A quick note before we get started on this week’s blog post… It will make a lot more sense if you’ve read last week’s post first! You can catch that HERE and then come back and join me. 

So today we’re talking about once we’ve got “the right people on our bus”, are they “in the right seat”?

Quite often when a new employee doesn’t perform as we anticipate, our first instinct is to be ruthless and let them go.  But instead, maybe we need to consider:

• Is the problem that the employee isn’t a match for our team and workplace culture?

• Or do we simply just have them in “in the wrong seat”, and they’re actually better fitted to a different role?

I can tell you from experience that the answer is usually the latter. I want to encourage you, when you’re hiring, to really think about the kind of roles that you have in your business and to not be afraid of hiring—and paying for—people who are stronger than you. 

I used to really worry about wages being a significant expense to the business. But what I have learned over my many years is that it’s not an expense—it’s an investment. 

My dad always said to me “If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys” and that was one of my first real lessons in leadership. 

Getting the right people, especially people that are worth a lot of money, is a huge investment in your business. Do not be afraid of this type of investment. 

I remember imposter syndrome striking hard when I was starting my business, and I was nervous that if I hired someone smarter than me, that one day they would take over my business or expose me as being clueless! 

But what I have learned not just from reading Jim Collins‘ book Good to Great, but also from my own experience, is the following: 

1. Hire people who are better than you are. 

2. Hire people with different strengths to you. 

3. Hire people who are really awesome at their jobs. 

4. Hire people who have skill sets that you can’t even imagine. 

5. Put those people with unique skill sets in the correct roles, give them the responsibilities that work well with their strengths, and then give them the autonomy to go and do their job!

It’s so important that once you do get your people on the right seats in the bus, that you then take your hands off a little bit. Give them the chance to try it themselves; to do it themselves. 

Support them where needed, but give them the chance to make mistakes so that they can learn from them. It’s no good us putting people in leadership roles and then looking over their shoulder all day, every day. Not only does it mean that we’re not productive, but it also means our team members start to think we don’t have faith in them to be able to do the job that we hired them to do.

The best people are your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems. 

Some leaders don’t want to hire more people because they figure with every extra person there’s going to be extra problems to deal with. But your people are the biggest investment you make in your business and they provide such an opportunity for your business to grow and for your customers to have a great experience.

And remember: if you get people on the bus and you find they’re in the wrong seats, do not be afraid to change those roles and responsibilities and juggle things around a little bit. Sometimes you need to take a HR approach and move them on, but don’t always assume that is the solution. They might just need a better seat.