#Smallbizchat LIVE is a monthly video chat where small business owners can get answers to their questions. The focus of #Smallbizchat LIVE is to end small business failure by helping participants succeed as your own boss. Please join us live every third Wednesday of the month from 8-9 pm ET Live on my SmallBizLady Facebook Page, YouTube Channel, and LIVE on Twitter. 

How to go from Management Mess to Leadership Success

Scott J. Miller is a 24-year associate of FranklinCovey and serves as the executive vice president of thought leadership. Scott hosts the world’s largest and fastest-growing podcast/newsletter devoted to leadership development, On Leadership.

Additionally, Scott is the author of the multi-week Amazon #1 New Release, Management Mess to Leadership Success: 30 Challenges to Become the Leader You Would Follow, and the Wall Street Journal best-seller, Everyone Deserves a Great Manager: The 6 Critical Practices for Leading a Team. Scott authors a weekly leadership column for Inc.com and is a frequent contributor to podcasts and webinars. For more information: www.managementmess.com

SmallBizLady: Is any leader a total ‘Management Mess’?

Scott J. Miller: No one is a complete “Management Mess,” nor has anyone been a total “Leadership Success.” Rather, leaders are a bundle of varying talents and fears, expressed through the daily decisions they make. This book will help readers to broaden those talents, set aside limiting fears, make better decisions, and come closer to mastering leadership. The principles and practices in it come from some of the best leadership minds around. Use my experiences with them as a shortcut, a cautionary tale, or a skill worth adopting. You are only 30 leadership challenges away from leadership success.

SmallBizLady: What are the principles, practices, and 30 leadership challenges in the book based on, and how do they help readers become better leaders?

Scott J. Miller: The book guides readers in an introspective review of their personal leadership style. Each chapter focuses on one of 30 leadership challenges, providing a framework to help readers become the kind of leader they would like to follow. They represent a collection of expertise, and practical advice spanning more than four decades and illustrate how leaders can rise when they fail and how they can survive – even thrive while embracing their individual leadership style.  This framework can help leaders to:

• Lead difficult conversations and celebrate success.
• Inspire trust, actively listen, and challenge paradigms.
• Put the right people in the right roles.
• Create a clear and actionable vision for a team.
• Accomplish an organization’s Wildly Important Goals®.
• Get the right results—―in the right way.
• Become a leader they would follow.
• Celebrate individual and team accomplishments

SmallBizLady: Why is leadership so important to business success? 

Scott J. Miller: It’s because people don’t quit their jobs, they quit bad leaders and bad cultures. Leaders are linchpins of everything inside an organization, and when a leader decides that they are going to take for who they lead, that they are going to coach them, relate to them, show them their blind-spots, and make a better future for them, the business inevitably will thrive.

How to Keep Your Remote Workers From Failing

Jennifer Leake is an HR Expert who specialized in effective recruitment and retention on employees.  She is the CEO of Assessment Pros. She created The Get Engaged People System™ a blueprint to help who and how you hire – and to build and retain employees who contribute to your business growth and profitability. Over the last 25 years, Jennifer has researched, learned, and worked with companies throughout the U.S. to understand what makes a strong and successful “people” system. For more information Assessment Pros 

SmallBizLady: How hard is it to manage a remote worker, who is working remotely for the first time?

Jennifer Leake: It depends on HOW you are managing them. Like managing workers in person, managing remote workers is not a one-size-fits-all approach – what works for one remote worker may be the wrong thing to do for another remote worker. For example, one worker might want to talk daily and update you on their actions. Asking me to do that implies you don’t trust me on my own and would frustrate me. Weekly (which I need) is just perfect for me.

Then you have to consider the added complications for their success when they work remotely. Even previously successful employees and managers may be struggling in a remote environment. Probably 1/3 of your workers are doing fine. But 2/3 are struggling or at risk of failing in this new remote environment without structure, processes, organization, help with time management, support, and collaboration.

In addition, touchpoints with remote workers are less frequent, so they need to be more spot-on when they do happen.

SmallBizLady: How can you set up your remote workers for success?

Jennifer Leake: Their 4 biggest challenges will probably be lack of social interaction, time management, communication delays, and home distractions.

Tips for better success of remote workers:

• have clear expectations of actions and results – the more metric the better
• make sure they have all the tools they need to work remotely – technology, materials, etc.
• what’s the communication plan?
  • how often do we meet?
  • what’s our agenda when we do meet?
  • how to handle unforeseen situations that require support or answers?
• know each worker well enough to know what can get in their way of success:
  • need for structure or process
  • their time management and how they organize their day
  • need for interaction and how they communicate
  • comfort level or authority to make decisions on their own
  • is this stressful for them and why?

SmallBIzLady: I know that you think it’s important to get some data on your employees to understand their best work environment? What tools to do use to assess your team?

Jennifer Leake: My assessment toolbox includes several tools but one I’m recommending right now is called Managing the Remote Worker package from BestWork DATA. Their short 10-minute survey measures 6 key personality traits – assertiveness, rules, details, people, how they handle stress, and team. These personality traits influence that list of things we talked about that may hinder success in a job, especially if it’s remote. 

For example, my score indicates low rules and details scores. The good news is I’m open to change and adapt easily to the idea of working remotely. However, I also need some sort of schedule (with external accountability), a clear work area so I “go to work” and am free from distractions and my family knows when I’m not to be disturbed.

The Remote Worker package offers insights to the worker AND a report for the manager to know how to work with the remote worker. Their third piece of the package is a report generated when the manager completes the survey and uses their personal results to help them know how to be the best remote worker coach.

I’ve known Chuck Russell, founder of BestWork DATA, for years.  He’s so concerned about and committed to remote worker success that his company is offering these reports at NO COST.  

How to go from Side Hustler to Full-Time Business Owner 

John Clidy  is a serial entrepreneur and real estate investor. He runs his own Keller Williams realty firm in South Jersey. His agency, The Clidy Group, has sold over 3,000 homes since 1999. He has personally flipped more than 100 homes and holds over $7 million in real estate assets, including 5 market centers. He was a side hustler for the first 15 years of his real estate career. He is the author of the new book, Leaving 6 Figures. He loves to use his story to help others create a life by design. For more information: www.Leaving6figures.com

SmallBIzLady: You built your real estate business while you worked full-time as a state trooper and you have a family, how hard was it to manage all of that?

John Clidy: It was very hard, it was one of the reasons that I started to think: ”how long can I continue to do both jobs at that level?” In 2007, I sold nearly 200 homes in one year and flipped a bunch of homes. It was a very busy and stressful year. Trying to find balance in everything was difficult. 

SmallBIzLady: What kind of support staff did you have in place to help you with the business while you were working? 

John Clidy: I had different support for my different roles. In the beginning, I tried to do a lot myself. Until I learned about leverage.  In my Keller Williams Real Estate market centers, we followed the KW model on how to smoothly run a market center. For the rest of my businesses, I leveraged duties to my assistant or other people that worked for me.  

SmallBIzLady: When did you get to the point where you were comfortable to walk away from your 6-figure job to pursue your business full-time? 

John Clidy: I remember the time I was looking for a murder suspect inside a house.  I noticed eviction notices on the countertop. Instead of worrying about getting killed, I was looking at the house, so I could purchase it.  My partner reminded me that we were there for police work and not real estate.  That day started to shift my mindset away from the state police and more about being a business owner.  I was uncertain about leaving a career that most people would die to have. Especially, one where I was only three years shy of receiving nearly $70k a year plus health benefits, for as long as I live.  That is millions of dollars. That is what I gave up!!!  

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