Do You Have the Bench Strength to Slow Down?
If you want to slow down, whether for personal or professional reasons, unless you plan to sell your practice, you need bench strength. If you don’t have enough bench strength:
- You haven’t hired enough people,
- You haven’t hired the right people, and/or
- You haven’t sufficiently trained and developed the people you’ve hired.
What to do?
Hire. First, get clear about the kind of person or people you want and need to hire. What are your “must haves, nice-to-haves and dealbreakers?”
What skills are necessary for the position you want to fill? What skills must your candidate come with and what can be trained?
What behavioral traits and attitudes must your candidate have to fit into your organization? Be careful here. Don’t look for clones and reject anyone who’s “different” from you and your current team. Diversity brings fresh ideas and new viewpoints. Reliability, follow-through, inclusiveness, honesty, integrity, responsibility are a few traits that might be must haves for your candidates.
What are your nice-to-haves? Maybe your candidate already has experience or training that you won’t need to provide. Or maybe they enjoy training others, a skill that isn’t necessary for the position, but would be an asset.
What are your dealbreakers? They might be the opposite of the must-have traits. Additional possibilities include the lack of necessary experience, unwillingness to learn or the inability to work the hours you require.
Train and Develop. Developing people on your time requires an investment of time and money. You’re busy. I get it. But, if people are to take work off your shoulders, potentially one day step into your role, they must learn how to do it and some things are best learned from you.
Take the time to identify what has made you successful. What might be critical or helpful for your up-and-coming talent? What can best be taught by you? Take the time and find the ways to pass that wisdom and knowledge on.
?What can be taught by others? Much can be learned in continuing education classes. Advise your people to select their classes wisely, strategically, rather than simply finding an offering that fits their calendar or is available when their deadline is nearing. Encourage them to select classes that fit the needs and opportunities before them.
Coaching can be a highly effective source of development. It can provide new information, including leadership, delegation, effective communication and much more and it can support the learning your people are getting from you and others.
Hire the best, then invest time and resources into their training and development.
More bench strength will give you the freedom to slow down and do more of what you want to do, professionally and personally.