Best Of: Empowering Employees to Take Ownership

In a recent conversation with a contractor, they shared this frustration with me: “I just wish my team would take more ownership.”

When we looked closer, every decision was still routing back through him.

That’s the trap.

When leaders hold too much control, employees default to waiting for direction.

In this episode, we talk about the shift that helps teams move from “helpers” to real contributors.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why holding control is the cause of people not taking ownership
• How to delegate in a way that people take ownership
• Why treating employees like helpers limits accountability
• How to shift those things so your employees take more ownership

Simple takeaway:
Ownership grows when leaders stop carrying every decision.

Watch the video: https://youtu.be/o9PbIHyI0R0?si=zbxq_fHvB2a_6-Pp

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

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

Transcript

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 jobs. So let's jump in.

Have you ever heard the expression, we teach the best that which we need to learn the most. Well, 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 the greatest gift that we can give our team is to hold them to their greatest potential and their greatest possibility in that 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 kind of was facing this breakdown of realizing 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 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 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 wanna have this experience anymore of not having fun in my business. 

I don't wanna have the experience of ⁓ 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 experience on a real life example. ⁓ 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. 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, there's two people on my team, Rebecca and Dorothe, 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 control and driving everything, and I was treating them like helpers you gotta 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 wanna shift some things and I want to open up a dialogue with you about us collaborating together about taking this next step in our business together and shifting some things around. I would like and am 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 that was the conversation I had with them yesterday. And I gotta tell you, 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 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 brainstorm together that I could see like the lights go on for them and how they were excited at the possibility of contributing more. And in 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, 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 ⁓ 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 ⁓ so I just, wanted to share that with you and I wanted to say that I'm learning and that I hope that maybe there's something that you're hearing and seeing about this for yourself and your business. 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 no longer need to hold onto and control? And what can I trust my team with? And there's this thing of there's delegating and there's empowering other people. Then there's a version of it that's like abdicating. I'm just like, I'm lobbing it over there without, just to get it off my plate.

Well, that's not what my intention is. And that's not what I'd recommend that you do. ⁓ We're formulating what is the structure look like for being able to stay on the same page. And it also requires that I just trust. 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 gonna talk about, okay, what are the next pieces? And how do we be clear about what our intention is and our desired outcome is together in this new iteration? So I'm gonna keep recording about that as I'm going along. 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 ⁓ 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? All right, so I'll keep you posted ⁓ and I'm gonna leave you with a quote.

⁓ I love this quote by Marianne Williamson and it says, 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 Marianne Williamson. Thanks for listening today and I look forward to seeing you next time on The Prophet Builder. unscripted.