Leadership – It’s what they do when you’re not there.

I continue to be amazed at the people who are prisoners of their business. I'm not talking about the employees; I'm talking about the owners. I hear these people lament, "You can't get good help, anymore." I hear them say, "People don't want to work." This isn't my experience.

I'm from Montana, but my business is located in Florida. The people who work for me are located all over the country and because I rarely see them face to face I decided to take a little road trip home. Once I arrived I found the fly fishing just too alluring and I decided to stay a while longer than I originally planned. Several people have asked me, "How can you afford to stay away from your business for this long?"

Well, it's pretty simple. I have good "help" and the folks who work for me want to work. To go a step further I'm going to brag a little about them and say if the fishing continues to be as good as it's been I might stay a little longer, because we haven't missed a beat.

How do we do it?

Number one, we're all clear on our individual and collective goals. We all know what spells success for the team and we're all clear on our individual roles in achieving that success.

Number two, everyone's clear on how I evaluate performance.

That's it, it's rather simple. I trust the people with whom I work. I think I've done a good job assessing their capabilities and they're sufficiently committed to what we do, that if I were to ask them to do something they didn't feel they could deliver, they would tell me.

So, when people lament about their employees and say they can't get away; I wonder where the problem lies. Do their people not understand what success looks like? Do they not understand their role(s)? Have the owners hired people who don't possess the capacity for the tasks they've been assigned?

I'm sure there are other factors which contribute to our success, but the fundamentals of being able to trust people are (a) they know what's expected, (b) it's within their capacity, (c) they understand how I'm going to judge their performance and (d) they've accepted my trust and (e) have committed themselves to accomplishing the goal.

With that in place, I'm quite comfortable goin' fishin'.

I hope you can join me soon; cause man oh man have they been bitin'.