Leading A-Players

As a follow-up to my previous five posts on the How to Hire the Best strategies and in preparing for our Leadership Bootcamp this fall, I want to emphasize the importance of people and leading A-Players. Aside from time as your greatest resource, it’s how you utilize this time and whom you trust to manage the tasks and time at hand. Let’s face it, as entrepreneurs we are constantly striving for a level of fulfillment. You know what I’m talking about. Remember that feeling? The drive that once fueled us to begin this journey? It is a constant and powerful tugging to get back to this root of what drives us now, so we can continue to grow or pivotmaintaining our purpose.

Below is an excerpt from my book How to Hire the Best that talks more about finding and leading A-Players and how we can foster them and their drive, while serving one another.

If you are like most owners, you watch your bottom line closely. Payroll is typically one of the largest expenses. Although payroll is an expense in our financial statements, the team members behind that payroll are assets when they are A-Players. They are responsible for leading your company into the future. Whether they are productive or not, they will determine your future. The more you invest in your A-Players, the better your future will be.

With that in mind, compare your mindset on team building with your mindset on investing in new equipment or a stock in your investment portfolio. Do you research equipment before buying it? If you choose a lower-quality piece of equipment, do you blame the equipment when it breaks down, or do you try to make a better choice next time?

What about stocks in your investment portfolio? Do you just pick any stock, or do you try to find quality ones you believe will give you the best return, even if it costs more per share than other stocks?

A-Player team members are not an expense.

They are an investment. You invest payroll, leadership, training, and other time and money into your team. You also invest in your team members by listening to them and continuing to invest in improving the tools, systems, and processes you provide to support your team, even when times are tough.

Investing what you can in leading A-Players at all times helps you build deep relationships with them. Don’t turn your back on them when things go south. When things are better, they will still remember that you did not have their backs. That will make them just loyal enough to stay until they find a better offer.

If you expect your team to be accountable to you in good times and bad, you need to be accountable to them as well.

Hiring team members is an investment, and it’s up to us as business owners to make sure that investment is worth it. If we hire the right person, they’re an investment that’s worth it. If we hire the wrong person, they are an expense, costing us time and money. The better you become at investing in the right team members and developing them, the more productive and engaged they will be and the better your return on investment will be. If you don’t, your payroll can also be the source of a significant hidden profit bleed—employee disengagement.

To invest in your own dreamsand further invest in your businessfirst invest in your people, the right people. Those people who are of service to the company and can see the vision. They have dreams too, and there’s a wonderful magic that happens when you can not only see the spark in their eyes, but feel it. That is the point when a team of believers begin to work together to meet (and celebrate) a common goal. And kudos to you… where it all began. This is BIG. 

Consider our Leadership Bootcamp for your Leading A-Players!

 

About The Author

Dr. Sabrina Starling, The Business Psychologist and international best-selling author of the How to Hire the Best series and The 4 Week Vacation™, is the founder of Tap the Potential and host of the Profit by Design podcast. At Tap the Potential, we work to free business owners from the constant demands of a growing business.

We believe work supports life, not the other way around. Clients in our Better Business, Better Life coaching program have more time for what matters most and more money in their bank account than they’ve ever had. Next, we send them off on a 4 Week Vacation™ to celebrate their hard-earned journey to take their life back!

Dr. Sabrina and her team at Tap the Potential are on a mission to change the story of entrepreneurship from one of long hours, grinding it out, to one of sustainably profitable businesses that support and enhance life. The Tap the Potential Solution™ and our Tap the Potential Family of Business Owners are disrupting small business as usual. We are on our way to making the Tap the Potential Solution™ the mainstream model for growing business.

By 2023, 150 Tap the Potential clients will have taken 4 Week Vacations. These are the trailblazers, role modeling what’s possible for entrepreneurs. In many entrepreneurial circles, it is becoming more and more common for one entrepreneur to ask another, “Have you taken a 4 Week Vacation™?” (as opposed to asking “How many employees do you have?” or “What is your annual revenue?”). Taking a fully unplugged 4 Week Vacation is rapidly becoming the recognized symbol of entrepreneurial success.

Never one to accept the status quo or back down from a challenge, Dr. Sabrina’s How to Hire the Best series grew from her desire to solve the toughest hiring challenges interfering with her clients’ growth and profitability. What sprang from her experience working with entrepreneurs in rural areas catapulted her into becoming the world’s leading expert in attracting top talent in small businesses—no matter what hiring challenges those businesses are facing—and earned Tap the Potential’s reputation as the go-to resource for entrepreneurs committed to creating Great Places to Work with thriving coaching cultures and highly engaged team members working from strengths.

As The Business Psychologist, and with her years of driving profit in small businesses, Dr. Sabrina knows what it takes to find, keep, and motivate exceptional performance out of your biggest investment—team members.