Ep 29. How to Avoid Becoming Your Team’s Worst Nightmare

Having a team can be a game changer for business, but if you’re not organized it can quickly turn into a horror story. In this episode, host Phylicia shares four things that business owners and entrepreneurs can do to avoid becoming their team’s worst nightmare.

About Phylicia

Phylicia Pough, MBA is a wife, mom of 1 daughter and an entrepreneur. For over 10 years, Phylicia has been behind the scenes of businesses and ministries, keeping things organized. Her journey started in Administration and developed into Systems & Automation Consulting/Strategy. 

Her latest venture is The Mom CEO Suite which is a community for the modern day mom in business that curates experiences and safe spaces for mompreneurs. The Mom CEO Suite also automates business and podcasting processes for mompreneur service providers.

Connect with Phylicia

Facebook: Phylicia Pough

Instagram: @PhyliciaPough

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/phyliciapough/

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Website: themomceosuite.com

Instagram: @themomceosuite

Join The Mom CEO Suite Facebook Group

Join The Mom CEO Suite Email Community

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Transcript
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You are now tuned in to the Mom c e O Suite

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Podcast. I'm your host, Felicia wife,

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mom, and entrepreneur. In this podcast, I'll be sharing my

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mompreneur journey along with strategies that will help you build your

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online business operations in a sustainable way.

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The goal is to help you build a business that fits into your lifestyle as

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a mom who values putting family first. We will also hear the

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experiences and expertise of other moms with

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service-based businesses. You'll get a peek into our journeys, so

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you'll know that you are alone. Motherhood gets hard,

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entrepreneurship gets hard, but together we can

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do hard things. Welcome to this.

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Hey friends. Welcome to another episode today. We're going to be talking

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about how to avoid becoming your teams.

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Worst nightmare. Nail at the suite, a part of our

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framework. For building your online business in a sustainable way

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is team building. And having a team, it can be

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such an asset to your business, but on the flip

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side, a lot of horror stories can come along with having

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a team. And if you, as the business owner, you don't have your

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things in order, then it's going to be the team member. That's going to be

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having these horror stories about you and your business. And we want to

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avoid that at all costs. So I'm just going to be sharing

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four things that you can do to kind of

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avoid that. And this is just based on my experience being

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behind the scenes in businesses. For years, I did

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do some VA work, um, earlier on in my

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entrepreneurial career. And so I've seen a good amount

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of things behind the scenes of businesses. So again, I'm gonna share these four

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things. Now, when I say team. I'm not saying

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necessarily that you need to have full time employees or a

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full staff like me. For example, I don't have full-time employees

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or full staff. I outsource things. On a project

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by project basis or just depending on what's going on in my business.

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I have certain contractors that I use for certain things like graphics

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or updates to the website. Well, for now I have

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lots of things automated in my business, so it's not a need. So

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again, think about where you are in your business, what your need

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is and build your team from there. But we'll talk about.

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specifics about team-building in another episode. Okay.

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So let's get into these four things. How

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you can avoid becoming your team's worst nightmare. So number one,

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you want to establish and maintain

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clear communication. Now in order to do

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this, you need to collaborate with your team member to

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define what this really means. You cannot have an expectation

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for communication without. Expressing that to the team

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member. Okay. So you both need to be on the same page. so what is

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your communication going to look like? Is this

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going to be a weekly zoom call, or will you be able

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to communicate throughout the week during your business hours or

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one? Slack or a boxer. or

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are you going to communicate via email and then

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establish what the cadence for your communication

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is going to be? So are you communicating daily or just weekly?

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And along with that also are the boundaries that are going to be in

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place. In terms of your communication. So will you be

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able to. So all of these are things for you to

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consider as you are establishing what clear

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communication looks like. But not only do you need to establish it,

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but you also need to maintain it. And this

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is one of the things that I have seen in my experience is

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that consistent communication. Becomes a

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problem. And when there is lacking or

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inconsistent communication, then that leaves a room for

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problems and challenges to arise in.

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The relationship, but also in the business as well. So that's

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the first thing you went to establish and maintain clear communication

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and make sure you are collaborating with your team member to define what that

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really means. Okay. Number two is you want to

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avoid scope creep. You hear this term a lot when it

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comes to clients. So the client

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may have hired a business owner to do a particular

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thing. And as the project. Progress's

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they want to add little things along the way. That

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were not a part of the initial proposal

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or initial agreement of the project. Now from

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a team perspective, this can happen as

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well. If you, as the business owner, Bring someone

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on to your team. And then once you have

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hired them for a particular role or task,

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once they're on board, you start asking them to do other

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things. So let's just say you hire them to do your social

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media marketing. Then, if you began to

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ask them to do other things like, oh, can you do

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email marketing? This typically happens if this is a, uh, virtual

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assistant. But you start asking other things. Can you do

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email marketing? Can you, update the

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website, right? So this is scope creep. And this is very

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frustrating to the person that you have hired because they

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have the expectation that they are going to be doing one

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thing. And now you are asking them to do

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more and it becomes even more of a challenge when you are not

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offering as the business owner. To compensate them for this

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additional. scope of work that you are asking them.

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To handle. And so to avoid scope creep, you want

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to have clearly defined roles and responsibilities.

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You want to start this from the time you put out your job

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description. So in the job description, You want to be

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very clear about the role that you are

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hiring for and the specific tasks that this

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person is going to be responsible for in order to do

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that, of course you need to, really.

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Identifying where the gaps are. And what the

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role needs to be, but. Clearly define

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your roles and responsibilities so that you can avoid

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scope creep. Okay next.

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Number three, and this will also kind of help you to avoid scope

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creep, but it's also number three on our list here is that

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you want to have SLPs available. SLPs are standard

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operating procedures. And so again, SLPs are the

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blueprint for how your business operates. They

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outline how tasks are performed. And when you

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have SLPs in your business, this can help you

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have a smoother and more efficient onboarding

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experience. and this is very important because if you don't

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have a good onboarding experience, this will kind

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of diminish. Your reputation This also, again, as I mentioned will

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help you to eliminate scope creep. And it can help you to

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improve your retention rate for your team

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members. Because again, the problems that arise are that,

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somebody coming on, if you don't have SLPs, or if you haven't clearly defined their

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role, Then they're coming on. It's disorganized.

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they are feeling like they don't know what they are supposed to be doing.

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on a day-to-day basis, they don't have any guidance. And so

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SLPs really help with guiding them,

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from day one, from onboarding all the way through

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until. whenever it's time for them to offboard, it

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helps them to understand how the tasks are supposed to be

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performed according to your, your business

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blueprint. And again, it just makes things go a lot

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more smoother and efficient. Now, if you are needing

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support with your SLPs, make sure you click the link and the show

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description so you can get the details about our upcoming two

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day SOP sprint. All right now, finally,

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last in our list. Number four is that you want to find the balance

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between micromanaging and

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abdicating. So micromanaging is let's just say you

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hire somebody. And you are constantly

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checking in. You're constantly. Just

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you're overbearing and you are going outside of the

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boundaries of the established communication that you have

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set. So you don't want to be a micromanager. It

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can seem like you don't trust them. But you also

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don't want to abdicate and abdicating is when you

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might bring a team member on and you just totally

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Relinquish your responsibilities or your

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duties and you give them no guidance. You pretty much just give them.

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And the whole pie and say, here, this is your thing

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now without any type of guidance, And so. You want

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to be able to find the balance between the two to where you

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are letting this team member know that you have

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some level of trust in them, right. That they can handle the

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tasks. But that you are also going to not just

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leave them out there, that you are going to be available.

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You or another team member that somebody is going to be available.

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To guide them throughout the process or to be

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available. For feedback or questions that they might

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have. Okay. So again, As a

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quick recap, how can you avoid becoming your team's

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worst nightmare? Number one you want to establish and

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maintain clear communication. You

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want to avoid scope creep? You want to

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have SLPs available. And then finally you want to

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find the balance between micromanaging and

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abdicating. I hope that this was helpful for you. Send me a message

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on Instagram and let me know which one of these four things was most

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impactful for you. And I will see you in the next

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episode. Thank you for listening to the Mom C e O Suite

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Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, can you do us a favor?

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Leave a review on iTunes and share with other moms in business

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like you. Help us spread our message and empower others who are

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