Elevate Your Business with Strategic Task Management

Are you overwhelmed by the endless tasks piling up on your plate as a small business owner? Discover how to break free from the "do-it-all" trap and learn the art of effective delegation in this week's People Gardener podcast. Join host Rhonda Delaney, also known as the People Gardener, as she unpacks the importance of placing the right people in the right roles within your team. You'll gain insights into writing accurate job descriptions, identifying team members' strengths, and delegating tasks to improve business operations and employee satisfaction.

In this episode, Rhonda tackles common misconceptions about leadership in small businesses and shares practical strategies to help you lighten your load. From hiring and onboarding to project management, you'll get actionable advice on assessing whether you're the best fit for particular tasks or if someone else on your team could excel in those areas. Tune in to transform your approach and lead your business more effectively, making your role more enjoyable and manageable. Grab your pen and paper—you won't want to miss the valuable tips and perspectives shared in this episode!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Well, hey there, welcome to the People Gardener podcast. I'm Rhonda Delaney, your host, also known as the People Gardener, thrilled to put this podcast together to help small business owners, new business owners, frustrated business owners and aspiring leaders, whether they're inside business or outside. Each week, we bring you some actionable steps so that you can actually improve your skill as a leader. That's what we're about. We're here to help you become a better leader by giving you access to lots of different perspectives. By giving you access to lots of different perspectives. The guests are varied. We're thrilled to have them. Get out your pen, get out your paper and be ready to learn Every single episode. You're going to be able to take something away that you can implement. Are you ready? Let's get to work. Well, hey there. Welcome back to the People Gardener podcast. Happy to have you here. Let's talk about right people, right spot. It's something that I talk a lot about inside my Leader Pro First program and definitely something that we work on inside the Raving Fans Society, looking at it more to those that you hire being the right person in the right spot. But today I want to take it just a little bit different. Look at it. Let's focus on you and are you the right person in the right spot?

Speaker 1: 1:49

And, as a small business owner, so many things fall on your plate and one of the mistakes it's so hard to call it a mistake because often you're just feeling like you have no other choice because there's only one of you and there's so many things to be done and you might not have a big team, let's say. But the mistake is that you believe that you have to do it all. You have to do all of these things, and when you make that choice to do all the things, more often than not the end result is nothing is done. Well, you are feeling completely overwhelmed, you are feeling burdened. Business becomes an absolute drag. You don't even want to have it anymore or do it anymore because it's too much, and the reality is it is too much for one person to do. So I wrote down a number of things that I want you to just take a minute and think is there somebody on my team, an employee that I have right now that would be better suited to take on this role? Let's just kind of start at the beginning here.

Speaker 1: 3:17

You're feeling like you need to hire. How do you figure out what it is that you need this person to do? Do you need to write a job description, a skill description, and for you, the owner, who has kind of been doing everything, are you the best person to actually write out that job description? Do you intimately know what it is that they need to do? Or do you need to talk to somebody on the team who would be directly impacted by this new hire and bounce some ideas off of them, or maybe even hand this over to them, get their perspective on the skill sets needed and what the job description should be? They're in the trenches, they get the feel, they get the vibe, they have a more intimate understanding of what is needed. So maybe you need to move that off your plate. Maybe you need to move that off your plate.

Speaker 1: 4:28

The hiring Are you the best person to do the hiring? Or is there somebody in your organization that is skilled at communication, is skilled at putting people at ease and is discerning about humans, about how people present themselves? There could be somebody that would be perfect for this role. So, yeah, maybe you're not the right person to do the hiring. And then the onboarding and the training yes, you have to be completely involved in setting up the standard operating procedures so that people are onboarded and brought into your company in the way that you want them to. But do you need to do that? Or is there somebody in your organization that would be stellar at it? Think about that's what this episode's for. Think about all of the things and figure out if there's somebody else that could be doing it. So then we've got project management. So, as things go through your business, however, your flow is, is there somebody else that could be watching and managing and putting their hand up when things get a little rough or when some troubleshooting needs to be done? The team building and the recognition yes, you can't get away from that because it's necessary, as you as the business owner, to be connected to your team.

Speaker 1: 6:05

What I'm saying is you don't have to put it all together, you don't have to create the program, you don't have to. You know, book the time in a conference room or in a bowling alley or whatever, like there are people on your team that are probably excel at that. And, yes, you participate and yes, you're all in and you give your support, assessments, thinking of the productivity assessments, feedback. Absolutely, you have to be involved, but again, it doesn't have to be completely on your shoulders. If you've got, you know, 10, 15, 20 employees and you have supervisors or you have floor leads, or maybe you have a manager, help them, train them how to do assessments and what is important for you and feedback. It's so easy because, yes, the buck stops with you and it's so easy to take on all of these things that are important to the business but you don't do.

Speaker 1: 7:24

There's another way of doing it, and that's by putting the right person in the right spot, and you are definitely not the right person for all of these tasks. None of us are, and that's okay. You just have to recognize that you are not the one. And then you've got to work at figuring out who is the right one. You got product development right. You might be thinking that, hey, I've got to come up with it all. Get into your employees' brains. They have all sorts of ideas of things that might work. They're in the trenches, they're talking with the customers, they know what the customers are feeling and wishing and all the rest of that, so let them help. And then, okay, let's get into the financials, the bookkeeping, the financial projections. Yeah, there are bookkeepers out there, there's virtual assistants out there that can help you with so many of these things laying the groundwork and presenting you with information. You're so far beyond the starting point when you actually get this information and it doesn't take you as long or as much brainpower to work your way through it. Let people help you.

Speaker 1: 8:52

Looking at my list here other other things. Oh, the other one was the productivity assessment, like determining whether or not your processes and procedures are actually functional, like they're doing what they're supposed to be doing. Get in there and let your employees help you understand where the roadblocks are. You can fix the roadblock, you can participate in fixing the roadblock, but you're probably not the best person to identify them because you're not in the trenches. You're at your desk, you're the visionary, you're looking at the big picture and you're trusting trusting people to do the work and to give you feedback.

Speaker 1: 9:39

Be okay with not being the right person. Be okay with not being in the right spot, be aware and then make the adjustments so that you get the right person in the right spot, and then what happens is things flow much easier. You have lots of time given back to you, you're not feeling overwhelmed, you're actually having fun in your business and it is being productive and profitable business, and it is being productive and profitable. As you're doing this, you're transforming your employees into raving fans, and those raving fans are the ones that are going to give you freedom in your life and more profit in your business. That's it for this week. We'll talk to you again next week. That's it for this week. We'll talk to you again next week.

Speaker 1: 10:41

Well, thanks for joining me today. Just a quick reminder if you were not on my email list, go to my website, rondadelaneycom, and there's a place there that you can subscribe, keep you up to date on all things people, gardening and leadership and also a reminder that the Raving Fans Society app is available on the Apple Store and the Google Store. I do have a free membership in there that you'll be able to access some of my material, and then there's also a paid membership, and right now it's $49 a month and you will receive access to all of my material, all of the teaching content, including a resource library that will really help you along, as well as group coaching every month and then quarterly bringing in guests that will talk on topics that pertain to small business owners and leadership. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you again next week.