Smart Business Growth with Nicky & Ness

From Doers to Decision Makers: Empowering Your Team

• Nicky & Ness • Season 2 • Episode 18

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In this episode, the focus is on setting up teams for peak performance by transitioning them from mere doers to empowered decision-makers. The discussion highlights the importance of creating an environment and culture that encourages team members to take ownership and make confident decisions. The episode also explores how a positive workplace culture can lead to increased revenue and productivity.

Episode Highlights:

  • The impact of team empowerment on business growth and revenue.
  • Differences between doers and decision-makers in a team setting.
  • The negative effects of micromanagement on employee motivation.
  • The Critical Alignment Model: Environment, Structure, Implementation, and People.
  • Practical steps to empower team members to make decisions.
  • Importance of clear communication and constructive feedback.
  • Creating a decision-making framework for your team.
  • How leaders can support and nurture a culture of innovation and autonomy.

Learn more about Nicky and Ness https://businesstogether.com.au

Buy a copy of Healthy Hustle: The New Blueprint to Thrive in Business & Life www.healthyhustle.com.au

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Nicky LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/connectwithnicky/
Ness LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/vanessamedling/

Give us a call
Nicky Miklos-Woodley 0403 191 404
Vanessa (Ness) Medling 0400 226 875

Or send us an email hello@businesstogether.com.au

Music by Jules Miklos-Woodley

Nicky:

Welcome to the Smart Business Growth Podcast with Nicky and. Ness.

Ness:

We would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of country, the Turrbal and Bunurong people of Brisbane and Melbourne respectively, where Nicky and I both work and live. Today, I thought we could focus on how to set up our team for peak performance, and when I think about peak performance and I think about teams, it's really about moving them from just being doers to decision makers, because what I think most business owners or senior leaders really want from their team is somebody who is capable and empowered to make the right decisions, to be able to confidently get on with their role. It's almost like that you're my set and forget child. I know that whatever you deliver is going to be of a high standard. You're going to be getting the best out of your team or the role that you're doing within the business, and I think that there's a lot that we can do in order to create an environment or a culture that allows us to have a team that are engaged and empowered and are really aware of why they make a difference, why the work they do, how that impacts on the bigger vision of the business and how that makes a flow-on impact outside the business to whoever their clients or their customers or whoever they're working with and I know that from some studies like there was a Gallup poll Gallup's brilliant for lots of studies and they looked at companies that prioritize a culture experience or a positive culture experience they see a 33% increase in revenue. So it doesn't just make sense from a people perspective, it makes sense from the ability to make more money in the business and therefore provide a return on the investment the owners put in the business. Or, if you're on salary, it means you can get more salary, more profit, more money in your pocket, and so I think that really matters.

Ness:

When we think about all the reasons why we want to do this. And, interestingly, looking at another study by Department of Economics at the University of Warwick I think this is a UK study they found that unhappy workers are 10% less productive, and when I think about that, 10% is actually quite a huge impact. When we talk about the 1% incremental moves, when we drop 10%, that's a lot of our day that is focused on not being productive. So, Nicky, when you think about these unhappy workers so I've just talked about what the decision makers, what workers would be, how they would be feeling and how they'd be turning up to work let's look at the flip of that. What would you say? A doer, an unhappy, more unproductive worker would look like.

Nicky:

Yeah, really interesting stats, and you're so right about the incremental increase and alsoness, when we take care of our people, we'll take care of our business, and so that, I think, is a really important filter in terms of the decision-making piece. The doers, I would say, are the people that just they're order takers. That could be a way to look at it.

Nicky:

So, they're going to rock up, they're going to just do exactly what is asked for them. They're going to be waiting for instruction. There's not that autonomy around. I'm going to get started, even if I don't have all the ducks in the row. It's literally here's an instruction, I'll follow it to the T and I won't do anything outside of that remit.

Nicky:

I think unresourcefully, bare minimum. But also sometimes it doesn't have to be a really negative thing or unresourceful thing. It's just I'm an order taker, give me an order and I'll follow through. But again, when we're talking about peak performance, it's that whole thing around. Good is the enemy of great. So it could be that they're good, solid workers, but there's limitations to what they will do because they're doers or, as we talked about it could flip over, fall into more unresourceful in terms of a cultural. I'm doing what I get paid for, not a second more or not a minute over, or from a thinking point of view or a doing point of view. So sometimes your doers can be good, Sometimes they can be problematic for culture.

Nicky:

But either way, we really need to think about what actual culture do we want to create. Do we want to create that empowered, autonomous team which therefore allows the leaders senior leaders to be able to get back to what they need to do in terms of helicopter view of the business, the visionary aspect, and actually having a team not just leadership team, but team coalface team that they can rely on to get shit done. That's what we're talking about here, Because I think also, we want different levels of capacity. I don't know if capacity is the right word, but we want good people that can come in and get a job done really well. But imagine if those people broadened their thinking, their scope to come up with a solution as well as talk about the problem is a classic example of a decision maker Be feel safe enough to maybe take a little risk in the business to try something new.

Nicky:

Growth and expansion comes with innovation, comes with different ideas, and, for those that are listening to this, think about the ideas that could be untapped from your team if only they knew that it was a part of they had the opportunity to come up with different ideas and solutions. So I trust that that helps clarify this difference between that doer piece and the decision maker piece, and I know we're going to talk about a little bit of a solution, a framework to help turn doers to decision makers. But, Ness, what do you think keeps people stuck? A team member stuck, and sometimes a leader as well? Well, stuck in doer, instead of transitioning or being empowered to be a decision maker.

Ness:

That's a really good question. Look, I do think there are some people out there that just ever want to be a doer, so they don't. It's within who they are, they just come to work, they do that job. They go home. They're not interested in working any more than that. I remember my sister worked with a guy. They called him not my job, jerry, because every time they'd ask him to do something he'd throw his hand up in the air and go not my job, not my job, and he'd walk away. But you can unlock the door and let someone in Not my job, that kind of thing that it became. I just don't know that.

Ness:

I could work with someone like that. So I think there is that aspect of someone who is just to the T. This is what you've recruited me to do, this is what I do. I do that and I go home and I don't want to do anything else, and there could be some businesses where that's applicable. That's great. That's actually a really good outcome. But what we're talking about is the people that you really want to step up, that you want to help them feel empowered and that you want to bring out the best in them.

Ness:

The ways we don't do that when we're leading is by micromanaging, because I can think of so many scenarios that I hear from people that we work with and from my own experience, where you're keen, you want to get in, you want to do really well, and then someone micromanages you and you're just like I. Just why would I bother? Why would I bother? And I've had this experience myself with a leader who had to make the final decision on something. I had researched everything about it and I had all of the except me. I had a lot of detail around why I made the decision or why I wanted to make. The decision I wanted to make was within my realm, but she had to do final sign off and she said no, not until she had done all of the research I'd already done. That was so disempowering that made me really feel like why should I bother? Because I'm just going to get knocked back. And I think that we don't often see that. Because we're stuck in the busy trap and we are doers ourselves right as leaders. We're just trying to juggle all the balls in the air and try to get stuff done and we're not stepping back, we're not taking the time out to realize that us coming up above and really working on the business and helping our team to understand, setting them up to succeed means that we have to get out of the weeds of the business, and I think sometimes leaders and business owners can get stuck down there, and so what happens is when we're in that space, we think that we can do it better, more quickly, easily, ourselves and anyone else. We are poor at delegating because we're not communicating well. With that, we're not helping our people to step up.

Ness:

I remember one client telling me about a leader who gave them a piece of work, and this happened often. They didn't actually know what they wanted themselves, but they delegate it and say could you work on this? I want this or I want that. That person's sitting there going. I've got no idea what you're asking me for, but you're not giving me any other guidance, so I'm going to interpret it. I'm going to do what I think is what you want. Hand that work in and it will come back going. You totally missed the mark. There's red markers all over the page.

Ness:

That was so demoralizing, disempowering all the things that just put you back into. Why should I bother? Why don't I just do the bits I do and then go home and that's it, whereas I don't know about you? But whenever I've loved who I work for, whenever I've been appreciated for the work I do, when I know I'm adding value, I want to go above and beyond. I want to do the extra piece, whether that be extra time or extra effort or something along those lines. You just want to be in that space. So I do think it can be. Definitely you've got the doers that exist. But we're talking about how do you bring out the best in your people, to give them that decision-making, because often they don't make a decision because they're scared of the consequences and that they'll get in trouble. It's not okay to make a mistake and we might say it is, but how we follow up when somebody makes a mistake is 100% what they're going to believe in the future around whether that's an appropriate decision to make or not.

Nicky:

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Nicky:

And I think that point around the doer is what culture does it align with culture? Is it resourceful or unresourceful behavior? It's that whole expectation piece. So just to summarize some of the key things that I heard there around what kind of puts people into unresourceful doer state?

Nicky:

In other words, they maybe want to step out a little bit more but, they're stuck into this place of resentment or why bother disempowering them through micromanagement, thinking about or looking at how you give feedback we can still give constructive feedback without it feeling like a hard criticism. That's really important. How are we communicating? Is it safe for people to be a bit vulnerable or to have a go at taking a risk? These are the things that you just talked about as a little checklist, almost to say. Am I nurturing a team of decision makers or am I actually keeping people stuck in that place of I'm just going to do what I need to do here and again it comes back to that, not because I just I'm happy and fulfilled doing my job, but because I actually feel a bit of negative resentment and feelings towards my leaders, my managers, the culture and the business.

Ness:

Yeah, for sure, and I think probably one of the best ways that a leader can start to lift themselves if they find that they're in that micromanagement space or they're not delegating well or they've got a team of doers that are capable of being decision makers. It's around how do we start to create that shift? And, as we are big believers in models helping leaders to create change in a business or understand where things come and problem solve, the one model that I love the most in this situation is a critical alignment model. Now, we may have spoken about this in a previous podcast, but it's a model that was developed, probably back in the 90s, by Sharon Pearson, and it looks at four different dimensions that we can actually look at any problem through. So the first one is environment. So environment is looking at the bigger picture, the purpose. What are we here to achieve? Like I said earlier, around when somebody understands what part they play in the bigger vision, that's really important. But it's not just the vision, the mission and the values of a business, it's the culture, it is the values, it is the standards and attitudes and behaviors. It's all the things you can't really put, you can't see it, it just exists right. So we've got to actually have that set up in order to help people succeed, so that they understand where they fit in and what we're here to achieve, what's the bigger vision.

Ness:

And then the next step is the structure. So structure is all about systems and processes and the kinds of things that people can have to help them make decisions. So we've got to actually set people up to succeed by saying here's a decision-making structure, for example. These are the kinds of things you need to take into consideration when you are deciding whether we go in this direction or that direction. And it's stopping reinventing the wheel every time we do something. So it's actually taking that time out, which a lot of people go. I don't have time to step back and do process or structure around this, but it actually saves time in the long run because you've got more people that you can educate on what that process or structure is.

Ness:

When we do those two things, we set people up to take action with purpose implementation based on what we're here to achieve. Here's the structure around how to do it. Let's just get on and do it. It's around them making a decision. It's around the actions that they take. It's around all of the things that help us to get to the goals, the KPIs, whatever it is we're setting. And then the last part of this model is people. And so many people say but I, as a leader, I always put my people first. Why would this model not have people first? And what we love to say is, the reason why they're last is because you can't put them first unless you have the right environment, the right structure and allow them the space to be able to implement. So in the people aspect of this model, it's around mentoring, coaching, training, skill set, really ensuring that communication is spot on, that people are given the ability to shine within the business Based on I know you know this model. How do you see that play out in this perspective around peak performance, Nicky?

Nicky:

I think it actually can be used as a formula and a framework in so many different instances for peak performance. If we narrow that down to decision-making, so we're talking about empowering people in your team with a framework that they can make decisions that are absolutely aligned with the business outcomes, the business goals and your way of working. And when I look at this model actually I've scribbled down here as you were talking through we can filter any decision through four key areas that aligns with the critical alignment model with environment, structure, implementation and people. The first is why am I doing this? Why am I making this decision, or why does this decision matter? So why? The second is what are the steps or how does this decision, this thing that I'm making a decision about, need to come to life? Then what or when? So what needs to be done and when, and then who needs to be involved?

Nicky:

So actually a way we can decode this to share with your people in your team is to say, okay, I want you to be empowered to make some decisions as to certain actions that can be taken and you can put boundaries and limitations around that. So we're not again, we're not saying go rogue, everybody has all the decision making power in the team and the world, but there might be certain things that you can say. Look, I actually want you to start leaning into making certain decisions or making certain calls on things, for example, around tasks like X, y, z. And a good framework for you to think about is for what purpose would we want to do this? Why Does it fit with our overarching environment culture goals, how will this work and what needs to happen and when and who needs to be involved? And so already we can see that an individual in the team having this framework to ask those four questions and align it with the business purpose, vision, values, cadences, unspoken ground rules, all those sorts of things. They can make a call and you can be pretty comfortable about it because it's aligned with what you probably would do and it's not high risk.

Nicky:

Think about what you can start to empower them with. That isn't high risk. But all of a sudden, a your leaders. You can do this with your leaders and you can do this with call face team. So your call face team is starting to make some more decisions, which frees up your leaders time. Your leaders are starting to be empowered with more decisions, which frees up your time and again, you can start with that 1%. It makes a difference, so play around with it and actually structure it in that. That's the decision-making criteria. This is our business criteria for making a decision on key areas within this sort of remit. That's how I would use it.

Ness:

I love that, and what I really love about that is it gives the person something really tangible to use, so it gets them creating and thinking. It's the questions that they're going to be asking and it also, within that, you've got to do the thinking yourself right, otherwise how can you guide someone? And this is really about I think we end up with the team we deserve is a comment that I, or my statement I love to bring into the play. So the question is if you have a team of doers, what aren't you doing to set them up into being decision makers? And exactly what you ran through there, Nicky, is a great example of how you can support somebody by not just going oh, pick my brain, pick what's in my head, because I'll change my mind today to tomorrow, to the next day, around the decision I make based on my gut instinct. That's not valuable.

Ness:

We really need to set people up to succeed by giving them the structure. So exactly what you went through is the structure around how to make a decision in the business. So I really think that is a key element in order to be able to start to empower people and, as you said, identify what's the life and death stuff that's not going to be okay to experiment with. What's the risk? What is the risk? If it's a minimal risk and someone can make a mistake and that's okay, then they're going to learn so much more quickly than being told what to do all the time. So we've got to allow because, let's face it, when we started our businesses, we made mistakes. All business owners make mistakes. It's how you learn.

Nicky:

And there's a terminology that I'm thinking of as we're having this conversation, which is spoon feeding. If you know that there are people in your team leadership and general team that are being spoon fed, this is a really good framework for that. Yeah.

Ness:

Really putting it back on them and saying I hear this often that somebody will go to their leader and ask a question around what should I do here? And often the leader will tell them what you should do here, but then they've asked that question 50 times. So, being able to come back and put it on them and go what would you do if I wasn't here? What decision would you make if you couldn't fail these are the kinds of way that we move into this more productivity, this high performance and, of course, the rewards of that which is engaged team, who want to stay longer, who want to give more, and the profitability increases in the business because you're achieving so much more. So, as we wrap up, what do you think out of everything we've talked about today would be a great starting point for our listeners and viewers in the next 24 hours to take an actionable action? Is it that checklist? Is it those questions?

Nicky:

I think that's a great action, but I actually think the first step is to get together with your leadership team and have this conversation. Have a conversation around how empowered do you as a collective and do they because they're going to have their finger on the pulse how empowered are the team to make decisions? Is there spoon feeding going on in the team? Is that a challenge? Understand if that's a challenge first and then come up with that criteria together as a team. It's the why, how, what and when and who. But first of all, is this a gap? Is this a blind spot in the business? Have a broader conversation around it and get your leaders in on that conversation as well. Amazing.

Ness:

Good luck with that, everyone and, of course, if you want to talk further or you need some help with it, reach out. We're on LinkedIn. Until then next week, we will say goodbye for now. Have a wonderful week. Thanks for listening to today's ep. If you loved what you heard, connect with us over on LinkedIn and let's continue the conversation over there. Nicky and I are obsessed with helping businesses install smart business growth strategies and leveraging people leadership for peak performance. We bring two business minds and two perspectives into your business, and our number one goal is to make sure that your business is thriving, your team are thriving and you are thriving. We offer a 30-day business diagnostic taking you from chaos to clarity in just 30 days. Are you curious to find out more? Send us an email or go old school and give us a call. Until next time, happy listening and here's to thriving in business and in life.