The Stable Team Strategy with Emily Hawkins | DFS 328

Welcome to Destin for success. I'm your

host. Jennifer Takagi, and today I'm honored to have a truly

amazing woman. Emily Hawkins, Emily like has created quite the

business career in corporate and then walked away and started her

own thing is now crushing it as an entrepreneur. Emily, thanks

for being here. I'm so excited to get into this.

Oh my gosh. Jennifer, thank you so much for

having me. I just think that you are so fun and we have so much

in common. And yes, I did leave the corporate world in 2017 and

I help small businesses to really streamline their

processes, their people and their systems. And if I can do

anything today, it's to help anyone who's listening to

understand that you have everything you need right in

front of you. You have everything you need, and it

doesn't really cost you anything except for maybe some time and

maybe some introspection. And the thing that I really want to

touch on, the thing that I really, really, really want to

share, is this concept of a stable team. So we as a society,

love to talk about how we want to skyrocket the team. We want

to have a productive team. We want to have a profitable team.

We want to have money. And I don't know, Troy the things, all

the things right, when, in reality, what do you have to

have before you have any of that? Some sort of stable

structure to put all of that greatness on, and we miss that.

And my favorite word stable, if you take the s off, it's table,

right? And table is just a very secure spot that you feel

comfortable, and you know to either work on or put plates on,

put dishes on that are, you know, kind of scary, connect

with people on, think about all the amazing things we do on a

table. So it only makes sense that the root of stable is

table. So I want to share an acronym with you. I love an

acronym, and it is stable in how to build your team. And this

really does fit. If you are a business owner, you have one

person on your team. You have 30 people on your team. If you are

a middle manager in the corporate world, it really does

fit no matter what. And this was built on things that I did when

I was in the corporate world. And then, of course, took and

help businesses now do so stable. The first letter is S,

and it is for seen. So S, E, E, N. And what I mean here is your

employees feel seen. They feel that they have a voice and that

they can properly give you feedback. So I know many of us

ask for that feedback, and we don't like what we hear, and we

do it anyway. We do whatever we want anyway. Well,

unfortunately, that erodes your trust, which is actually the

next letter. So the T in stable is trust. It erodes the trust on

your team if you allow people to give their opinions, and you

utilize that, you're starting to empower your team, and they will

trust you. Other ways of building trust is making sure

that they have everything they need to do their job that

actually builds trust. So providing SOPs. So that's a

really fancy word for standard operating procedures, or what I

like to call some other person. I call it some other person

because I want some other person to go do the thing. So it's the

instructions for some other person, but guidance, making

sure that they can fail, learn and grow. If you trust your team

to fail, learn and grow. It is amazing what can happen. Another

way of building trust is to show up on time, and if you are going

to be late, telling someone, I know this sounds so freaking

basic, but it's amazing how we would do this to a superior. But

when we think about our team. We're like, Yeah, they won't

care for late, yes, but you want them to show up late, or you

want them to show up on time, not late. So I just want to make

sure that we understand that if we want people to trust us, we

have to show them the same level of trust, and that means

trusting their time.

I just, I have to just interrupt for half a

second here, I know you're on a roll, and I love this that

showing up on time is very important for me and for the

audience. I'll be transparent here. I had to email Emily, and

I was like, my call is going late. I'm going to be 10 minutes

late. I'm so sorry, because I hate to be late. My mom always

said, winners are on time. Losers are late. Winners have a

full day. Gas losers are sitting on the side of a road so like

that was like, ingrained into me, but I had a boss who would

show up anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes late, and we're all

sitting around the conference room table waiting for her to

have her staff meeting, and I'm sitting there thinking,

everybody at this table makes over 80,000 a year, and like,

just lost money, lost money, lost money, lost money. So yeah,

that time thing, that's a big one. How did you

and what I say, what I absolutely loved is that

you sent me a note. And the reason I love that is because I

made sure not to join for those 10 minutes. And I actually was

meeting with my team over our Slack channel, and we were

getting other things done. So by letting me know ahead of time

that, to me, is not being late, right? That's just common

courtesy. And like, Hey, this is about to happen, so let me

prevent it, and your team really deserves that same courtesy for

the exact same reason that you just mentioned you're just

creating very expensive paper weights by not showing up on

time. So I just feel like that's incredibly important. So the

next one that I want to talk about is ability. So the A is

ability. I want the people on your team to be the expert, not

you. I want you to be the expert at whatever it is you do your

zone of genius. But I am almost positive that scheduling

meetings is not your zone of genius, that creating a Google

doc is not your zone of genius. There is somebody on your team.

I have somebody on my team that does data analytics. This girl

rocks. She is 100 times better than me. I think, I just think

she is phenomenal. And it's not even that she somehow just is

miraculously smart. She asks really powerful questions and

spends a lot of time chewing on things before she brings it back

to me. That's time that I don't have, right? If I put something

together, I'm probably going to throw it together. It's going to

be last minute, because I got so many other things going on, and

all of a sudden, I've probably caused more work for her and

other people of the team. And instead of just entrusting her,

giving letting her shine and letting her ability come out.

Another way to let this ability come out, trusting people with

the work and not doing it for them or around them, is to

positively gossip. Love some positive gossip. I just did it.

I just told all y'all lovely people about this person that

you don't know. Her name is Aaron Lacher. If you, if you go

on LinkedIn, you can find her. She's phenomenal. I'm just going

to do some good gossiping right now about this girl and how

amazing she is woman. She's a woman. She's not a girl that is

positive, right? And I told you exactly what she did, that she

did well, so I didn't just say that Aaron was a good person,

which she is that Aaron is awesome. And I'm using air

quotes here, Aaron is awesome. That is not helpful, that's not

actually good gossip, positive gossip is saying Aaron asks

great questions and spends hours in documents and reports,

digging into the data so that our business is better informed.

And I feel so lucky to have her. That is good gossip. So go

spread some good gossip today. I bet you know people that you can

spread good gossip about if you don't go spread it about your

spouse or your children. I just feel like that's a that's a

missed opportunity there as well. So the next one is

boundaries. Boundaries, boundaries. We were actually

talking about this just a few minutes ago. I am recovering

from suffering with boundary issues, meaning, if you are a

client, I will give you all my time, and I will do all the

things that's not helpful. And the reason it's not helpful is

if I act like that, well, poop rolls downhill, and I have a

team of people that then that trickles on too, and I care

deeply that Aaron that I just mentioned, and Jessica, who's on

my team, have families. They have things outside of working

with me. I know it's hard to believe that the people that

work with you have anything other than you in their lives

and they're thinking about other things, but yes, friends, they

do have other things. And so with that being said, make sure

that you know what their schedules are. Make sure that

you know that if somebody has a basketball game, they they're

coaching their son's game that they need to leave right at

five. Make that happen. Honor those boundaries. And another

way to honor those boundaries is ask them about career

advancement before just giving it to them. When I was in the

corporate world, I unfortunately this was a. Hard lesson learned.

Had someone on my team. Her name was Rachel. Rachel was fabulous.

She was a rock star, she was solid. She was everything that I

wanted to groom into being more of a leader on the team. So I

started pushing her more, and I started giving her more, and I

was like, Oh, she's just going to do so great. She came in my

office crying, threw down her notice on my desk and left. And

that was the end of Rachel. And the reason is, is because we

never had the conversation about this promotion that I was

grooming her for. She said, You never let up on me. All you do

is tell me what I'm doing wrong, which was what I thought was

coaching, not It's not coaching. And only after she left did

other co workers tell me that she and her wife were trying to

have a child and that she wanted to stay right in the position

she was in because she was going to be a mom and wanted something

stable? Well, I never had that conversation with her. I assumed

just so dangerous that she wanted what I wanted, which was

the next level. And understanding those boundaries

and having those conversations with your team to understand, do

you want to step up more? Do you want to work more hours? Do you

want to travel or not, and being okay with that. So honoring

those boundaries, to me is incredibly, incredibly

important. I had

a situation like that, sorry to interrupt.

No, no, no. I was in the federal government, and at this next

level, it was a non supervisory position, but it was a senior

position, and your position description was you would take

on harder projects, and you would help other people if they

had a harder project that wasn't like hard enough to come to you,

but they needed some guidance. So this woman got the promotion.

She was amazing. I was very happy for her, because I surely

didn't want the job. And then one day, one of the bosses came

in and said, anybody in this senior position, you're now a

team leader. She did not do as well at a team leader as a

senior project manager, and so blah, blah, blah, I made acting

supervisor, and then I applied for the job, and I'm being

interviewed, and I said something that sparked this

conversation, and the big boss who caused that all to happen,

and demanded it happen? Said, you brought that up. So camera

froze. You brought that up. So, like, Why do you think she

didn't do well? Like, I thought she was a great employee, and I

looked at him and I said, she is a great employee, and she's

excellent at being a senior person. She never asked to be a

team lead. A team lead is the worst position in any

organization, because you're expected to hold everyone

accountable, but you're not a manager, so therefore you can't

actually hold them accountable. So you put her in a complete

lose, lose situation, and she didn't even want it. So then I

ended up being her supervisor. She went back to doing what she

did really well, and we are both really happy, like, it worked

out beautifully, but you like you say, we just assume somebody

wants the next thing. She was like, when they announced I was

supervisor, she was the first one to say, you could not have

picked a better person. And she was like, I did not want it. I

didn't even know how to do her job. But to be a good

supervisor, you don't have to know every little thing. So

that's big, and the other part of boundaries that this just

happened last week. I was at an event, and it was a weekend, and

it started on a Sunday, and at the lunch break, one of my

friends said, Man, I'm getting all these text messages from one

of my employees on a Sunday about all these potential

problems and things coming up. And I texted him back, and I

said, Dude, it is 10 o'clock on Sunday morning. Enjoy your

family in your day. And I was like, Man, that was the right

thing to do. Like you have to model that behavior. Somebody

else at the table said, You don't understand. You worked for

the government, and I went well, but I was corporate first for

years, and here's the deal, you don't make people work weekends,

unless it's a life or death job, like they're even if they're

not, like their salary versus hourly. And I said, you have to

set a boundary. I said, when you were she goes. I used to text my

employees all the time, all the time, and I went and was any of

it life or death? Uh, like, could you not have just made a

list of things you wanted to talk to him about on Monday? Or

did you really have to interrupt their weekend time with their

family? We had very opposing views on this. I'm just going to

say I think I was right.

Well, I will take it a step I will take it a step

further. I get some of the best ideas on the weekends. And I

know that outlook and slack and Gmail all offer this feature.

I'm pretty sure other email providers do as well. But those

three platforms, I know you can write anything you want, and you

can schedule that sucker for Monday morning. And I do that

all the time. Yeah, I will even create something. We have a

Slack channel that's just for our weekly goals, and I will

create something and then I'll go back in and edit it like

three times before that Monday morning, and it's a better, more

fleshed out thought than it was if I interrupted them on

Saturday morning when I had this hair brained idea. So agreed.

100% agree with that, unless the building is on fire, someone is

dying, which, in my business, that's not ever going to happen.

So we're good, you know, I don't need anything on the weekends.

So we can wait. Yes, exactly, exactly. Okay, so that was the B

for boundaries. Okay, yes, so now we're on L so we've done

scene, we've done trusted, we've done ability, we've done

boundaries, and the next one, oh, we're gonna get Woo, woo,

love. I do think you should love your employees, not the way that

your mom loves you, or something like that, not the way that you

love your spouse or your children. That's a bridge too

far. But there are actually other ways that you can love

your team. But the thing is, if you've ever read, read The Five

Love Languages, except for physical touch, like I'm saying,

don't, don't go there. Those actually apply to your team. And

there are acts of service, gifts, quality time and words of

affirmation. But here's the thing, if you give somebody

gifts that really just wants time with you, it's going to

fall flat. So understanding what that person wants. I had

somebody that absolutely love to just sit in my office and would

sit there endlessly, if I would let them. So I realized that I

needed to schedule time with this person and make sure that

they knew that that was their time with me, and we would

discuss whatever they needed as soon as I did that this person

disappeared because they knew that that time that we hadn't I

was very honoring of that time. I did not cancel that meeting or

anything like that, but quality time meant a lot to this

individual. Other people do love the gift cards, you know, to

Starbucks or whatever else. And other people are acts of service

people. And this is where, you know, I'm making this up, but

Jennifer's going on vacation. Well, Jennifer, you're going on

vacation for, you know, next week. Let me pick up a couple of

your tasks, and all the sudden, that's huge, right? It's like,

oh my gosh, I'm not going to come back to, I'll still come

back to a mountain of emails, but most of them will have been

handled, and that just feels really good. So those acts of

service mean so much. And then words of affirmation. Sometimes

it's emails, handwritten notes. It can be public announcements,

where you have a team meeting and you make a big deal out of

somebody. Some people don't like that, so just be real clear

about what that is. I had an employee that hated words of

affirmation, and they were like, it was like their anti love

language, and they were very much acts of service. And the

first time we interacted, she actually said this to me, I

thought you were blowing smoke, like I just didn't think

anything you did or said was real or that what you did. I

mean, she was very, very upfront. Love the candid I love

candid people. So I was very on board with this. And she said,

until I saw your actions, and then I realized, Oh no, she's

the real deal. She's following through. She communicates well.

And so this person, I I'm assuming, I think a lot of us

have had a lot of words given to us, but not have a lot of action

to follow. So just know that when you love someone at work,

make sure you're doing it in a dialect, a love dialect that

makes sense to them, that is crucially important. We have a

manager like people would get service awards for years of

service, and we had a new boss come in, and the that was the

position who would give these awards. And he came to me, and

he goes, Hey, this employee has three so that was like,

you get them in five year increments, right? So

it was over at least 10 years she had not gotten her awards.

They were in his office, in the cabinet, and he goes, Why was

she never given her award? She still worked there. She was

still there. And I said, Oh, the last guy's rule was, if you

didn't come to the all employees meeting and walk up in front of

everybody to get your award, you didn't get it. And so she would

look at the agenda for the all employees meetings, and if it

said awards, service, awards, she wouldn't go. And so he held

them all, and he goes, Well, meet me at her desk in five

minutes. Is, you know, she at her desk, or is she out in the

field or whatever? And I was like, nope, she's there. So he

came over with all three of them, and I circled around

behind him, and he said, Excuse me. I'm so sorry. These are

late. Here are your awards. And stuck his hand out to shake her

hand and hand her the awards. And she just started crying. And

she was not a cry person, but her awards had been withheld

because she refused and didn't want to go in front of the

office, which is what this other guy wanted. So since he wanted

to be recognized in front of the office, he thought everybody

did. So I just have to hammer that point home a little bit

that that's a critical thing like me, of course, call me in

front of the whole office and tell me how great I am Yes, and

hand me the microphone like Yes. Some people do not like that,

and you have to honor it 100%

and you just made me think of a time that I won an

award. I was so excited, and I was wearing heels, and my heel

fell into a data port in the floor, and I face planted in

front of a room full of people. And I was like, Yeah, I it was

so embarrassing, but I got up fast, and I was like, I

literally do fall all the time. And to this day, I know people

that worked at that organization, and they were

like, that was all time best award I'd ever seen. So I really

Saturday

night skit when you jump up and go to,

yes, that's basically what I tried to do,

and it hurt too. So I was trying to be like, I'm fine. And I was

like, Oh my God, it was so embarrassing. But they just made

me think of that well, and the final one is exactly what we're

doing right now. It's enjoyment. And again, I think love and

enjoyment are things we're not supposed to say about work,

right? We're not supposed to use the L word, and we're not

supposed to enjoy what we do, because the word is work. I

don't believe this. I actually believe that sharing time with

people learning about, you know, what their kids are into, what

they enjoy, for hobbies, going to lunch, having a day where you

have an off site retreat. You know, something relaxed is

really fun. I mean, I love what I do now because my team, we're

remote, and one of our rules is like, we're all probably showing

up with no makeup on, and like, workout clothes or PJs or

whatever you want. It doesn't matter. And that's really fun,

because I feel like we're in a better mindset. And we typically

at some point in the meeting, if it's not the beginning, the

middle or the end, somewhere in there, we'll talk about what our

kids are doing and what's going on in our lives, and either have

collective sorrow, aka summer or or excitement, because, you

know, school starting, or, oh my gosh, Halloween is coming up, or

whatever, so having that moment, and also like funny memes that

we send each other, I really love that there's something

called pebbling that I don't think we do enough as a society.

So pubbling is where you see something funny on social media,

a video, a post, and you send that link to someone. So that is

called pebbling. It's an actual term, and I find that people I'm

closest to, which happen to be my co workers, I love sending

them reels, especially funny ones of like, you know, team

members and how awesome they are. There's this one of Maya

Rudolph right now where she's like, that's my lady. That's my

lady. And I keep sending that because I just think it's

hilarious. So anytime they do anything good, they're like, Oh,

she's going to send me Maya Rudolph again, but it's true, I

probably will. So just having that enjoyment, all of that is

really important. So stable in order to really grow anything,

it's got to be stable first. And so when you see your employees,

you trust them, you believe in their abilities, and you honor

it with the work that they deserve to have and own. You

honor those boundaries. You love them the way that they want to

be loved, and you create a place that everybody enjoys.

I mean, that's an amazing team. So oh

my gosh, this has been so much fun and and the

one thing that has happened since i. Became an entrepreneur,

and anybody listening that used to work for me, let me just

apologize now. I learn more of these things, and the more I

learn, the more I think, wow, there are so many things I could

have handled so much differently, if only we had had

more training, if only there had been more opportunities. Because

I signed up for every training possible, because I just loved

all of it. I even would do training on my own time and pay

the fees to go because I wanted to be better. And you see

something like this, and you hear how it can make your

organization better, and it's like, I wish I had that then. So

if somebody's listening and they either have a small team, or

they want to build their own skills, or they work for an have

their own organization, big or small, how do they get hold of

you? How do you work with people like, how does all that happen?

Emily? So

you can find me on any platform at Emily

Hawkins, the number for the letter U. So my handles on all

of those platforms are Emily Hawkins, the number for the

letter U. My website is Emily Hawkins, for you.com and how I

work is I start with having a conversation with you about

where you specifically are in your business, and what kind of

growth and changes you would like to see. The majority of

people I work with, we start getting out of overwhelm first.

I like to say that for a living, I run to get on already moving

busses, because there's no stopping, right? So typically,

it's figuring out what are the biggest rocks that need to move

in the business, dealing and strategizing for that specific

area first and then covering the other six areas. Because there

are six areas that your business. I'm making a wheel

sign with my hand. They're all connected. My goal is, though,

is to deal with the biggest one first that will actually improve

your business as fast as possible. And actually, even

without talking to me, I offer a diagnostic that you as a

business owner can take. So if you go to Emily Hawkins for

you.com/performance you can take an eight question diagnostic

about your business, about your team, and it will spit out a

report for you of exactly which area you should focus on first

and how to do it. I give you three small shifts that you can

make today inside of your business that will increase

profitability, increase productivity and remove whatever

waste is happening, whether it's wasting time, whether it's

wasting money, wasted efforts. There's a lot of that going on,

so it will help you with all of those things. And then, of

course, if you want to book a call with me, you can do that as

well.

Oh my gosh. This has been lovely. I so

appreciate all of your insight as we wrap up final words for

the audience,

wherever you are, whatever you are doing, I today,

I want you to take that hard thing and break it down into one

small action that you can take today, because every single one

of us has one small action in us, something that will take you

10 minutes and it will get the ball rolling. And momentum is

one of the most powerful things that we have, but it's just

starting. So whatever that big task is, that big project, or,

you know, building the team, or whatever, what is the one thing

you can do today that will be 10 minutes.

I love that. And calling myself the 12 minute

success coach, I love that. 10 minutes. 12 minutes. It doesn't

make me any difference. I love that. Thank you so much for your

time, Emily. I look forward to connecting with you again. And

to everybody else, I'm Jennifer Takagi with destin for success.

I look forward to connecting with you soon. You.