EntreLeadership - Now is the Time to Upgrade Your Team, Training, and Talent

Starting point is 00:00:03 Hey guys, Daniel Tarty here with Entree leadership. Man, you talk about crazy times. One of the things that is just staggering and certainly unprecedented right now is the unemployment rate in our country. And if you just see that headline and you think, oh my gosh, this thing's going down the tubes. What are we going to do? Well, that's one way of looking at it. But another thing is if you're a leader, if you're someone in charge of building a team, if you're in charge of running a business, unemployment could actually be a blessing in disguise.

Starting point is 00:00:38 I just had to lay off my team. I mean, what do you mean if blessing and disguise? Come on, tardy. This is bad times out here. Look, I get it. I understand it's difficult. And for some businesses, it's the worst year you've ever had. And it's going to take a while to recover.

Starting point is 00:00:54 I just want to call your vision to think about in five years from now, what will be true at that point. that you're harvesting the fruits of seed you planted in this season. In the middle of the storm, if you've got enough vision on when we get through the storm and we start to rebuild, you can do some things right now that are going to set you up for success to come back stronger and better than ever. Here's what I'm talking about. Right now, yes, unemployment's at a record high, and that also means that there's talent sitting on the sidelines that hasn't been there before. This isn't unemployment at record levels of people who are not worth hiring. There's a lot of people that are brilliant, rock star team members.

Starting point is 00:01:39 You know, we talk about hungry, humble, and smart, the ideal team player. There's ideal team players sitting out there right now. This is a weird way for there to be this much unemployment because it's not an indication of their performance. You know, there's people that can get fired because they're doing a bad job. Their companies got shut down. So this is a time to start thinking about upgrading your team. This is a time to be having these conversations.

Starting point is 00:02:04 I've had a few people in my community here locally that they've been at a company where their company shut down and they're probably not coming back or whatever. And I'm going, oh, wow, this guy's on the street now. This guy's a free agent. And I've been having some of these conversations even with my leaders going, hey, we should talk to this person. I know them through a mutual friend or I know them from church or I. They've been in the business community here locally. They're a stud. They just happen to be in a situation where their company shut down.

Starting point is 00:02:33 If we can pick them up in the season, we can upgrade our team. There's a chance to upgrade your team. There's also a chance to get rid of the whiners that you're going. If your team right now is whining and they're bottom feeders and you've been thinking, oh, man, I got a bunch of donkeys instead of thoroughbreds. Listen, you should not get through this whole thing without having 100% of your team being thoroughbreds. because there's thoroughbreds out there right now looking for opportunity. And if you've got an opportunity, you go, well, hey, I'm not hiring right now.

Starting point is 00:03:02 How am I going to pull this off? Look, I get you may not be hiring today. But it doesn't mean you can't start having conversations with people for roles that you're going to hire maybe in 90 days, maybe in 120 days. You start putting a business plan together for when this thing comes back. Have these people in the queue. Have the interview process already in motion. And then just tell them, look, when we come back, it's going to be six months.

Starting point is 00:03:24 Can you wait six months? Maybe they can because they don't have another opportunity right now. Then in six months from now, you come online with this new deal, with a new team, and you've got a stronger foundation to build from than you had going into this. Right now, you can upgrade your team. You can also upgrade your training. Guys, I don't know about you, but I always think I should be training my team better than I am. You know, there's so many things I feel like our team wants to know.

Starting point is 00:03:50 I feel like our team wants us as leaders to slow down and teach them how to do. their job better. Our team wants to be set up for success. And one of the limitations for us as leaders is just our time. You know, we're in meetings and we're working on building the business, working on things for marketing and for our customers and managing the sales activities and all the stuff, reading the financial reports. And I don't know about you guys, but I usually look up sometime Friday afternoon, having set off in the week with intentions of doing some kind of training for the team and the whole week goes by and it didn't happen. this is a time that you can really get your training together.

Starting point is 00:04:28 If you got a little more time on your hands and your team's there and you can send videos and do the Zoom stuff or whatever you guys are doing right now, you can whiteboard out. What do I really want to train our team on on how to do their jobs well? The history, the story of our company, our core values, our mission statement, how to be ideal team players. We've got an opportunity at a moment in time right now to get all of our training in place, all of our documentation and maybe even record some videos and send it out to that. I mean, what if you sent a five-minute video to your team every two or three days right now? Because you have the time to work on building that video.

Starting point is 00:05:05 And then it's in the archive. Then, you know, every team member that you hire going forward, now you've got this repository of all this great training and documentation. You can upgrade your training process right now. This is an opportunity to do that. Thirdly, you can upgrade your talent. Guys, talents are muscles we can grow. Just like going to the gym and growing our muscles and our physical bodies, we can grow our mind.

Starting point is 00:05:33 We can grow our competencies. I'm such a fan of this idea of transformation. And I am so glad that I'm not the same leader that I was 10 years ago. Because through the power of transformation, through the power of personal development and reading and learning and studying and studying, I can become a new leader. I can become a better leader. I can grow to a new capacity. And so this is a time to look at your team and go, what's our team really need to improve on right now? What are the talents and competencies that if our team got better at these things because, well,

Starting point is 00:06:07 they've got some time on their hands. I don't want them just sitting on Netflix all day. I want them reading a book. I want them taking a course. I want to do it with them. As a leader, what if I said, hey guys, I'm going to take this course right now on whatever, public speaking or communication or maybe it's a sales thing. What if we got in it together and we said, we're going to go through this course in this season so that when we come back online in a few months, we've got this new tool in our toolbox. We've got a new competency as a team. There's an opportunity right now. So think about this. You can upgrade your team. You can upgrade your training. You can upgrade your talents. Are you doing that stuff? Or you suck in your thumb? Are you licking your wounds? Are you just

Starting point is 00:06:51 trying to survive tomorrow? It's okay if you're doing that stuff. Just don't only do that stuff. Get your head up above the whole thing and go in a year from now, in two years from now. What are the opportunities that this season created that we normally don't have time for? Because right now you've got some time. And if you'll do this stuff, you will come back stronger. you will build a better business over the next three to five years, and you will be proud that you did. That's what leaders do. You're a leader.

Starting point is 00:07:22 Dig in on this stuff, and you will get better. And until next time, keep learning and keep leading.

EntreLeadership - Now is the Time to Upgrade Your Team, Training, and Talent

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