Watch This if Your Team is Frustrating You

One of the things I really struggle with as an entrepreneur when I still struggle with it, but one of the things I really struggled with in the beginning was hiring and training great people. And the reason for that is it’s so as the entrepreneur, you do all the jobs. You know what you expect. You have your standard of excellence that you expect from everybody and you hate. You think you’re being very clear in how you’re communicating the standards to everybody and what you want. You think you’re being clear with it, and yet, time and time again, you will inevitably have people falling short of your expectations and it will breed frustration inside of you. Go, what is happening? Why aren’t they getting this? And you will be very tempted just to swoop back in and solve the problem for them or just solve the problem. And I still do this.

I have to fight my urges to not get involved, to not solve problems, and instead understand that the reason people are not living up to the standard is because I failed to communicate it. I failed to communicate the expectation clearly. So anytime that you’re feeling frustration, discontent, anything, it’s because there’s a gap between your expectations and your reality. And this isn’t just with employees. This is in every aspect of life. If you are frustrated with your loved one, it’s because there’s an unmet expectation. You expected something from them that in reality, you did not get. If you’re frustrated with somebody cutting you off in the street, it’s because you expected them to respect your space and not to get into your way and to not cut you off.

And now they have put you in danger. Now they have done this, and now the reality of your situation does not match your expectation. And now there’s a gap that forms. This is a very buddhist concept, but we need to apply this to our employees and our training procedures to understand when you’re frustrated with people on your team for not living up to your standard, that is not the, that is not the opportunity for you to swoop in and solve the problem. That is an opportunity for you to coach. That is an opportunity for you to step in and recognize that there is a gap in your ability of communicating the expectation. And so what you need to do then is get very clear on what the expectation that was unmet is. So what I like to do is whenever somebody’s friend, whenever somebody has not lived up to a standard, I like to write out what exactly is it that has, like, what is it that I expected to happen? I expected it to be at this standard.
That means this looks like this. This looks like this. This looks like this. Currently, you put this. You gave this to me, and it looks like this. This and this. So this is where we are. There’s a.
There’s a gap between expectation and reality. Here’s what it looks like to bridge the gap from where we are, which is the current reality, to where I expect us to be. And painting that path, like painting the vision for where we’re trying to go and then painting the path of how we get there, that’s what a leader does. And so if you’re feeling frustrated with somebody on your team, and usually when we’re frustrated with people on our team, it’s not just a one time thing. It’s usually a whole litany of things that we’ve failed to train. We’ve let those things go by and kind of pile up. All right, so I want you to sit down. If you have people on your team, or just your team in general, that are failing to live up to your expectations, sit down very clearly and write down what are the things that annoy you about what they’re doing, rank them in levels of importance, and then ask yourself, what? When was the last time I trained my team on these things? When was the last time I sat down and set the very clear expectations and kept holding accountable to that expectation, kept beating the drum over and over again? This is how we do this thing.
This is what great looks like. And then how am I holding people’s hands in the training process, not in the execution process? Am I going to hold your hands as you edit the thing or create the thing? I’m going to hold your hand into creating the vision and the roadmap that you’re going to follow and what the deliverable of excellence looks like. Until you’ve done that, you have to realize that your team is not slacking. It’s not that they’re failing on purpose, not that they’re trying to cut corners. It’s that they lack. So we have to ask ourselves, is this a slacking or a lacking? If we have identified that, we have not been clear with our expectations, if we have not given them tools, the resources or the vision for which we expect them to go, then they lack something. And that’s on us to give to them as the coach, as the leader. If you’ve done that, if you can no longer identify that there is a lack in the system, you have set the expectations over and over and over.
You have given them all the resources, all the coaching, everything that you can possibly give. And then you have to say, okay, maybe it’s a slack. Maybe they just cannot actually live up to the standard. And then you have to either coach them up or coach them out. And at that point, if you’ve been trying to coach them up and they’re not coming up, then the next next step is to coach them out. So hope this brings you guys a little bit of insight. Something to think about. If you’re feeling frustrated with your team, don’t give up on it.

Don’t just make the decision that hiring is not for you and that you’re just going to stay a solopreneur. You’re going to stay small. That is not the way to grow a business that maximizes your return on life. If you want to learn more about building big businesses that you you don’t grow to hate, go to beyondtheapex.com dot. You can apply to the apex accelerated opportunity to work with me personally on growing your business. I’d love the opportunity. So go fill out the application form there and if we think it’s a good fit, I’ll be in touch. If not, then that’s fine.

Just keep consuming the free content. It’s awesome to have you guys here. And just so you know, we are trying to grow the YouTube channel for the amplified impact podcast. So the goal by the end of the year is to get to 5000 subscribers. Right now we’re right around two, two and a half thousand, I think. So if you would do me a favor, just if, if you’re listening to this on itunes or on Spotify, I appreciate that. When you get a chance, go over to YouTube, to YouTube.com amplifiedimpact. Go subscribe to the channel and that would mean the world to me.

Truly it would. I appreciate your love and support as we’re trying to get this podcast out to more entrepreneurs that we can hopefully serve. So that’ll do it for me. We’ll catch you in the next episode. Until then, stay hyperfocus, my friends.