Be the best boss

Be the person people loved working for

The responsibility of managing people is multi-faceted. To develop a team that delivers the best business outcomes, you also need to foster an environment that is both supportive and inspiring.

And all of this comes on top of the technical and/or professional skills you needed to acquire to be the boss in the first place.

David Finkel, the co-author of Scale: Seven Proven Principles to Grow Your Business and Get Your Life Back, offers some very poignant tips on how to be a great employer.

One of those is to ‘handle the big rocks first’. Many of us have heard the analogy of figuring out how to fit three piles of rocks, stones and sand into one bucket…

The only way you can do it is to start with the biggest rocks and once those are in place, the other elements will fit in around them.

Finkel says being the best boss is about dealing with BIG challenges head on and not letting institutional issues fester while getting sidetracked with the small stuff. Honestly assess, be decisive and solutions-focused, and your team will be inspired by your ability to make change.

In addition to showing bold leadership, Finkel says you must also create space to let your star employees shine. Delegation is time worth investing in and watching someone take pride in solving a problem that may seem quite straightforward to you provides a feeling akin to the ‘joy of giving’. Not to mention providing your star hire with a healthy shot of confidence.

Of course, before these stars can shine, you’ll need to hire them.

Hiring ‘superstars’ requires putting the necessary time and effort in to run a rigorous recruitment process.

It can be challenging to know where to start with this. Big companies with HR departments have often developed a comprehensive hiring process that provides the lightest touch for the manager, but how can SMEs approach this?

Well, that’s where we come in. We can help you ensure you’re putting the right processes in place to hire the best candidate by taking out a lot of the leg-work and creating a shortlist of ideal candidates. This is a task that will not cost your business a cent.

Not only does Finkel suggest a thorough hiring strategy, he also recommends robust on-boarding with tailored training.

Again, we can give you tips on how to best manage the ‘first day in the job’ and help with training to enhance their skills through our various programs that we can tailor to your businesses individual needs.