Methodologies for agency owners to navigate HR issues with Allyns Melendez

Hey, everybody. Drew here. You know, we are always looking for more ways to be helpful and meet you wherever you’re at to help you grow your agency. It’s one of the reasons why we’ve produced this podcast for so long, and I’m super grateful that you listen as often as you do. However, there are some topics that are better suited for quick hyper-focused answers in under 10 minutes. That’s where our YouTube channel really comes in. For quick doses of inspiration, best practices, tips and tricks, head over to youtube.com/the at sign Agency Management institute. Again, that’s youtube.com/the at sign or symbol.

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Welcome to the Agency Management Institute community, where you’ll learn how to grow and scale your business, attract and retain the best talent, make more money, and keep more of the money you make. The Build a Better Agency Podcast, presented by a White Label IQ is packed with insights on how small to mid-size agencies are getting things done, bringing his 25 years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant. Please welcome your host, Drew McLellan.

Hey everybody. Drew McLellan here with yep, another episode of Build a Better Agency. We are marching our way to episode 500, and this is a good one. So I’m excited to talk to our guest today and pick her brain around. I think one of the biggest challenges for us in 2024 is keeping the amazing staff that we have. Many of you are telling us that you have probably the best staff that you’ve ever had, and so we wanna help you keep those superstars. But before we, and before I tell you about our guest and we jump into that, I do wanna remind you that the Build a Better Agency Summit is coming up very soon.

May 21st and 22nd. Member Day is May 20th, for those of you that are associate members or in one of our peer groups. So you’re welcome to come on Monday for a half day of content and dinner, but for everybody, the conference starts Tuesday, the 21st, and goes through the day on Wednesday. So one of the breakout sessions we’re gonna do, which we’ve done for several years now, is Susan Beyer and I, Susan owns Audience Audit, and as you know, she’s our research partner for the Agency Edge Research series. We’re actually in year 10 this year of going out and doing proprietary research on your behalf.

This year we are focused on biz dev talking to people who hire agencies about how, when, and what makes them hire a new agency. So what makes them decide it’s time to change agencies? How do they go finding perspective agencies to do research with or to interview to see if they’re the right fit, what we can do to accelerate their decision making, how they make the decision? Is it a committee decision? Do they have criteria in advance? So lots and lots of questions. So the where we are going to unveil this research is at the summit. So if you wanna come and get a deep dive on what we learned, we’re out in the field right now, so I can’t even tell you what we’ve learned yet ’cause we’re still asking the questions.

But if you would like to learn how and when and why clients are hiring agencies and what you can do to be in the consideration set and what you can do to win, because we’re gonna ask them what tips the scales for them between one agency over another and what you can do to accelerate the process. This would be a great session for you to attend. So grab your ticket for the summit, come join us, and we will give you the scoop. Okay, let me tell you a little bit about our guest. So Eileen’s Melendez has worked at a PR firm for many, many years. She worked her way up to COO and is running the agency day in and day out.

She stepped away from that role for the most part, to start an HR outsourcing firm and works exclusively with agencies and other small businesses on all of the HR issues that are super challenging for us. And so one of our areas of expertise is how do you sort of set some boundaries? How do you have hard conversations with employees? How do you help set the standards that you want all your employees to live by, and then sort of hold their feet to the fire in terms of asking them to really honor those. And so I’m super excited to talk to her about the methodologies and the tips and tricks on how we can have those difficult conversations, how we have them differently with different people, and how we can be successful in keeping our best players by having better conversations with them, and also by creating a better environment at the agency as a whole.

So if you will join me in welcoming Eileen’s and let’s get to it. Eileen, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining us.

Thanks for having me. Drew.

So we are gonna talk about everybody’s favorite topic, which is employees. So tell everybody a little bit about your background, your agency experience, the work you’ve done, and the work you do now, just to sort of lay a framework for why you have this expertise. And then I have a ton of questions for you.

Great. So I’ve been in HR for 27 years now, and I, I’ve gone to

Survived HR for 27 years.

I have, I feel like I’ve been in HR my whole life. It’s something I was definitely born to do. I had no idea what empathy was, but I used to use it a lot in school and, and sort of get called out for that of Oh wow. So empathetic. And I found this job in HR 27 years ago, and I, I just haven’t looked back. It’s definitely made for me. My company focuses on HR outsourcing and consulting project work for agencies or companies that don’t have someone there to think strategically in HR or do the HR work. We also do corporate executive level coaching for business owners and their number twos and also their up and coming leadership members.

And then we do just corporate training for companies, all the compliance training and all of that. And for the past 16 years, I’ve been at an HR at, in an HR capacity running a PR firm, a global PR firm. And so I have very, very intimate knowledge with the challenges within an agency structure around its people, especially if you’re in the service industry, people are what you’re selling, their ideas, how they show up, they’re gravitas. And navigating people can be very, very difficult at times when you’re just so focused on growing your company.

Yeah. So really you cut your HR chops inside an agency so you understand all, all of the challenges that the listeners are dealing with day in and day out.

Exactly. What

Do you think, what do you think in your 27 years, what has changed the most about hr? What, what has, what has made it, what, has it always been this hard and we just didn’t think so? Or has something made it more difficult?

I think it’s always been this hard. We’ve always sort of dealt with generational differences, you know, from the time where the baby boomers were the ones kind of coming into the work world. And, and I gotta tell you, I have handbooks from 1929 in my bookshelf behind me, fascinating stuff that my father-in-law’s given me over the years, and I read it. And there’s a lot of similarities between what they were saying then and what we are saying now. There’s a lot more protection now. You know, there’s a lot of laws, new things happening every day today. There’s a new poster in New York you’ve gotta post to employees just this morning is the deadline. So there’s all these changes that are happening every single day. But I think the one commonality is navigating the people on their behaviors because it is always shifting and the environment around you is always shifting.

You know, there’s always a something going on in the universe that kind of takes everybody out of whack. And so as business owners, we have to navigate those interest intricacies of the human behaviors at work.

So in other words, people were writing books about how difficult we were as employees. Absolutely. And, and we were clueless. And now that we’re the owners, we’re the ones who are looking for the books on how to manage employees.

Exactly. And guess what, yeah, it’s gonna happen again with this, this next patient coming into the workplace,

Right? Challenges for a lot of agency owners is they’re accidental business owners. They, they didn’t go to school to run a business, and most of them grew up in the agency space. And so they’re really good at some aspect of agency life, account service, strategy, creative, whatever it is. A lot of HR classes, they probably didn’t take a lot of site classes. And so they’re handed by hook or crook this company that they now need to run. And they’ve started it all of a sudden they look around, they have employees, and they’re sort of trying to figure out how to, how to do this well, and, and like you and I were talking about before, before we hit the record button, I really do believe that most agency owners, the vast majority of agency owners want to be good employers.

They want, they want to keep, they wanna attract and keep and grow great employees, and they just are not sure how to navigate all of the intricacies of conversations we have to have with employees today. So let’s talk a little bit about sort of managing employees. So talk to us a little bit about, so how do I, how do I need to show up as a boss, as an owner to everybody? And then how do I decide how I show up for individuals within that body of employees? Because, you know, everybody’s wired so differently. Everybody’s got their own needs. So first of all, when you are coaching a business owner, how do you recommend that they show up at an all team meeting, or when they’re setting policies and procedures and announcing those, what, what do you, what are you saying to them to help them present in a way that they would feel good about how they show up?

Yes. I’ll start that off by saying that every business owner wants to be the one that’s different. Usually they leave this environment and they say, well, well, when I open up my own shop, I’m gonna be different. And then quickly they realize, oh boy, I can’t be that different because there are all these things I didn’t realize or recognize I had to handle. Like the compliance things like the payroll, like all the state requirements. So when you’re showing up, you should absolutely be your authentic self because that person is who they’re buying into. So you can’t be more than than who you are. But in terms of how you communicate your body language, you send signals every single day and not blatant signals.

So think of it as wifi. So I think about your signal strength as being the head of an agency. You send out a signal that’s very strong by nature of your position, by nature of who you are and how long you’ve been there and what you do. Other people at your organization send out signals as well, whether they’re weak or strong, and they have an impact on people. So when you show up, you have to think about what is my signal strength and how am I showing up? So I would say that everything that you do sends a message. Even the things that you don’t think you are doing. So for example, if you are showing up and you’re not addressing that someone came into the meeting late and maybe was super disruptive, it sends the message of, oh, it’s okay to show up to meetings late, right?

That’s okay with this business owner. So you know, what if I show up 10 minutes late, then guess what? You’re gonna have a meeting that starts 10 minutes late every Monday, let’s say. So thinking about how you show up, you have to make sure you’re intentional and authentic because that’s not what you would do if you were showing up to a meeting. You would want everyone to respect your time and respect everybody else’s time. The second thing is the way you message the things that come out of your mouth, and all of it is gonna be smart and business focused and caring and kind, you would hope to your staff. But then there’s a way that you do that. So there are some people who are not gonna stick around for tons of data.

So if you’re the type of person who gives data upfront, you’re gonna lose that person in the back that’s only focused on kind of like, why am I here? What’s the big picture? Right? Or why are we getting into finish about this person’s account? I’m not on this account, I’m checking out, I’m gonna start checking slack. So think about what is a cadence of my communication? Am I going high level then am I getting into this sort of weeds of things? Am I losing people? Do they need to be here? Do you need to spend all this money? How much money is tied up into that meeting? Add up their hourly rates and times that by an hour or two. So when you show up, not only are you being authentic, but you are considering your message, body language, how you address things.

And you’re also showing up in, am I messaging things in the right way so that I continue to keep their listening open, otherwise I’m wasting everybody’s time. Is this meeting for me or is it for them? Yeah, so I answered your question sort of several parts. We could probably go anywhere from here, but at the end of the day, be that chameleon leader, be the one that can shape shift. And I’d sometimes meet with leaders and I say, you know, sometimes you do have to be a chameleon. You have to shape shift your messaging. You have to shape shift how you show up in your own style in the moment to kind of get that person in and with you. And sometimes I get the resistance of, well, why should I change? Well, guess what?

They’re not listening. So if you really want someone to listen, you take ownership of how you’re gonna communicate and then Dr. And bring them in, and then they’re gonna understand you seek first to understand, then to be understood.

Yeah. Well, and I think too, you just set the tone for the shop and you set the tone for your expectations. And I think a lot of people, a lot of agency owners are pretty comfortable winging it, right? So, right. They’re used to stepping in front of a crowd or a small meeting or a big meeting and just, you know, they’re good on the on off the cuff. And so, right. I think what you’re also saying is, you know, give some thought to, how do I wanna show up today? What do that, what do I want them to get from me both verbally and non-Verbally? And then how do I intentionally do that? Make sure that I’m clear about that,

Right? Because it is their example of success. The person that is at the head of this company is their example for success. And so it’s like, it’s like if you have children, what your parents do signals to them what they should be doing. So if I see this business owner and I say, wow, look at this business owner, and they show up late to meetings. I mean, I’m just using that as an example, right?

Yeah.

That means success to me. So it’s okay if I do that because this very successful business owner is doing that too. So we do have to think about how do we set that tone? Remember that nonverbal cues are really strong based on that person’s signal strength.

Yeah. Well, and too, you know how you, correct. So that’s what I was gonna get to next. Showing up, late’s a great example because everybody probably deals with it. So I have an all team meeting, either it’s in person or it’s on Zoom and somebody shows up late. What is the appropriate way for a leader to call out that that’s not acceptable?

So in the first sort of infraction, I would pull them aside privately because that might be someone who had an emergency that morning or you know, maybe they were running late or whatever it was. And if it was their first time doing it, I would say to them and pull them aside and say, listen, I just wanna call out. I saw that you were late this morning. It sort of disrupts the flow of what we’re talking about, but it’s also a respect thing, right? We wanna make sure we’re respecting everyone’s time. And sometimes somebody might say, well, I had an emergency this morning and say, next time just text me or write me a note beforehand that you’re expected to be late so I can announce it. Right? Hey, so you know, this person’s gonna come in late to the meeting, they called me up, had an emergency this morning.

So, you know, they’ll just kind of sneak on in when they get here. This way it is sort of acknowledged beforehand. So again, sends the message that, oh, I should be letting you know, drew know, for example, that I’m gonna be late this morning. And then you, it’s your turn to say, Hey, just so you know, you know, this person let me know that they’re gonna be coming in late. And again, that sets the tone for how we handle our meetings and the office, if they do it again and they didn’t reach out to you, then I would again, pull them aside. Again, I, I’m not, I’m not the type of leader that’s gonna call them out in front of everyone. The only time I would do that is if someone’s being disruptive in the meeting. I would say, Hey, is there something we need to go, you know, is there something we need to discuss?

I see that you both are talking about something, or let’s wait until you sort of let us know what’s going on. If it’s urgent client issue or something, that’s when I would sort of call things out in a meeting. Otherwise, if it’s a one individual thing, I’d pull ’em to the side privately and set the tone for the expectation of what I want going forward.

Okay. So let’s say somebody has not done that and now they’ve created a culture where people show up late or don’t turn their camera on on a zoom meeting, which frankly drives me insane right now. How do I handle it?

Yeah. So if you’ve already created that culture, I would make an announcement. Like, let’s say, let’s take the video camera for example. That’s a really great one. Yeah. So if you show up to every meeting and the expectation is that you have your video cameras on as soon as a meeting starts, I’d say, all right, everyone put your cameras on. And if someone doesn’t, I would call them out. I’d say, you know, person A, your camera’s not on. And I usually get something, well, I’m not camera ready. Well, you know, it’s okay, blur your background or whatever it is that you need to

Do.

But we are here in person. And then if they continue to refuse, then I’d say, I’m gonna ask you to leave the meeting. It’s our expectation that we’re gonna have everyone on camera present and ready to go. And because you’re not present and ready to go, you’re not ready to be in this meeting. Yeah. And I would, if that’s something that has been established, if it’s something that needs to be reminded and send out an email and set expectation, again, make the announcement in the beginning. You have to be camera ready on at all times. The other thing that sort of brings up for me is that I like a culture where we can video call each other just randomly villa video, call each other during the day. Some agencies that I work with say, oh, that would be fantastic. I always wanna do that with my employees. And I said, and why can’t you?

Why can’t you be the one that sets the tone of video calling someone they have the option of, of picking up on the spot or not? Some don’t wanna show you that they’re not at home. Some right. Will show you that they’re at their workplace or maybe they’re in the kitchen grabbing a coffee and they miss your call, but they call you right back in a couple minutes. So you can start that as a business owner to set, set the tone, everything you want them to do, you do yourself in the way that’s best done. It’s like if you show up to the meeting and you turn off your camera, but everyone else’s camera’s on, what does that send, what message does that send?

Right? For sure. Yeah. All right, so let’s talk a little bit about conversations with staff members. So, you know, agencies love assessments, 16 personalities, disc, Myers-Briggs, the Harry Potter version of Myers-Briggs. And we, we love those things, right? We, we, we love all of those. We do believe that they are helpful in sort of understanding sort of how to interact with folks. But let’s assume that an agency owner hasn’t done that or doesn’t know what my disc profile is or whatever. And, and they need to have a serious conversation with me. How do, how should a leader, whether they the agency owner or a department head, how should we prepare to have a more serious conversation with an individual inside the organization in a way that we are sort of teeing ourselves up to be heard?

Yeah, I’m gonna work through a whole framework for this. Great. And then I’m going to sort of give everyone a reminder of what happens next and, and that sort of close it out. So before you have the conversation, you wanna give the person a heads up. You have all the time in the world to prepare for this conversation and they don’t, right? And if it’s someone who has a tendency to shut down or respond and react in a way that might be negative, then they have an inkling that this is a conversation that’s going to happen. So give them the benefit of that. I would have the conversation in this way. Hey, I’m gonna talk to you on Friday during our weekly meeting about some performance issues I’ve been noticing.

And some are like, well tell me right now, say we’re gonna have this conversation. I’m gonna prepare some, some information for you that’s gonna happen in that meeting. They can stew. So if they’s someone who’s going to stew, you wanna make sure you have that sort of moment the day before into the next day. Not a

Week before.

Not a week before. Right. The person needs a night’s rest. Yeah. So a night’s rest helps quell emotion, not all of it, but helps quell some emotion. So they’re coming in at least sort of release a little bit of emotion and however they don’t need to do that exercise or whatever. So to prepare for the conversation, I have what’s called a mind map. In the center of a map, just imagine a circle with the topic you wanna talk about. Let’s talk, let’s make it meeting deadlines. Okay? Then around it, consider it like, you know, these little sort of lines with some circles around it. These are the supporting facts and this is how we go first. Supporting that fact. You’ve not been meeting deadlines, right? Like that’s like, that’s the one supporting fact. Yeah.

So deadlines have not been met, expectations have not been met. Second is, you know, it’s been a couple months that this has been happening and several conversations here and there where this has been happening. Third is analysis. I’ve also considered what else is going on in your workload. I know that you onboarded a new client, but you still don’t have a full portfolio of work to do. So there should be room to do this, you know, to not meet deadlines, right? Like to, there should be room there to do that. You shouldn’t,

Your workload should not be the excuse.

Exactly. Yeah. So then as I prepare, I’ve created these two facts of things, this analysis. And now I think about my intention. I want to state what is my intention in telling this employee? This one is to help them grow. It truly is. It’s not to upset them. My intention is that, and then the last thing that I put together is a list of possibilities of how to move forward. But I, I wanna now walk you through actually having the conversation.

Okay.

So I would start off by saying, and I’m gonna just use you Drew, so you’re my employee, of course.

Okay.

There, you’re Drew, I, I wanted to talk about meeting deadlines. I’ve noticed that in the past couple of months, that we’ve had several conversations around meeting deadlines. and that continues to happen. Most recently, last week, the client really wanted that release out and it went out four hours late. And as you know, the expectation is that we turn that around within time. And I looked at lead and plenty of time to get it done. I also noticed that in your other projects you have a pretty light workload and it’s been pretty light. Even though you onboarded that new client last week, I wanna let you know that my intention is to grow you here. I’m having this conversation because it’s gonna become something more serious.

And before that happens, I wanna make sure I’m being very clear that this is an expectation. Meeting deadlines is very, very important. And if there’s some deviation to a deadline that you wanna make prior to that deadline, we should have a conversation. What are your thoughts on that? So then that’s how we stop. We don’t go into solutions yet. You do not dominate this conversation up until that point. So this sort of style of doing it is putting all the information up front and allowing the opportunity for the person to respond. And now this is the scariest part. How in the world are they gonna respond? Right?

Somebody might, and, and can I be quiet? Yes. Of yes. Yeah. Yeah. So employees will shut down. So when we talk about a response, there’s so many different types of responses, can be an emotional response. And the emotional word is very subjective. Somebody can cry, someone can get angry, raise their voice, become quiet as a mouse back, just kind of like start giving things back. It’s your fault, drew. It’s, it’s because you didn’t do that, right? So a lot of what the responses are is the unknown for the business owner. Yeah. ’cause for that employee, this was unknown. So they’re, you’re just gonna get the knee jerk reaction that sort of showcases what their style is.

So you can just give the information and kind of wait. Like what am I gonna get? So let’s say that someone starts breaking down and telling you that they’re, you know, something very personal is going on. Or maybe they’re dealing with health issues or all these things that were contribute to them not, not beating deadlines. There’s so many ways we can go here. Always, always. If there’s a situation where you can empathize. Empathize, right? And a lot of business owners kind of use that as a, oh well now I’m not gonna do anything because they shared this. You know that they’re breaking up with your boyfriend or you know, spouse or whoever it is, right? Right. So you need to think about saying, yeah, I really feel for you. I understand that this is gonna get in the way of your work.

And you know, our relationship is a work relationship. And so I have expectations of you and you have expectations of me. And I encourage you to take your time off to handle the things that you need to handle. That’s why we may provide all that for you. And there is also this expectation that you do well here and that you show up and that you meet these expectations. So we’re at this place right now where we talk about solutions. And I want you to be involved here so you can sort of take the conversation, restate what’s going on, showcase your support, and now get into solution with them. And again, this can turn into a medical conversation. This can turn into a personal conversation. Yeah. But when it gets too personal, remember that you are not the one to solve problems.

You can’t be, you’re not a certified therapist, you’re not a doctor, you are not someone who’s gonna help with personal issues. You are there in a working relationship capacity. So know what your role is. And if you don’t know what to say, the easiest thing to say is, I need some time to think about this. I wanna give you a thoughtful response. And if I just kind of blurt something out, it may not work for you. So let’s talk about potential solutions and then I’ll come back to you with a response on what we can do. Or if you don’t even know what the solution is at this point, maybe it’s so out of your range or out of your league, right? Just buy yourself time. Say, listen, you know what, I’m gonna talk to my advisors on how to move forward with this.

You don’t even know who your advisors are. That’s okay, right? Just talk to someone else, but not a fellow employee. Do not use your people to talk about other people’s situation. Yeah. You absolutely need to go outside to a trusted advisor, someone who has a confidentiality, NDA sort of situation with you where you can find guidance to move forward. So once you have this conversation, come up with the solutions, the exit strategy is always the most difficult. Like, how do I end this conversation? I just wanna

Do this. Right? Alright, so, so let’s say that I’m breaking up with my girlfriend and or my kid’s in trouble at school, or you know, my mom has dementia or whatever, whatever the thing is. ’cause we all have all the things. And you say to me, you know, I’m really sorry to hear that. I share a personal, I I share that. I might have gone through something similar, but I we still need to get back to solving the problem. Yeah. Which is that you’re missing deadlines. So let’s think through some solutions. So let’s say we’ve talked through some solutions, right? Okay, then what?

Then I’d say, this sounds great. My next steps is I’m gonna type this up. I’m gonna provide this to you via email to make sure

I’m gonna type it up. The owner, yes,

The owner Drew is going to go ahead and do that, right? You’re gonna type it up and because you’ve already mind mapped, it’s all half written for you,

Right?

So all you now have to do is just kind of plug everything in and then you send this to the employee and you ask them to respond, did I get this right? And are you committed to this plan? And then if they say yes, say, great. I have scheduled a meeting in two weeks or three weeks to go over this with you again. Great. And then

To review your progress in essence.

Exactly. So as we exit that conversation, say, I’m gonna send you an email, it’s gonna restate everything that we talked about. I think this is a great plan. I’m committed to the plan. Are you committed to the plan? Yes, I’m committed to the plan. Great. When I send the email, I’m gonna ask the same question. Just wanna get it back and then we’ll take it from there. Thanks so much for your time today. And then you come out, then it’s the documentation piece. Then you just sort of type it up, you send it over to them and you get that response. That response in email is key. And also give them 24 hours to respond. Because what if they did not expect the conversation? You also want that employee to have a moment of, you know what, maybe I don’t agree.

Maybe this plan doesn’t work for me. Maybe I didn’t tell you the whole thing. Maybe I’m having other issues I haven’t discussed with you. Maybe, maybe, maybe. And they just need some time. So I’d give them about 24 hours or so just to sort of, again, get a night’s rest. Think it through. Because this is the precursor for potential pip performance improvement plan, which is such a bad word. Or a potential performance plan of some sort or a potential termination. The best case scenario is that it is a success and they deadlines and they hold other people accountable for deadlines. And again, you’ve set the signal that we handle people not meeting deadlines at this organization. Right?

Yeah.

That’s what we have to look out for.

So I know that people are listening, going, I think this is all a great idea, but I don’t wanna write the email. I want them to write me the email of the plan. Good idea. Bad idea. Don’t do it.

Bad idea. Okay. I’ve gotta say, as a business owner, lead by example, they’re gonna be future leaders. If they’re not already a leader, you’re having this conversation with, yeah, that job will eventually be delegated when you are smaller, lead by example. The gritty, hard parts of that job of managing people. If you’re at the top of that firm and you’re the one who’s supposed to have that conversation, that’s what you do. The other thing I’ve seen, and great point, drew, I’ve seen managers, you know, the leaders of the organization say, I saw this person doing this at this meeting. You talk to them about it. No, that feedback is owned by you. You take that stage and you deliver it in the best way that you can.

That again meets the person’s needs in listening. Yeah. So you don’t deliver it the way you wanna hear message. ’cause what drew, what if you’re a straight shooter and you just say, you know, you just say, Eileen’s, give it to me straight. And I’ll say, all right Drew, I don’t like the way you, you showed up in that meeting. It was brash. You were, you were too quick to respond. And it sort of felt like shut people down. And then you said, okay, you decided to give me the same kind of feedback. But guess what? I don’t take feedback well that way. I mean I do, but let’s just say I don’t, and I’m more of a like, give it to me a little bit softer. Maybe don’t use the words feedback because that’s a trigger word for me. You know, maybe not for me truly, but

Right.

Maybe I’m that type of person that just wants the softer side and you say, Hey Eile, I have to talk to you. You know, that meeting that we were in yesterday and I kind of felt like, you know, you were pretty brash with the staff and I’d say, oh my gosh, really? I didn’t recognize. Yes. So my expectation is that when you show up to these meetings, consider that some of our staff doesn’t want to hear the just straight shooter sort of language. They do want you to sort of spend some time with that feedback. Give ’em a chance to ask questions, answer them not abruptly, and then leave the room. But just kind of make sure that they heard you, they need that extra time. Okay, great. Got it. You know, there’s all these different ways for having the same conversation all based on style.

Right? Right. All right. So I wanted to take a quick break, but when we come back, I wanna talk about how the heck do I know the style of the person that I’m about to have that conversation with. So how, how on the fly, how do I assess and get it right? So, alright, let’s take a quick break and then we’ll be right. We’ll be right back.

Hey everybody, just wanna remind you before we get back to the show, that we have a very engaged Facebook group. It’s a private group just for podcast listeners and agency owners that are in the AAMI community. And to find it, if you’re not a member, head over to facebook.com/groups/baba podcast. So again, facebook.com/groups/baab podcast. All you have to do is answer a few questions to make sure that you are an actual agency owner or leader. And we will let you write in and you can join over 1700 other agency owners and leaders. And I’m telling you, there’s probably 10 or 15 conversations that are started every day that are gonna be of value to you.

So come join us.

All right, we are back and we are talking about employees and how to have conversations with them, how to course correct, how to encourage, how to get them to feel like they’re seen and heard. But also following the rules are rules, As, agency owners. So before the break, you were talking about how you have to sort of change your message based on the listening style or the receiving style of the employee. So again, assume whether we’ve done the disc profile or whatever profile our agency is fond of or not, I don’t remember, I don’t remember what you are. Or maybe I’ve never even looked. Or maybe we don’t do them. So I am now gonna go have a conversation with you or vice versa.

You’re gonna have a conversation with me. How do I quickly assess how to show up so that I am, that I am well heard and well received.

So it’s so simple. Respond in kind as soon as this person approaches you. Take note, take note of how they are providing information. Are they giving you only high level? That might mean that they’re a DI in disc, a D or an I. If they’re starting to kind of give you all these details upfront, just straight up like, hey, so I started doing this and then I started doing that and I started doing this. That might give you an indication that they’re a C someone who provides a lot of detail that needs a lot of information that is looking to make sure that they’ve given you all the facts. So I sort of stop and say, Hmm, how is information reaching me?

And now I’m gonna respond in kind. So it’s as simple as sort of emulating that person’s communication style in the moment to see how they respond. And it can be in a little bit of an art. So for business owners, I like to sort of start off by prior to ever needing to be in communication, proactively spend time just meeting and greeting your staff. Some of them you might know really well ’cause you’re small,

Right?

Some of them, maybe they just were hired and you just feel like, you know what, I don’t have 10 minutes to spend with this new person. Take the 10 minutes to spend with that person and take mental notes of, oh, this seems like someone who is a data finder. This seems like someone who’s really kind and is showing more of that like s behavior. This is a very social person, very lively, very people connected, people oriented, sort of networking vibes. I’m getting that’s more of an eye person. Oh, this person’s a straight shooter. The way they’re talking is just kind of like in my face. Very independent thinker. You know? Okay, that seems more like that D person. So I would spend five to 10 minutes with someone just, Hey, I’m the new, you know, I’m the business owner you would just hired.

Maybe we spoke in the interview. I’ve got some idea of what I just wanna get to know you. And I ask very simple questions. What do you wanna get out of this job? What’s super important to you? What do you do in your free time? Tell me a little bit about you now that we’re out of the interview. Just want a little bit more understanding of who you are and what makes you tick and what jacks you and what are you looking to do here. So then that way I kind of get them in their comfort state and I get more of who they are. So that’s the proactive approach to that. But otherwise you meet a new client, respond in kind, ask questions first. Get people to talk about themselves, see how they communicate with you, and again, respond in kind. Then their ears are open, ready to listen.

And then you can give them the information in the way that they wanna receive it. That’s really difficult. If their style is completely opposite of yours.

I, I was just gonna say, so let’s assume that they are the polar opposite. So I’m a straight shooter and they’re a soft and sensitive s Right? Or whatever, whatever the o whatever the right opposites are, right? How do I, how do I know how to adjust?

So it is gonna be practice.

Hmm.

It is practice stretching yourself in the moment. We call that situational leadership. How do I need to show up as a leader in each unique situation? And I, I can’t, I can give you tons of examples and I can’t predict how you need to be in one that you’re gonna have in the future. ’cause you just, the dynamic is so unique, which is why I love hr. Everything is so unique, but it’s a puzzle to be solved. And as a business owner, you find like, wow, this is such a waste of time. I need to get back to pitching this client, or I need to get back to building business. Don’t they understand this payroll that I run is based on my activity of having to do this. I don’t wanna waste my time.

And they will work harder for you. They will cement themselves to your brand. They will show up for you if you respond in kind and start to learn the nuances of being this more chameleon-like leader as opposed to, I am who I am. And that’s all you’re gonna see. That may work in some instances when you are free to be who you are and no one’s saying to change, but learn to shift in the moment to keep the people interested, but also to be a people. For all the people. You are not gonna be perfect. It’s not always gonna go well, but it certainly is going to be challenging if you don’t practice. So practice, I’m, I’m here to practice.

Drew, if you ever need to practice, just say, listen, I have a very, you know, you’re a more sensitive person. They, they kind of take things personally when I talk to them and I don’t want them to shut down on me. Let’s role play this for a bit. You should find what we call a peer mirror. And as an owner of an organization, there’s a lot of peers to choose from, but sometimes they’re your competitors. But we all have the same issues, which is how do we get rid of these like HR problems?

Yeah, yeah. And just

Focus on growing our business. And the issue is, is that you need to practice with each other because guess what? It’s not gonna go away. Yeah. So your business is built around people and their ideas and how they deliver that to the clients and how they show up. And in order for it to be on brand for you, you’ve gotta show up for them. A big part of your job is, is doing that unfortunately, but practice with a peer that you could, that can say to you, you know what drew, that was too hard. Or, you know, what, perfect that, that worked really well. Like, try that again. That, that sounded more, you know, sort of in this style for me. Great delivery on that.

Yeah. So we have peer groups. So that’s one of the ways that they support each other is, is, you know, they’re non-com competitors. They know each other, they know each other’s agencies. So they’re able to do that. So one of, as you were talking, I was thinking, it seems to me that before, as you said, seek to understand, right? Before being understood, I have to understand what my style is before I can know how to adapt to another style. And I think as human beings, we think we come off a certain way or you know, we think that we show up maybe more empathetic than we do or whatever, whatever we think about our, our own sort of style.

So how do you recommend that we self-educate? How do, how do I feedback or learn more about how I show up in crisis when I’m mad? You know, all the, you know, of course when you’re at a company party and you know everybody’s having a great time, it’s easy to show up as the owner and the leader. But under stress, how do you recommend I learn how I show up, show up so that I can sort of adjust better because I understand myself better.

There’s two approaches to that. There’s the individualistic approach where you take a disc or a pi or some sort of, you know, Myers-Briggs or whatever you are comfortable with. And you read your report and you answer a few questions. Or maybe you work with a coach who will sort of share more insight into your style. Or you take the social approach and ask people, tell me about me. What do I need to know about me? You may not always get a very direct answer. So in the social approach, I would give a specific question, Hey, I felt like I was maybe a little too direct in that last meeting with these employees.

What do you think? If you open yourself up to a specific question, you’re gonna get a more specific answer as opposed to the open-ended. Tell me about me. I like that one as a icebreaker. Tell me about me. What do I need to know? What are my blind spots? How was I in that last meeting? I kind of saw that, you know, employee A was sort of shutting down when I was talking. What’s contributing to that? What am I like under stress? What kind of messages do I emit? What does my body language say about me? There’s all these things that you can have a back and forth conversation. And then sort of the third tier to that is do a 360 anonymously. People don’t wanna know, drew, how many times have I gotten into companies and I’m like, let’s do an engagement survey completely anonymous.

Let’s do it 360. No. I’m like, why? We’re gonna, we’re gonna get all these problems that we need to solve. I’m like, great, these are the things that I love. You know why? ’cause if they’re not telling you, they’re telling everyone else out there, right? Publicly as we’ve seen, you know? Right. So would you rather them tell you and you do something about it rather than they tell the world and then you’re forced to do something about it, which makes you look terrible. So we could take all these different approaches to actually figuring out who we are as people in terms of our style, who we are in terms of our projected style, what people are experiencing in terms of our leadership.

And then getting really down into the nitty gritty of, okay, what do I need to shift in the moment because I’m not changing, you know? And most of us are, you know, over 40, we’re pretty set in our ways at a certain point, right?

We are. We are what we are. Right?

Right. All we need to learn, we’re not changing. And I never want someone to feel like they need to change. Same thing with employees. Don’t feel like you have to change. Change is on you. You wanna change that’s on you. What I wanna show you is how to shift shifting is what you need to do. And if you’re resistant to shifting, there might be some growth opportunities you’re missing because your employees are not gonna buy in if you are not willing to shift in the moment for them. And they’re not recognizing it. The, the key is do not recognize like, okay, I’m gonna shift into my other style now. No, just do it. Right. Just do it and see what happens.

So if I’m gonna ask for input, and I’m a solo owner, am I asking my leadership team, am I asking whoever was in the meeting meeting? Who, who am I seeking that feedback from and how do I make them feel safe to give me candid feedback?

One-on-one,

Okay.

And I would say that to them directly, I feel like there are some blind spots and I truly, truly want you to be honest with me. I want you to be candid with me. I want you to be direct with me the same way I expect you to be with your employees. So right now, I want you to feel like my manager, I want you to tell me what I need to do differently. Specifically in that last meeting, I felt like I was losing the staff and I don’t know why. And I truly, truly want to know. And it’s all in how you deliver that specific message too. Yeah. Right. If I said to you, drew, tell me about me. How was I in that meeting? Was I terrible? Come on. Or I can say, I, I really truly just wanna know who I’m showing up.

Like, right.

Why

Did they shut down on me? What’s going on? What, what do you think is going on? and that kind of brings me to the next one is ask calibrated questions. Sometimes why questions don’t work and just put someone on defensive. So I say to you, drew, you shut down in that meeting. Why?

Hmm.

Oh wow. I need to not defend myself as opposed to, drew, I noticed you shut down in that meeting. What can I do differently? Do you see what happens?

Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. I I don’t have to be defensive because you asked me about you.

Right, exactly. Yeah. And the way that you also keep someone from putting you on a defensive is to give your, because I felt I was very, I, I shut people down in that meeting because I was pretty direct and it probably didn’t come across nice. What are your thoughts? Instead of seeking for something that you already know, say what, you know. Yeah.

It keeps conversation, right?

Yeah.

There’s a lot of stuff. This, the people part, I think for most business owners is so challenging because A, there’s not one right way to do it. B every circumstance and every person is brand new and it requires presence. And I think that’s really challenging for a lot of leaders is to be really present in the moment when they are with someone. Especially with, if there was someone they don’t know very well or their style is super different or you know, they don’t love them, right? It’s like, okay, I, I have to really show up here. And I think, I think I hear a lot of frustration from agency owners and leaders.

They do wanna do this better, but it’s hard and it’s time consuming. And what I’m hearing from you is, yep, it is hard and it’s time consuming.

It is. And you can be better at it because what is the outcome? Think about what happens if you start to do this with intention. I’m not saying do it right, do it with the right intention. And so if I approach these conversations with the need of, I want this person to work here, they do something amazing for this company and amazing for this brand, I want them to stay here. So now I’m gonna be that leader that they need me to be. and that leader doesn’t look the same to the other person that you work with. That leader looks a little bit different to that person and different to the other person. Yeah. But think about the growth you as a business owner will have. You will be that firm that is different because so many business owners just wanna ignore this and pretend that it goes away.

They’ll keep a non-performer on for years. They’ll pay a ton of money as they terminate them. As opposed to being open and saying, this hasn’t been working out for a while. Now we could do this two ways. We could either just kind of let you go right now, give you a chance, or we could talk about an exit strategy. Wanna look for a job? Look for a job. I’ll give you two months. I want you to, I want this to be on your terms, or I really want you to be here and I suck at giving you the information that you need. So now I’m putting myself out there and saying, I’ve done you a disservice because I failed to have these conversations with you. So we’re gonna start anew. Yes, I’ve been letting this go for a while.

I can’t let it go on for a while. I’m still gonna give you a good time to fix that. I’m gonna give you some good time to fix that because I failed. These are the things that will grow your firm. Yeah,

It’s, it’s funny, I was just thinking how often we avoid doing this until it’s a huge deal and then it’s so hard to fix because it’s so ingrained in the behavior or the culture or the relationship you have with the employee. Whereas if we comfortable doing this on the front end, setting expectations. Yes. Pulling someone aside when they miss the mark or don’t match up with the company values or whatever it is. Exactly. And we, if we would do it when it’s little, this would avoid so much angst of, you know, I, I think a lot of agency owners are passive aggressive for a while, right?

So they hint that there’s a problem, but they don’t really deal with it. And then it becomes this huge problem, right? And now, now it’s, you know, sort of the courses outta the barn

And think about what happens from the employee standpoint, right? I’m a very balanced HR person, I’m a business mind, so I completely understand the business and I’m a people person mind. So when you integrate the two things, I also think about what is the experience that this person is having? Would I feel treated fairly? And as a business owner, you have a hundred percent control, right? Over how that person feels. So when they leave and they write on Glassdoor, fishbowl, whatever it is that they’re writing on something on the social sphere, this is something that is within your control of saying, I messed up, we didn’t do this right and I wanna do right by you.

Here’s what we’re gonna do. Right? But then you let them walk out of there, great problem’s done, it was handled potentially poorly. And then there’s more to deal with because look at what it left behind, right? People talk and in absence of talking to you, they’re gonna talk to others. And so you need to create a culture of open feedback, even if it’s anonymous, just to handle the crap that you don’t want to. Like that’s the hard part, right? Gritty part of HR handling the crap. Guess what? Better you than someone else. Better you than not.

Or, or no one, right? Exactly.

Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah. This, this has been fascinating, super helpful. Great hands-on council. So thank you very much for sharing your expertise.

You’re welcome. Drew.

If people wanna learn more about you, about the work you do, what’s the best place for them to, to learn more?

Yeah, so you can visit my [email protected] transform.com or visit our Instagram page HR transform, or you can reach me via email, A-L-L-Y-N [email protected].

Okay. We’ll include all of that in the show notes. Thank you again for being with us and thanks for helping us be better bosses and leaders. Even though it’s hard, everybody wanted you to have the silver bullet, but what I think what I’m hearing you say is there is a silver bullet that you just gotta suck it up and do it

That’s right. Thanks Drew for having me. Yeah,

You bet. Alright everybody, so this is, this wraps another episode. Lots of hands on good, tangible tips. So you know what, I don’t, I don’t care if you have no employees, you’re just working with independent contractors. I don’t care if you have 150 employees, this episode is for you. This is how, how do we show up as leaders? How do we show up amongst our peers? How do we show up as a business owner? And you know what? This is probably something that when you are at it, you can probably be a little better. And, and so I think that Eileen’s has given you lots of very practical tools that you can start practicing and, and I think one of the sort of underscored messages here is this is a muscle and you have to start exercising the muscle.

And the better you, the better you exercise the muscle, the more often you exercise the muscle, the effective you are gonna be as a communicator. And I think too, the more, we’re talking a lot about culture these days, how do I create a better culture in a hybrid or remote environment? A lot of it is about clarity of expectations, holding everybody accountable to those expectations and how you show up in the little moments. So I think for most of you, you know how to prepare for like the big heavy conversation because we’ve all had to do it. But honestly, we can avoid those big heavy conversations if we show up differently and better for those day-to-day conversations that we should have.

But we often avoid having. So lots of takeaways here. So please put them to good use. We’d love to hear how it’s working for you. Either, you know, you could shoot me an email or pop into the Facebook group and tell us how it’s working. You know, there’s 2000 other agency owners in there who are ready to be your peer partner. As Eileen’s was saying, if you need a practice partner, if you’re not in one of our peer groups and you need somebody to hop on a zoom call because you have to have a difficult conversation, I promise you there’s somebody in there who would be glad to do that reciprocally if you’ll do it for them as well. So there are no excuses for not trying to get better at this. And the benefits are pretty big. You know, our biggest expense are our people. And when we invest time and energy into getting them trained and putting them in front of the client, boy it’s expensive on all fronts.

Expensive, financially, emotionally, mentally, when they leave us and especially when they leave us and they’re not happy with us, right? Because they’ve kind of polluted the pool. They’ve said some things to our other employees on the way out, or they’ve said things on Glassdoor or they’ve said something to a client that doesn’t come back to us until after they’re gone. So this is an important part of our job, is to have clear expectations, deliver them clearly, course correct when they’re off, celebrate when they’re on. We didn’t even get into that, but that’s a little easier for us I think. But this is not something you could delegate. This is not something that you can sure. Because even if you have a big organization, somebody is your direct report and somebody is your responsibility.

And so it’s your opportunity for them to be more in alignment with the values and the way you want behaviors to be inside the company and to be a better ambassador for you with the rest of the employees as well. So this is important stuff and I hope you took it to heart and I hope you’re willing to practice it. Alright. Alright, before I let you go, huge shout out and thanks to our friends at White. Label IQ. They are the presenting sponsor for the podcast. As you know, they do white label dev, design, and pc. You can learn more about them at White Label IQ dot com slash aami where they have an offer for you on their first project. You have not worked with them before. Lots of agencies sing their praises, so check them out. They’re good people. And guess what, I’m gonna be back next week with another episode, another guest, and hopefully as much learning as we had today.

All right? So I’ll be here if you will too. Thanks for listening.

That’s a wrap for this week’s episode of Build a Better Agency. Visit agency management institute.com to check out our workshops, coaching and consulting packages, and all the other ways we serve agencies just like yours. Thanks for listening.