Empowering Employees to Take Ownership

I recently made some big changes in how I manage my team, aiming to empower them by stepping back a bit. Through this process, I learned the importance of not just delegating tasks but clearly sharing the goals and intentions behind them.

This has helped me trust my team more deeply and avoid micromanaging, allowing them to take true ownership of their work.

This shift has been a valuable lesson in leadership, and I hope it might inspire you to explore similar changes in your approach.

Resources:

• Want to increase your profitability? Grab my book “The Profit Bleed.“
• Looking to grow your construction business? Check out our exclusive group "The Contractors Collective.”
• Want employees to take more ownership? Check out our course - “Build Your Dream Team.”
• Are you struggling to hire the right people? Check out our “Contractors Hiring Blueprint” course.

Connect with Vicki on social media:

• YouTube: Vicki Suiter
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vickisuiter
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SuiterBusinessBuilders

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Transcript

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welcome back to The Profit Builder Unscripted, today we're going to be talking about how to get your teams to take more ownership in their job so let's jump in. Have you ever heard the expression we teach the best that which we need to learn the most? Well um this week I have had the opportunity to notice that the thing you know there's this thing I talk with people about all the time about um the greatest gift that we can give our team is to hold them to their greatest potential and their greatest possibility and that the great the the most direct Pathway to being able to grow our business is to be able to grow our team and one of the things that I got to notice this week about myself is I I kind of was facing this breakdown of realizing that that my need to control so many things about my business and what I do and how I function week in and week out has created this um a an experience for me of not having very much fun in my business and feeling like I'm just go from one thing to the next to the next to the next like this long like kind of checklist of to-dos and that everything is funneling through through me because I've needed to hold on to so much control and the thing that I realized is that I wanted to make a different choice I don't want to have this experience anymore of not having fun in my business I don't want to have the experience of um feeling like I'm spending all of my days with the stuff and have no room and no space for creativity and being able to even just stop when I notice something and record a video that's just based on like a real life uh experience and a real life example and uh so what I did last week is I decided that I was going to shift that and I was going to change that and I was pretty nervous because I also knew that what it meant was I was going to have to let go of some control I was going to have to stop doing some things and I was going to have to trust my team more and I had a lot of apprehension about sitting down and talking with um there's two people on my team Rebecca and Dortha who are amazing human beings who I've worked with for a long time I have an enormous amount of respect and appreciation for them what I realized is I've been playing this small game with them that I have been the one who had to be in Troll and driving everything and I was treating them like helpers now you got to know like if you know me you know that I talk all the time about how that's not a useful way to lead and that it's not empowering to the people around us when we treat them like helpers but I realized that's exactly what I've been doing with my team and so I was a little bit nervous about having this conversation with them about hey I really want to shift some things and I want to open up a dialogue with you about us collaborating together about taking this next step in in our business together and shifting some things around and I re and I would like and and requesting that you would love you to take on a bigger role in that and I would love for you to contribute more to that and I want to hear your thoughts and your input and I want to let you let your own Brilliance shine and and that was the conversation I had with them yesterday and I got to tell you um like I said I was a little bit nervous about having the conversation and as we started talking and I started talking about the shifts that I wanted to make and how I wanted to be different and I have wanted us to to start to create the next iteration of our business but together and not have it be just about me driving the process and controlling it and I was so delighted as we started to talk and we started to um brainstormed together that I could see like the lights go on for them and how they were excited at the possibility of contributing more and um and the the content of what it is that we were talking about wasn't so important as it was that afterwards as I reflected on the conversation and as I even thought about recording this video I thought oh my gosh this is what I talk to people about all the time about this is our Pathway to being able to build businesses where um we have more free time where we get to do more of what we love to do and have more joy in our work and that ultimately it's also the pathway to more profits on our bottom lines and um so I just I wanted to share that with you and I wanted to say uh that that um I'm learning and um that I I hope that maybe there's something that you're hearing and seeing about this for yourself and your business and and it started with this question of what can I let go of it started with the question what can I stop doing what is it that's no longer do I do I no longer need to hold on to in control and what can I trust my team with and you know there's this thing of there's there's delegating and there's empowering other people there's then there's a version of it that's like abdicating I'm just like I'm lobbing it over there without you know just to get it off my plate well that's not what I that's not what my intention is and that's not what I recommend that you do like it uh you know we're we're formulating what is the structure look like for being able to stay on the page same page and it also requires that I just trust and and the thing that you know and I'm going to keep recording about this because we're in an exploration stage about this we're meeting again next week and as we do we're going to talk about okay what are the next pieces and and how do we be clear about what Our intention is and our desired outcome is together in this in this new iteration so um so I'm going to keep recording about that as going along and uh and hopefully you'll find this to be valuable and useful for you in your leadership Journey as you're looking at how do I grow my team how do I let go of control how do I have maybe that initial conversation about um inviting people to step up to their next greatest level of contribution and how do you and how do we stop having to be the conduit in the middle and the control of everything that happens in our businesses um all right so I'll keep you posted um and I'm going to leave you with a quote um I love this quote by Marian Williamson and it says you playing small doesn't serve the world there's nothing enlightening about shrinking so that others won't feel insecure around you as you let your own light shine you indirectly give others permission to do the same again that's a quote by Marian Williamson thanks for listening today and I look forward to seeing you next time on the profit Builder unscripted