The Profit Builder Unscripted

Result vs. Task - Your Key to Freedom

• Vicki Suiter • Episode 9

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Ever felt lost as a manager, focusing too much on tasks instead of results?

You're not alone. In this episode of "Results vs. Tasks - Your Key to Freedom," I share my journey from being a micromanager to a results-focused leader.

This change made a big difference in my work and life! I'll talk about the problems I faced at first and how a key conversation helped me see leadership differently.

You'll hear about how I changed my approach with my team, which led to better work and more free time for me.

I'll share some easy steps I took to make this change. You'll learn how to help your team take charge and give you better feedback.

This isn't just my story—it's a guide for anyone who wants to lead with confidence and have more freedom in their work.

Tune in to hear more.

Do you have a similar story? Or a tip that changed how you lead? Leave a comment below—I'd love to hear how you're focusing on results to improve your leadership!

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If you love listening to this podcast, please leave a review in Apple Podcasts.


welcome back to the profit Builder unscripted today we're talking about how do you shift out of the role of micromanager and really find more time in your day by learning some really key distinctions about how to manage your team differently all right let's jump in for anybody who's ever managed people we could probably most of us agree that we don't wake up one day just knowing how to manage people and for a lot of people I see that they really struggle with being a leader and a manager and trying to get people to uh do what they say they're going to do follow through be you know take ownership and you know I was thinking about my experience of learning to manage people in my early career and I had I did not enjoy it um I just had a really tough time trying to trying to understand how to motivate people how to get people to produce consistent results how to take ownership but I also had all of this stuff about this thing of I have to work just as hard as my employees do and I have to show that um I'm not asking them to do more than I'm doing and um you know if if they were not performing or I needed them to do something extra like I thought that the way to get them to perform better was to buy them treats or gifts or you know an acknowledgement well I'll say goes a really long way um I just in those early days I like I was trying all these different things I didn't have really great role models that I had worked for that showed me how to be a great leader and to be a good manager and how to inspire people and how to have people be able to produce consistent results and in my early career I didn't really want to acknowledge that um I didn't know what I was doing and so I kind of like you know I just sort of powered through it and when I left my corporate career in um many years ago and um from a job that I was working 60 to 70 hours a weekend and I had a team of six people working for me and I and I just I didn't love it I mean I I en the work part of it but I didn't love all of the rest of the crazy hours and and I didn't enjoy managing people I just found that it was really a struggle and after I started my business about I I was kind of glad that like oh I only have to depend on me it's just me having to you know do the work and I only have to do what I know to do and I don't have to try to motivate or Inspire or you know whatever I was doing to get somebody to to do do work better faster whatever but then four years into starting my own business I found myself back to working 60 to 70 hours a week I was exhausted um at the time I was about to become a single mom I and you know so I just I really did not um relish the whole thought of having to hire somebody I didn't want to disappoint my client ience I really liked that my business was growing I appreciated that but kind of in this dilemma and you know I remember talking to my mom and I was complaining about like I was working so many hours and I don't really want to hire somebody and I'm afraid to hire somebody and what if they don't work out and so much of what I know I've learned through the school Hard Knocks I don't know if I could teach somebody to do what I do and she said listen she said if something happened to Taylor my son would you would you do would you know what would you do if you how would you run your business because I didn't have the luxury of of not working that wasn't part of the equation in my life and I and she just said you know if you had to stay home now understand this was many years ago well before Zoom or you know computers were still new okay and she said you know what would you do if you had to do your business differently and you couldn't go out to clients all the time and I said well obviously i' have to hire somebody and she goes and how would you figure out how to get them to do the work and so we kind of talked through it a bit and I was like oh okay that was actually a really good frame for me to be able to sort of shift my mindset about it of if I had to stay home I would figure out a different way to do it and it made me just look at managing and leading differently and so I started writing down all these things of what do I do with clients and how do you know what are what are all the steps I take what are all the tasks I do and and then I wrote a job description and I started interviewing people and interviewed a bunch of people and then I met Beth and we just HIIT it off instantly we really liked each other we just kind of had this very we actually we came from the same Hometown which was kind of funny because it was all across the country uh but we you know we she just seemed like she was really knowledgeable had the experience I was looking for and I thought okay this is a great fit this is perfect so she when she started working for me I you know introduced her to all of our clients I went through with her and like we were doing review work um financial review work at the time and um and I was like okay you know teaching her all the steps and everything I did did and and then you know couple months in I was like there you go like off you go like you go do it now and um you know as she started to work through you know the list of tasks I'd given her she'd come back and then we'd sit down and go over it and and pretty soon like I realized that the amount of time that it was taking for me to check her work wasn't really saving me much time from what I had done I was basically micromanaging her and then I also noticed that there was this like this like she would come to me with problems and she would say well here's the situation and then I would have to figure out a solution and then she would go and do whatever it is that she did to fix that problem or you know or investigate an issue further and then I also started to get some phone calls from clients that said you know hey she doesn't ask me as many questions as you do are you sure she knows what she's doing like you and I would talk about things and you know we don't talk very much and so that kind of got my radar up I'm like oh like you know is she looking at all the right stuff and so I sort of doubled down at that point and I was like maybe I need to spend more time with her maybe I need to check her work more and so all of a sudden now I was really back to spending like she'd spend a couple hours at a client I'd spend an hour and a half with her going going over what she had done and again a few months pass and I'm like I am no further ahead I'm still working these crazy hours and because I'm still you know in the mix of all of this with her and and I thought you know maybe I just need to let her go maybe this isn't working out like maybe it was just a bad idea and it was around that time I was listening to um I was on tape while I was driving along um I was listening to Steph Cubby's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and he was talking about what motivates people and about empowering people as a leader to take ownership he talking about this whole idea of how do we treat employees and how do we manage people and do we treat them sort of like tools or do we really give them the opportunity to have ownership in their job and it just like the lights went off for me and I started to realize that like with Beth that the issue was me and with all those people who had worked for me in my previous you know corporate career that the issue was me and how I was seeing my role as a leader first of all and second of all how I was operating with them and it it's just like that that light bulb went off and I was like I need to learn more about being a leader I need to learn about being a good leader and I started studying some of the great thought leaders on the topic like you know Jim Collins and um m Gerber and reading all of these books and listening to tapes and I was like oh my Approach of how I was doing things with Beth and how i' done things with other employees was to give them a bunch of tasks and really I've been treating people like helpers as opposed to treating people like they were completely competent and capable to own a result and not giving them really the whole picture and you know what the analogy I use is I I work with predominantly construction industry right and I and I use the analogy that it's kind of like imagine that you don't give your employees the blueprint or the schematic or a budget of how to do a project you just go tell them the scope you know the details to do and then what you end up is you end up having a bunch of people who are helpers and things are inefficient and it takes a really long time and everything goes through you like there's got to be a system to know where you're headed to what the result is you would never start a project without being clear about what the end result is but we do that all the time with employees we're not really clear about what the end result is and even if you look at job descriptions a lot of times what they actually are is more like task lists as opposed to what are like what's the big picture result that we going after and when I started those those realizations started to come to me I looked at how I'd been operating with Beth and then I'd given her this long list of tasks to do and I oriented her to you do this task this task this task but I wasn't orienting her to what's the result what's the blueprint what's the end thing going to look like when you're done and and how and then so that was the first thing is I started to shift her job description which I now call position agreements um because I hold them that they're in agreement about what are the results of that position and I um and I rewrote it and I sat down with her and I went let's talk about what's the results that we're after in this job and then what are some to better tools that we can give you for you being able to give me feedback about what happened happen when you're out there working with a client and that instead of you coming to me with questions I want I'm going to invite you to come with me to me with questions with a solution potential solution like how do you think it should be handled and so we started slowly shifting that relationship and shifting for instead of me micromanaging what she was doing her being really clear about what the result was if she didn't have a question she'd come ask me she had started to do some different reporting and feedback to me to let me know what happened as opposed to me sitting down and working with her for you know an hour and a half to figure it out and then call the client well we worked through this over a several months and as I started to see change happening we went our meetings went from an hour and a half to about 20 minutes to 30 minutes um and really dramatically impacted amount of additional time I had and she started to really be more accountable to all right what am I like what's really my job with this client it's not doing these tasks but it's to make sure that these things happen right like she started looking at where have I cre has I have I achieved the result we're after and if not then she's asking questions of the clients she's asking questions of me we're talking about things and as I started to see this change with Beth I started to implement what I was learning with clients and I was starting to talk with them about the importance of position agreements that are results driven versus task driven and I started to see a dramatic change in their businesses and how they LED their team as well and the thing that it did is not only has it built um a lot of really great leaders and managers but also business owners and leaders who are now not micromanagers and you're out you know I can see how they've shifted from being in the middle of everything to managing the big picture with their team and managing for results versus managing all the particles and pieces that has resulted in in and it did for me so in those next two years with Beth remember I was like ready to I was ready to fire her right she um in those next two years I ended end up moving from working 50 to 60 hours a week to working an average of 35 hours a week and I was very detailed and meticulous in those days about tracking my time and how much I was working whether it was in the office or with clients um and in those next couple of years I had made more in those next two years than I had in any of the four years prior and I had a better quality of life I was able to spend more time with my son I was enjoying what I was doing more um she and I had much better communication and a much better relationship she ended up working for me for almost 10 years one of the best employees I ever had loved working with her and it just that experience taught me so much and I've seen this time in again too is I've worked with clients on how do you start to shift that relationship from having your employees be helpers to actually having them take ownership for a result um I have there's several videos um on YouTube that you can check out of mine um that will you know kind of digs deeper into how do you develop a position agreement or how do you get clear about what those deliverables are and um I think probably I'll be sharing some more in the podcast about uh that journey and how I did that but I wanted to share that with you because you know I just see people um you know we struggle like we don't we we don't wake up one day and just know how to manage and lead people and it and when what I love is that when we can start to um make those distinctions and learn how to um Empower people to own a result versus a task it does this amazing thing because fundamentally as human beings all of us want to have a sense of contribution value belonging mattering right no matter what you do I don't care if you're the labor the janitor or the president like we all fundamentally as human beings have that desire and the thing that I've learned is that when we can tap into that with our employees I don't mean like just like I've told you what to do now I abdicate it it's really you know so much of being a good leader and being able to support your team and being successful is having good feedback and good data that's it's critical so it's not like you just have a conversation and then it's over right it's it took Beth and I a long time and we worked through a lot of The Kinks and and um you know feedback one of the things I say if it's if it can't be measured it can't be managed not by them and not by you so data and feedback is critically important but when you do that and when you invite people to step up to their next greatest level of potential it is a gift that we give people and I don't mean like throw them out there and let them figure it out on their own like probably you and I you know a lot of us did along the way but how do you mentor and guide them and I the thing I found with Beth is that when I got really clear about what the result was like the lights went on for her and and then we started having a different kind of conversation because now we were managing to that blueprint of what what's the criteria for Success um so anyway I hope you have found this to be helpful um uh one thing I would recommend is well two things first of all I would ask if you found this to be valuable please share it um share it with somebody else that you know who is a manager or leader who could maybe use some um some advice or some help and then secondly make sure to check down the out the resources down below um my course and I'm not trying to sell my course but if you want to learn more um by all means check out the um build your dream team course that I offer it's uh it's got some great you know it really walks you through sort of all the details of what I learned all those years ago and what I do have been doing with clients for uh for 30 years now in helping them build great teams all right um thanks for being here today and I'll look forward to seeing you next time on the profit Builder unscripted

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Vicki Suiter

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