(Time to read this Blog is about one minute)
Before we get to the main topic, here are a few things to get you thinking:
- My biz quote of the week:
“Running a business properly is incredibly hard work. But not running it properly is incredibly costly in lost revenue, missed opportunity and personal stress. And, yet, proactively ‘running the business’ is, at best, a low-priority, part-time activity for many business owners.“
…Donald Cooper.
- ‘Working from home’ update. According to a recent New York Times article, 86% of employees are happy working from home and only 1 in 5 want to go back to the office full time.
Now, to this week’s important topic:
Do you have the guts to hire people who know more than you?
As a business owner or manager, many of the people you hire should know much more about their specific area of activity than you do. That’s how you’ll move your business or department, your career and your life forward.
As a leader, your main job is to have a clear Vision of what your business or department commits to become, then to attract the talent needed to make that happen. Then, you need to create a culture of engagement, excellence and integrity, remove obstacles, reward performance…and deal quickly and fairly with non-performance.
Your job is not to know more about everything than everyone else in the place. In today’s complex business world where everything is changing so quickly, the ‘boss as the know-it-all’ is obsolete and deadly.
It takes guts, self-confidence and humility to hire people who know more than you. Then, it takes even more guts, self-confidence and humility to create a culture that encourages respectful debate and courageous conversations so that the business benefits from their expert knowledge. Whether you knew it at the time or not, as a leader or manager, that’s the job you signed up for.
So, the next time you’re hiring, what will you do to make sure that you hire and empower really smart people who can take your business or department to the next level?
That’s it for this week…
Stay safe…live brilliantly!
Donald Cooper
Donald Cooper speaks and coaches internationally on management, marketing, and profitability. He can be reached by email at donald@donaldcooper.com in Toronto, Canada.
