If you have a team, you will inevitably experience frustration with them. 

This comes up a lot in my Accelerator program because it’s something that happens to everyone (whether you are just starting out with a team or you already have a team), so in this episode of The Art of Online Business, I am listing out a few exercises that you can do if this is something you are going through right now. 

As CEOs in our business, we must take responsibility for our own actions, so the first step is always to take a look at yourself and your own leadership. As the owner of your business, it is your responsibility to identify what isn’t working and find ways to make it better. This simple exercise is one that I have done countless times in my business and it is game-changing. Every time I try it, I learn something new.  

This will help you change the way you look at the issues you are facing by taking a step back, removing the names from the equation,  and determining if you have the right people in the right seats. 

When everyone on your team is pulling towards the same mission and vision for your business and providing an amazing experience, that’s where the magic happens. Everyone on the team is in a position where they do well and serve the business in the best way possible. 

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How to examine your leadership to identify ways to improve 
• How to get clarity on what you really need on your team and the qualities and roles needed
• Making changes to your team to put everyone in positions where they thrive 

Links & Resources:

• The Art of Online Business website
• DM me on Instagram
• Visit my YouTube channel
• The Art of Online Business clips on YouTube
• Full episodes of The Art of Online Business Podcast on YouTube
• The Art of Online Business Podcast website
• Check out my Accelerator coaching program

*Disclosure: I only recommend products I use and love and all opinions expressed here are my own. This post may contain affiliate links that at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission.

Got A Question You Want Answered On the Podcast?

Ask your questions or let me know if there is a topic or guest you’d like to hear from in the comments below or click here to visit my contact page and submit your question there for a chance to be featured on one of my upcoming Q&A episodes.

Follow The Art of Online Business on iTunes and/or Stitcher

Please support the podcast by giving an honest Rating/Review for the show on iTunes!

Other Episodes You’ll Enjoy:

How Feeling Good Actually Affects Your Business Sucess with Judith Gaton 

Facebook Ads are DEAD (Unless You Do This)

TikTok For Businesses: How To Increase Sales and Get More Leads, with Keenya Kelly

Transcript

[00:00:00] Speaker1
Hey, my friends, if you were looking for a faster, a better way to grow and scale your online business, you very likely do not need
another course or to be reading more books about how to grow your business. What you need instead is a personalized, cohesive
growth strategy for your business, along with one on one coaching and group coaching, support and accountability to help you every
step of the way. Well, that’s exactly what my accelerator coaching program delivers for you. Accelerator is an intimate 12 month
rolling open enrollment, so it’s ongoing open enrollment, personalized coaching program and mastermind experience four
established all my course creators and coaches who want to take the guesswork out of optimizing and grow towards a profitable
seven figure plus business without more anxiety, without more stress and hours spent in front of the computer. Accelerator is about
thinking differently and bigger about your business, about your team, your funnels, your ads, your vision, etc., so that you can create
more profit, more impact with less hustle. So accelerators application only. And again, this is rolling ongoing open enrollment. So if
you want to learn more and apply, just go to Rick Mul Radio.com forward slash accelerator. Hey, my friend, welcome to the Art of
Online Business Podcast. My name is Rick Mullaney and I’m an online business coach. I’m an ads expert, and most importantly, I’m
a dad. And this show is where we help established online course creators and coaches create more profit, more impact with less
hustle.
[00:01:57] Speaker1
All right, let’s get into it. What’s up, my friends? Welcome back to the podcast. This is episode number 599. We are so close. Next
episode is 600 episodes and I can’t even believe it’s been 600 episodes already. Here on the show, we started the show. I started
the show in the summer of 2015 and here we are, 600 episodes later this summer here of 2022. We’re going to hit 9 million
downloads in that time, which just blows my mind. So thank you for listening to the podcast. If you’re if this is your first time here,
welcome, my friend. Thank you so much for tuning in. Super appreciate you. Make sure to hit that subscribe button to the podcast.
And if this is your 599 episode, thank you, my friend, for being here with me on this journey and I feel like we’re just getting started.
So anyway, on today’s episode, I want to talk about if you have a team, inevitably, inevitably you are going to experience frustration
with your team. This is a conversation that comes up pretty much all the time with our accelerator members, whether they are just
starting out building their team or they already have a team and they’re experiencing frustration within the team for one reason or
another. Now what I want to do here is kind of list out a few things that I recommend doing and giving you an exercise to do with
knowing that there’s a lot of different ways to approach.
[00:03:36] Speaker1
When you’re having some frustrations, you are frustrated as the CEO with what’s happening or maybe not happening within your
team. And so the first thing I want you to look at is because by the way, let me back up for 1/2. These types of challenges that come
up with your team, they come up for everyone. And when you have a fine tuned team that everybody is heading in the same
direction. Everybody is, you know, pulling towards the same mission and vision of your business and just providing an amazing
experience working for your business. Like that’s when just there’s so much fun to be had within the business and within your team.
Now again, inevitably there’s going to be times that come up during as you’re running your business where things aren’t running so
smoothly. And so that’s what I want to talk about here today and give you one exercise to do that can help you get things back on
track. Now, the first thing that I want to encourage you to do and ask yourself as the CEO, because remember, as the CEO, we
always take responsibility for our own actions, right? So we take 100% responsibility. And so the first thing I want you to do is when
things aren’t going the way that you want them to be going in your business is looking at yourself.

[00:05:08] Speaker1
Where do where do you need to be doing things differently in terms of leadership when the team isn’t working as well as you want, or
maybe they’re not doing things that you should be doing, etc.. Look at your leadership first and foremost. Is there a breakdown there?
Can you be doing a better job as a leader of setting expectations and giving context and letting people know like, Hey, you own this
project over here, ownership means you own it, right? I’m not telling you every step of the way to do whatever that is. So that’s the
first thing is look at yourself as the leader of your business and where are there opportunities for you to improve your leadership?
Because I will tell you that there are certainly things that you can be doing to improve when you’re having problems with the team.
Look at yourself first because there’s always areas for improvement, especially when we take full responsibility for what’s happening
in the business. Even if you’re not responsible for something, it is still your business, thus you are fully responsible. So that’s the first
thing. The second thing what I see a lot of people doing in their team is they take the people that are already on their team who are
maybe having some challenges and not doing what you hope them to be doing what you think they’re supposed to be doing, and you
start making changes or thinking about the team through the lens of the people that you already have on the team.
[00:06:48] Speaker1
Here’s what I mean by that. If you have somebody on your team who’s not performing the way that you want them to be performing,
or they’re doing a great job, however. There are things that they’re not doing that you think they should be doing. Maybe they don’t
even know that they’re supposed to be doing those things. And so what I want you to do is take a step back and look at this is the
whole right seat’s wrong. People are right people wrong seats sort of thing that they talk about in traction. The book Traction by
Jenna Wickman. It’s looking at your team, right? But take a step back and look at what is needed in your business to fulfill on the
goals that you have for the business, right? Revenue goals, how much you want to work, etc., etc., what kind of impact that you want
to have and look at what kind of roles do you need in your business to achieve those goals? Notice I’m not saying take the people
that you already have in your business and put them here. Have them doing whatever there is that they’re doing because they’re
already doing it. No, we want to remove people’s names in this exercise here. We’re not firing them or anything, but in this exercise
we are removing that person’s name and we are looking at the business objectively and we are looking at the roles that we think we
need in the business.
[00:08:17] Speaker1
So, for example, we need a whatever community manager, we need a marketing assistant, we need a executive assistant, whatever
it might be, right? And so we name the roles and then we go from there and we start to do things like we get to daydream, if you will.
We get to daydream like what kind of characteristics does somebody have in the marketing assistant role, right? What are their
tasks? What is that person doing as a marketing assistant? How do they do things in the business? How does that role communicate
with other people in the business? How do they communicate with you as the CEO? What’s their attitude? What types of intangibles
do you need to make sure that they have in terms of personality and work ethic and all that stuff? What drives this person right that
you think? How does this role fit into the overall vision? What kind of education and training do I want for this person in this role? And
so you get to build out your ideal role and the description for this role in terms of the questions I just mentioned. So for example, one
thing that is really important to me and you may have heard the term intra preneur, right? So this is basically an entrepreneur within
your business.
[00:09:42] Speaker1
So they’re entrepreneurial within the role of within your business, meaning they’re coming up with new ideas they’re implementing
and they’re taking ownership, etc.. That’s something that’s extremely important to me. So that could be a quality that we want to
make sure that the marketing assistant has. Boom check. So notice I’m not saying, oh, we put, you know, Jan in this role or like Jan
is doing this. So this is what we need from Jan. No, we’re removing Jan just in this in this exercise. We’re not getting rid of her.
Maybe we are. Maybe we are. But the exercise is such that we are defining the roles that we need without attaching names to them.
And what are the rules that we need in order to achieve the goals that we want. And she had the vision, the mission that we want to
be accomplishing in our business. Then once we have clarity around this, then you can start to look at the people that you currently
have in these roles. Maybe you already have an executive assistant, maybe you already have a marketing assistant or a community
manager, what have you. Right now you get to notice, you know, open up a dock or a notebook or whatever it is over a few weeks,
start to take notice of What are they doing? What do you wish that they were doing with whatever the task that they’re responsible
for? And so you get to track these things and take note of what you really want out of this role.
[00:11:14] Speaker1
And then from there, then you get to see like, oh, you know what? We have a gap over here. We need somebody to, whatever it is,
manage the podcast or whatever it is, you know what I mean? So like, oh, we have a gap over here. Okay, well, we need to fill that
role because it will help us achieve our goals, our vision, our mission, etc.. So then we need to write a job description for that role.
Now, going back to once you’ve clearly defined the roles, then and only then do you start to look at, okay, I currently have these
people on my team in their roles that they’re currently doing. Are they in the right seats? Because maybe for that marketing assistant
role, you want an entrepreneur, you want somebody who’s very driven, etc., etc., etc. or whatever. And so you get to look at, Oh, the
person who’s currently in the marketing assistant role not checking those boxes, right? They’re not all those things that I’ve just
outlined and daydreamed and brainstorm what I want for this role. But I have this person over here in a different role who is all of
those things and who does get marketing and comes up with ideas and so forth. So that might be a case of, you know, right person,
wrong seat.

[00:12:39] Speaker1
And for the current marketing assistant, the person that you have just in this hypothetical, it could be a case of wrong seat, right
person, right? So they might be better served in a different area of your business, or you might realize that they don’t have any of the
qualities, as it turns out, that you are really looking for, for the roles within your business that align with your goals and your vision
and your mission. So in that case, then you get to decide what you want to do with that person, you know, is it and that’s outside the
scope of what I want to talk about here, but is it a performance improvement plan, etc., etc.? Right. So the point here that I really
want you to take away from this is if you are feeling challenged with your team and you feel like things should be looking or working
differently and people should really be doing different things that they’re actually doing within their role. Step number one is look at
yourself first. Look at yourself as a leader and where do you need to be doing things differently in terms of your leadership? Because
we take full responsibility for ourselves and for our business. And then the second thing is you get to daydream and brainstorm and
just create your ideal picture of each role in your business that is needed to achieve your goals. We are removing in the exercise.
[00:14:11] Speaker1
Just recapping here, we’re removing the names that you currently have in your team and just solely focusing on the roles first. And
then from there, then you look at once you get clarity and all that, then you look at the people you have on your team, right? Do they
align with all the characteristics and everything that you just mentioned? If they do, are they in the right seats? If they’re not, is
somebody over in a different role? Are they better suited to this role over here or and vice versa? It’s this exercise that a lot of people
get hung up on because we so often try to do this exercise through the lens of the people that you already have on your team, rather
than taking a step back. Removing the name, if you will, and looking solely at what does your business need in terms of roles, and
then looking at what do I need to do to fill this role over here or this role over here? And it could just simply be from within the people
that you already have in your team or could be, you know what? This person is not quite a fit anymore. We need to make a change
and I need to hire a couple of people or hire one person. Okay, so this exercise is game changing. I’ve done this several times over
the years in the business, and every time I do it, I learn something new.
[00:15:38] Speaker1
Right. And again, there’s all different aspects that we can dove into here within this. But what I really wanted to do in this quick tip
episode for you is just dove into this one exercise, removing the names, looking solely at the roles. Do you have the right people in
the right seats and vice versa? Wrong seat, right person, right person, wrong seat sort of thing. But we can’t do that until we remove
them from the equation and just look at the roles first. Create those. What do we truly want from that role? And then we can look at
the people on our team to see if we have the right fits. Cool. All right, my friends, thank you as always, for listening to the show. Super
appreciate you. Hey, if you’ve not already left a rating and review for the show over on Apple podcast, I looked at the other day, I think
we have like 80% of our listenership of the show here is on Apple Podcasts, which I find really fascinating, which is super cool. So it
is still very much very helpful to make sure that you subscribe to the show or follow it on whatever platform, the listening on. And if
you wouldn’t mind leaving a quick rating and review for the show over there on Apple Podcasts, super helpful. Thank you, my friend.
Until next time, be well. I’ll talk to you soon.