take sales training. When you’re teaching someone how to sell, someone who doesn’t know how to sell, and you’re teaching them how to sell and you’re teaching them a talk track, they literally need time to memorize some of those talk tracks. They need time to practice it in front of non customers that they don’t blow it when they’re in front of a customer.

Madeleine: Why would any other team in your organization be different? They need the time to manage their processes, to manage their outcomes, right? When you bring a new member onto your crew, you don’t expect him or her to be excellent on day one, right?

Madeleine: If you’re bringing someone, you give them the time to learn their craft, time in their schedules to do the work that you’re giving them. And the last piece is time in your schedule to coach them, to encourage them, to correct them. You are doing your team members a grave disservice if you do not correct them, if you let them get away with sloppy work or bad behaviors or any of those elements, you’re doing them a grave disservice.

Madeleine: And also to support them. I’m not saying that you need to grab some pompoms and be some sort of a cheerleader. But what I am saying is that time is a critical element of excellent management, of management excellence. Management takes your time, right? I’ll never forget the moment that this became really, really evident for me. I’m actually going to stop my screen share here. I’m going to tell you a little personal story if I can stop my share.

Madeleine: So I want to tell you a little personal story. So my dad passed away last year, broke my heart, very, very close to my dad. When I had my first career move, I used to have a corporate… it used to be a corporate executive and I had a large team, but I went from having a high visibility project where I was an individual contributor to having a team.

Madeleine: And the team that I had, I had had a sales team in the past, but I hadn’t had a customer service team. Sales and customer service, as you all know, right? Quite different, right? They’re quite different in their way that they tick and the type of people were attracted to that role. So I remember I’d had my customer service team for a week or two and I was on the phone with my dad. And I was complaining because I was irritated.

Madeleine: It was early in my career so I still hadn’t learned this yet. And I told him, I was like, “Dad, I didn’t get anything done today. All I did today was handle other people’s problems.” And he bursted out laughing, and he said, “Welcome to management Madeleine.” Management takes your time. Your people is your job, right? Yes, you still got your work to do, but please do not put your people secondary to your work. As a manager, allow people to have time on your calendar.

Madeleine: One of my coaches once told me… I eat my own cooking, I have a business coach as well. One of my coaches once told me, “Madeleine, if it’s not on your calendar, how important is it to you really?” Right? Are you giving yourself time to meet one on one with the people who you’re responsible for? Are you giving yourself time to think about their performance? Not just once a year, when you’re going to decide, are you going to get the raise or not? Are you really giving them time?

Madeleine: Are you giving them your time? Not just are you providing them with the opportunity to do things they need to do, but are you giving up yourself enough? If you’re not, is the one of the things that is really difficult to see enhanced result without giving your time, right? It’s a hard learned lesson if you have to learn that the hard way.

Madeleine: And again, like blinding flash of the obvious, maybe you’re not thinking through it that way, but you have to remember that people is your job, right? That managing that human being is your work, is not secondary to all the other tasks you have to accomplish. It needs to be primary, and you need to find time on your calendar for it. So let’s talk about when you don’t have that time or when you’re…

Madeleine: Let me put my… I don’t remember if I shared my PowerPoint here, here we go back to sharing. If you don’t see my PowerPoint, pop it in the chat. So we’re going to talk about something that I call the money test. This is a great way of looking at how are you spending your time. It’s a great way of challenging yourself to consider where are you devoting your resources?

Madeleine: Because remember, time is an asset when we use it well and we can squander it, right? Just like money, right? If you have a bunch of money and you invest that money and you leverage that money, you can make more money out of money, right? You can let it work for you. Time is the same, right? It’s not renewable, but if you invest it wisely, then you get more of it back, right?

Madeleine: So a lot of people look at this as the art of delegation, and we’ll talk about that a little bit. But I like to look at it in terms of money because when we start thinking about the cost associated with things, then it’s really apparent to us that we may or may not be doing the things that we ought to be doing. So this is a way to help you challenge your assumptions about are you giving your time to the right priorities and also to consider what that means for your team, right?

Madeleine: So I call this the money test. So it’s one of my favorite things to teach people. Consider the value of different types of activities in your organization. Now, little disclaimer. I know we have people here from all different types of businesses and all different stages of management and sizes of teams.

Madeleine: I looked at this from the perspective of an owner operator, right? So if you are in a different position, maybe you’re managing a different type of team or elements, then I want you to just be agile in your thinking and think about how does this apply to me or what would I put in those different boxes? And if you have questions about it, pop it into the Q&A, or I’ll have my email at the end, feel free to email me with any questions that you have, I’ll be happy to support.

Madeleine: So entry level activities, intermediate level activities, senior level activities, and executive level activities. Now, sometimes we don’t think of ourselves as executives when we’re a small business owner or when we’re a small business leader but I want you to be thinking about entry level activities. There are activities that you pay a certain salary range to handle, right? Someone just right out of high school that you’re going to pay to do these things.

Madeleine: Intermediate level activities are things that maybe are a little bit higher on the pay scale. They’re worth a little bit more to your business and maybe they take a little bit more skill or acumen to do. Senior level activities, they’re worth a lot more to your business and they’re the things that drive money, that drive revenue, that also help you save money in the long term.

Madeleine: And they’re not just for someone right out of high school, right? They’re someone who has some experience behind them, someone who really knows what they’re doing, someone who has a higher level of education. Executive level activities. These are the things that really matter, right? Do you remember that urgent and important paradigm? If you don’t know that, then that’s a cool one to look up.

Madeleine: These are the important things that if you don’t do, they become really urgent and become a problem in your business, right? They’re those strategic level, leadership level elements that are the ones that drive you to the next level of success. So let’s explore these a little bit. Entry level activities. So let’s just think about your business.

Madeleine: Answering phones, looking up information, tracking shipments, running errands, cleaning up, buying supplies, sweeping the floors, doing all those things, these are things that do not take a high level of education or a high level of experience to be able to be effective in doing. There are things that are low dollar an hour activities. I know a CEO who has a couple million dollar business and he intentionally sweeps the floor because he’s trying to be showing that no thing is beneath him.

Madeleine: That’s not the same decision, that’s a strategic leadership decision on his side. That’s not the same decision as like, oh no, we’re running out of toilet paper, I’m going to run to the store and get it, or I’m going to hop online and buy that. That should not be you, right? These are activities that are easy to delegate, but a lot of people clog up their schedules, management level people clog up their schedules with these type of things.

Madeleine: Intermediate level activities. So if you think about, these take a little bit more skill. These are things that are not necessarily intuitively obvious to a newcomer in your business, booking appointments, managing projects, resolving issues, completing paperwork, ordering products, handling inventory. Now depends on your business where exactly which box you would put this in. But again, these are things that are important, right? You can’t not do them, right?

Madeleine: If you’re not completing your paperwork on your projects and you’re invoicing is late and you’re not ordering products well and your customers are angry, then of course your business is going to be in a bit of a storm, right? You’re going to be in a little bit of a whirlwind. But these are not necessarily things that require someone at the top tier to be doing, right? If you’ll notice, the header is red on both, right?

Madeleine: These are things that are easy to delegate relatively, right? And are things that you need to challenge yourself if your time is being spent here, it’s really important to ask how much more could you get out of that hour or those hours if you reinvest the elsewhere. Senior level activities, sales, vendor meeting, advertising, satisfaction surveys, developing new tools and software, right? Implementing new tools, finding out what you could do, right?

Madeleine: We talked about how tools are so much more than just the software piece or just those hammers and nails, right? Advertising, satisfaction surveys, making sure that your customers love your work, making sure that your team members are happy, making sure that your brand is matching, that your advertising is producing results, that managing sales and running sales and making sure that you have the lead flow that you need, these are things that are worthy of investing your time in at a more senior level.

Madeleine: These are the things that drive either savings or revenue in your business and they’re worthy of your time and attention, even as you go to higher levels. But last but certainly not least, training on professional skills in here. You have to be always upping your own game, you as a leader, you as a manager and your team, right? Training is not just for your team, it’s why you’re here today.

Madeleine: Because you can always get better. No matter how good you are, no matter how long you’ve done it, you can always get better. And this is a really important way to invest your time. If we look lastly at executive level activities, hiring decisions, the people you bring into your organization determine the tone of your business. Those are important decisions that you shouldn’t just pass the power to someone else for.

Madeleine: As your business gets larger and larger, of course you have to delegate more and more of this. And there’s more of this that’s kind of divisioned out into different elements, developing your people, management, taking the time to invest into people, into making them better at their work. No matter if they’re managers or workeress, improving your processes, finding the ways where you can gain efficiency, where you can save money without losing quality, without losing service, managing your reputation, right?

Madeleine: We talked about satisfaction is one thing, but reputation is what’s being said about you in the marketplace, managing that, making sure that it’s as powerful as you want it to be and it matches your brand. Media and marketing strategy. Not just advertising, but thinking about how are you showing up on social media? How are you planning your marketing? What does your website look like?

Madeleine: Is your brand experience consistent from the way that people show up in your, in your store or in the field or in home, in home sales consultations to the way that the invoices are received, right? Is all that a consistent experience? Right? Does that match what you want it to be? Expanding your sphere of influence partners, thinking about who all has access to your ideal client that you could bring into your sphere? How are the people, your vendors, the people you rely on, how well regarded are you with them? How well established are you with them? It’s really a critical thing.

Madeleine: And then of course, coaching, mentoring, and leadership development. Developing yourself as a leader is one of the greatest gifts that you can give to your team because the more you expand those skills, the more you have to give, right? People can’t give what they don’t have. So if you take the onus on yourself to take ownership and responsibility of that, it’s an exponential growth driver.

Madeleine: And last but certainly not least, self care, time off, vacation, family, friends, you’re not any good to anyone if you burn out, right? I’ve seen business owners and leaders not take a vacation for five years. That is not good for you, that is not good for your team. What that tells me is you do not have the people and the processes and the systems and tools in place that your business is outside of you, that you are not your business.

Madeleine: If you are your business, then of course you can’t take time off, right? But you should have trust in the people who are there to execute enough so you can take a break. It revives you, you come back with more to give. So if you think about those quadrants, what could be possible if you, or your highest value team members, right? Maybe this isn’t for you, maybe this is for one of the managers you manage.

Madeleine: Maybe they’re just devoting a lot of their time in those two first quadrants. You should be spending 70% of your time in quadrants three and four. And if you’re the owner of the business, you need to be spending a significant amount of your time in those executive level elements. If you are not, if you’re spending all your time elsewhere, who else in your organization is going to do those things, right? That’s your responsibility and imagine what would be possible if you regained that time, right?

Madeleine: One of the things I want to talk about since we’re here supported by Yelp here and sponsored by Yelp, and this is coming to you directly through them is one of the elements that you can do to delegate managing your online reputation and your social, right? It’s one of the things that is really important, and you need to have oversight over. I’m going to share example with you of one of my clients who’s a great Yelp user and they really embrace Yelp in every possible way.

Madeleine: And this is delegated, right? It’s not something that the owner of the business, the manager of the business types in himself, but it’s certainly something that when there’s a problem with, he dives in, very high on his radar. Remember that delegation doesn’t mean abdication. It doesn’t mean like, oh, you take it and never worry about it again. You still want oversight, that’s the management piece, right? But you can give it to someone else.

Madeleine: When you’re looking at all what’s available to you with Yelp, these are all fields that you can avail yourself of, right? You can have a really professional appearance and you should be logging in to make sure that your Yelp page really reflects the business as it is today, right? You want to make sure that your categories are correct. You want to make sure that your summary is correct. You want to make sure that your COVID protocols and how they can work with you are really, really clear. We scroll down a little bit more.

Madeleine: You can have portfolio elements, right? This client does window treatments and closets. So they’re showing all the different applications that they have. That’s really cool. You have the opportunity to use this as a portfolio for your clients. This is absolutely something you should be leveraging in order for this to have meaningful space in your business, right?

Madeleine: The highlights from the business, virtual estimates, customized solutions, 25 years in business, locally owned, available by appointment, free consultations, those are little widgets that you can have, those little bubbles about yourself. And then you can highlight the services you offer. This is a space that’s available. So many people look at it, leverage it. And you don’t need to be the one typing it in, but make sure that you’re managing this, make sure that it’s really powerful and strong for you. So one of the pieces you can put on your to-do list and delegate to someone else, right?

Madeleine: Now, if you’ve given them, let’s respond, circle back to the beginning here, purpose, tools, training, and you’ve really considered, you’ve taken a hard look in the mirror and asked yourself, where am I spending my time? Could I reshape how I’m investing my time to give more of myself to my people, to have more to invest in them, or even to empower them to step up into other spaces that they should be in, right? If you are doing this purpose, tools, training, time, you will find their willingness to do the things you want them to do, shift, transform, change, grow.

Madeleine: It’s not fast always. Sometimes it’s a little slower than what we want, but I would rather slow and steady over time. And you actually get to the outcome than try to shortcut this whole process, which by the way, doesn’t work and then you don’t ever get to the outcome. And it leads you to frustration and irritation and that feeling of like that we first talked about like, why aren’t they doing what I want them to do?

Madeleine: So this is my little trick to getting people to do what it is you want them to do, is to execute on this plan. Give them purpose, provide them with the tools, give them the training and the expertise in execution, and then give of my time. And when as a leader, as a manager, you do these things, the output from your team is transformative, it really can transform your business. But we always have situations where people are not doing…

Madeleine: The expression of that guy’s face is just hilarious. He looks so defeated. They both are frustrated. What do we do when our people still aren’t doing what we want them to do? We’ve done all that. Okay Madeleine, I’ve tried all that, it’s not working for me. What do you do when they’re still not doing what you need or you want them to do? You have to be willing to give constructive feedback.

Madeleine: This is a really important thing. I’m going to go over with this… go over this with you quickly. But it is one of the things that I’m on repeat, right? With my clients, the process of constructive feedback. I call it a criticism sandwich, or you can call it a solution sandwich, and I’m going to break down what’s all in the sandwich. So this is our sandwich. This is going to be our constructive feedback, our criticism sandwich.

Madeleine: If you just tell someone, “Hey, John,” in other picture, “you are doing horrible job. You’re not meeting my standards,” they’re not going to be in a presence of mind to hear what you’re saying. There is a way of delivering constructive feedback so that they hear it and are willing to act upon it and it’s fourfold. First thing is you start with what’s going well.

Madeleine: Ladies and gents, this is not lipstick on a pig here. You don’t make stuff up. You talk about real things that person is doing well, things that you are proud of them for, progress you’ve seen them make, skills you’ve noticed that they have. You always have to begin with what is going well. Because if you start with like, “Here you go, open wide. You’re going to hate this. It’s going to taste gross,” no one’s going to be like, “Yes, okay.”

Madeleine: But if you start with, this is not flattery, this is genuine appreciation, gratitude for what is going well, acknowledgement. When people feel seen and heard, they’re more open to letting you in, right? To letting you say what it is that you need to say. So what’s going well? The next thing is what the exact issue is.

Madeleine: If you are not very clear about what the problem is, if you try to be evasive or you try to help them to like lead them to the question, this is not a leading them to the question. This is you tell them exactly. You don’t beat around the bush. You don’t drag it out, direct communication, no indirect communication in this. Here’s what’s going well, here’s what the issue is.

Madeleine: So let’s say for example that we had the guy in the picture earlier. Let’s pretend that he was a person who was consistently showing up late and putting stress on the rest of the team. But let’s just say that he has really good affect on the phone, let’s just pretend he’s in customer service. So, John, what I wanted to do today is have a little bit of constructive feedback for you because there’s a couple things I wanted to chat about.

Madeleine: So first off, I just want to say, I think that you’re doing great with customers. When you get on the phone, you have a really friendly tone of voice, you have a really great approach, I really appreciate how well you present our brand and how friendly you are in your approach to customers. Now what’s not so good, what’s not going well is that you’re consistently late.

Madeleine: You have a problem for showing up and what that’s doing is it’s putting stress on the team. Because when you are late, everyone else has to pick up your slack. So it’s creating a problem for everyone else and it’s a problem because we don’t have the coverage that we need. That needs to change, right? Was clear about it, explained the stakes, told him what needs to change. So next thing is expect next, how we expect that to change, what exactly we need that to change?

Madeleine: So what I need you to do is because you’re chronically late, I think you’re overcommitting yourself, right? And what I need you to do is I need you to be here five minutes early. If you’re here five minutes early, then I think that we’ll solve this problem. And once you’ve been here five minutes early, five minutes early, five minutes early for a couple of weeks, I’m going to allow you to show up just on time and be on time.

Madeleine: If five minutes is not enough, give yourself more buffer, show up 15 minutes early, right? If you need to show up 15 minutes early to show up on time, then that’s what you need to do. I need you to be here when the working day begins. That’s what we expect to change. Now, a lot of people, that’s done, they’d be complete. They’d let that go, their sandwich is done.

Madeleine: But that is not the last piece of our sandwich. There’s one last little bit that we add to make this have a really strong punch, and that is why we believe it’s possible, right? Why we believe it’s possible. So John, I know that this is going to be a little bit of a stretch for you, but when you were first hired, you showed up on time, ready to work every day. I know you can do it because I’ve seen you do it. I know you can do this.

Madeleine: If you need me to support you, if you’d like me to send you a text message in the morning, I’m happy to support you and I know you can do this because this is something that we need to see a change right away. If you master the art of this constructive feedback sandwich, this criticism sandwich, your people will be able to hear you and they will be willing to step forward. It is critical to your success that you learn how to correct people in a way that doesn’t crush their spirit, in a way that motivates them to take steps forward.

Madeleine: So if you communicate well and treat them as the people you trusted when you first hired them and you leverage these skills and these tools to actually manage your team and to look at not just their outputs to look, but to look at them as humans, you will find that their performance improves significantly and you might have the byproduct of having an improvement in your culture and morale as well.

Madeleine: So if you do these things, you’re going to end up with some management excellence under your belt. And I promised my email address earlier for those of you who might want to reach out to me? It’s Madeleine@mm, that’s 3Ms, mmmacrae.com. And Emily, I know that we just have about five more minutes here. I know you have a few things you wanted to go over as well and maybe let’s take some few minutes to answer some questions before we wrap up today. So Emily, I’m going to pass it over to you.

Emily: Yeah, absolutely. So first I did want to address a question from Karen that came through about Yelp, because I think a lot of folks on the line might have this question. So Karen’s question is we have a strong presence online and in Yelp for the past eight years and I have close to 155 star reviews from our clients, many very detailed about their experience with us but for some reason, Yelp consistently hides more than 80 of those reviews as being not recommended. We’ve never been able to understand why.

Emily: So I’m going to give you guys the quick two minute explanation. Yelp has had a recommendation software since the very early days of when we started our site in 2004. It wasn’t long before Yelp was created that we saw our first obviously fake review. In that case, it was a business owner giving themself five stars, but we’ve seen everything, giving their competitors one stars, having family members write reviews.

Emily: And you have to remember that in order to be a trusted site for all of the great five star reviews, we have to not everything through the site. So right now about 73% of the reviews written on Yelp are recommended. But there’s a couple things that you can know about the algorithm that’ll help you have maybe less of a struggle with not recommended reviews. That algorithm is looking at hundreds of signals, everything from what we know about the reviewer, as well as their activity on the site.

Emily: So have they written other reviews? Have they uploaded photos? Have they checked into businesses? All of that information contributes to what we know about the user. But additionally, if reviews have been solicited or asked for, the algorithm will work against those reviews. And when I say solicited, I don’t just mean if you’re offering to pay people, I mean, if you are explicitly asking for a Yelp review through an email newsletter, through a follow-up.

Emily: You don’t want to do that because the algorithm is going to work against those things. I’ll give you a quick example. I used to work with a guy who owned over 10 car washes in Los Angeles, and he had an iPad set up at the checkout station when you were waiting for your car to go through the cleaning and you could write in a review while you waited for your vehicle.

Emily: To the algorithm, there’s no difference between if Bob is sitting in his office on his iPad, creating all these accounts or if it’s real consumers but it can see that all of that is coming from one computer. So you can understand why that would look fishy to the algorithm. The same thing is true if you’re sending mass email blasts. Now a way to work around that is to let customers know.

Emily: You’d love to hear their feedback and then link to all of the places that you have an online presence, Yelp, Google. If you’re on HomeAdvisor, Tripadvisor, whatever the case may be for your industry, you want to point them to all those platforms and let them use the platform that they’re most frequently active on. Madeleine, there are some great questions for you in there so I want you to be able to answer those before we power down.

Emily: The other thing I’m going to let everyone know is I’m going to quickly throw up that slide one more time that people can see if they want to sign up for that free mentor program that Yelp is giving away. You’ll have to apply by end of day tomorrow. So let me give you guys that QR code while Madeleine answers these last two questions.

Madeleine: Yes, great. Thanks Emily. So had two questions. I answered one in the Q&A box from Dan. So Dan was asking why do we call this the money test? Like what do these different levels have to do anything with money? The idea here is that each one of those levels has a rate of pay associated with it, right? You don’t pay an entry level person the same thing as you pay your VP of marketing.

Madeleine: And if your VP of marketing is doing entry level position things throughout their day, cluttering up their time and their schedule with those activities, you’re grossly overpaying and you’re not spending that time so it’s that time is money. They’re using their most precious resource time for something that is at a much lower value when we’re looking at the money/the value of each one of those ranges of opportunities.

Madeleine: So, Dan, I hope that that answers your question. If that does not answer your question, well enough, feel free to just pop that into the chat or reach back out into the Q&A. There was another question that came out from someone who said, “How do you correct the behavior of a female supervisor who chose to talk to the office employees with negative remarks about me and the company?” So I’m going to assume that I’m just making an assumption here, it was an anonymous question so I’m going to assume that you are the owner or the founder or a senior leader in the company.

Madeleine: If you have someone who is gossiping, right? That’s gossip, talking badly, tarnishing your personal reputation, the reputation and the standing of the business, that really makes for a negative culture. You have got to speak to the person, you have to understand where are they. Not just to come down with judgment, to come at them with curiosity, to ask that supervisor, “Hey, and I’ve heard through the grapevine that there’s been a little bit of talking amongst you, and that there’s some dissatisfaction here.

Madeleine: Let’s have an open conversation about this, and let’s in the future have this as a conversation between you and I so that we can resolve our issues and that our issues from me as a leader and you as my supervisor, that if we have tension between us, we don’t need to be spreading that to the team. So let’s talk about what the tension is around and see if we can resolve it.”

Madeleine: Now, excuse me, a little frog in my throat. If you absolutely cannot resolve that issue with them through a meaningful conversation, then it’s really important that you take steps to consider replacing that person. One bad tomato infects all the tomatoes around. And your culture is so important, your personal reputation, the reputation of your business is so important that if you’ve really done everything to empower that person, right?

Madeleine: You might want to challenge yourself to ask, have you given them purpose? Have you given them tools and training? Have you done all the steps that we talked about today, that supervisor who’s dissatisfied, is there something that you could do better to help that person to be less dissatisfied? But if there’s nothing you can do, and you’ve tried everything, truly honestly tried and they do not wish to correct their behavior?

Madeleine: And they have a culture of spreading gossip and of stirring up the pot, sometimes it’s better, coach them up or coach them out. Sometimes it’s better to exit them from your organization than to allow for them to spread bad culture around. All right. So I wanted to say thank you to everyone, Emily, unless there’s any other questions that you wish for me to respond to, I’m happy to do that.

Madeleine: But I just want to thank everyone for your time today. I know that investing in yourself, taking time away from your business is a really… It can be a really… It can be a hard call, right, when we’re so busy and there’s a lot to do. So investing in yourself is a huge gift to yourself and it’s also a gift to your team because the better you get, the more you have to give to them.

Madeleine: So thank you everybody so much for your presence, for your activity on the chat, for our engagement today. And if you have anything that you’d like to reach out to me about, be more than happy to help and support you. My email address is just right there. And of course, Emily is your guru for all things Yelp related. She is amazing and I’m sure that she’d be happy to help you as well.

Madeleine: The slides are going to be shared, am I right, Emily? The slides are going to be shared. So if you want them as a point of reference, you’ll have them in your email in the next couple of days. All right, everybody. Have a powerful rest of your week. Thank you again for being here. Delighted to have been here, have a beautiful day. Thanks everybody.