In the world of owning your own business I think the biggest double edge sword is hiring employees.

I think many small business owners would say it is like flipping a coin as to whether the employee will be a benefit or a liability.  And although there seems to be only two extremes of wonderful, great, fabulous decision or horrible, gut-wrenching, expensive decision, there are many components that tip the see-saw.

1.  Experience: Is It The Right Experience

First we usually check to make sure the candidate has the experience we need.  Unfortunately, many small business owners still look for what the employee did in their past jobs rather than how well they did it.  We really need to know if they made improvements, increased sales, reduced costs, beat timelines, etc.

2.  Ability:  How Well Did They Do The Job

This is getting further into the question of how well they did it.  Just because someone has been in sales for 15 years doesn’t mean they sold a lot.  Also, once they are in your company, you begin to understand whether or not they are set in their ways or only know one way to do something.

It doesn’t help you much if they were able to use the cash register at their last job, but can’t figure your’s out.

3.  Attitude:  One Bad Apple

This one is really difficult because most people try to have a good attitude on the interview.  You don’t know that in their 10 years of customer service that they hated 99% of the customers.

Or that the real reason they were laid off of their last job was because the owner was praying for a downturn in the economy so they could have an excuse to do a lay-off.  (If this is you, you might want to read Why Small Business Owners need to be Good at Firing People.)

A bad attitude is worse for your company than poor ability.  Sometimes you can train someone to be better at their job, whereas, you rarely change someone’s attitude.

4.  Culture:  The Intangible Secret Weapon

Culture is more difficult to assess than the other three.  A person can have a great attitude but still not match the company’s culture.  I had a very experienced district manager I hired once.  He had more experience and a successful track record than all of my DM’s combined.  But, he just didn’t fit in.  There was nothing I could do to make the rest of the organization support him.

He would ask me what he needed to do differently, but I was at a loss.  Culture is subliminal at times and changing to fit a culture is almost impossible.

What’s a Small Business Owner to Do?

Since many small business owners don’t hire a large quantity of employees they don’t usually spend the time studying and preparing to do this well.  However, the negative impact of the mistakes are extremely painful and sometimes long-lasting.  One hire can sometimes be 20-30% of your team!

As Christians we often feel that if we made a mistake hiring someone, it is our mistake alone, and we have to live with it.  However, living with it has the potential to cripple our business and torture the other employees.  It may also torture the employee in question.

I think this is such an important area of competency for small business owners that you need to either improve your recruiting skills or get outside help to recruit the best person for your business.

Hire Power:  Hiring People You Trust and Trusting the People You HIre

Right now our coaching business is recruiting eight positions for a handful of clients.  We aren’t a recruiting firm.  We just want to make sure our clients hire the best people for their business.

In my prior business career, recruiting was one of my favorite responsibilities.  Even when I moved up to higher positions, I always made it a priority to be integrally involved in the hiring process.

Since helping so many people as a coach, I began to write about how Christian business owners can hire people that will be right for their company and their culture.  If you are interested in this three part guide on hiring the right people for you, you can find it here.

Poor Hiring Skills Doesn’t Fix Itself

If hiring is difficult for you, face it now.  It doesn’t get better on its own.  You may think after enough bad hires you will improve automatically, but the opposite is true.  You generally psych yourself out and then you second guess yourself even more.  Employee holes go unfilled for too long and then you hire out of desperation.

Get good at it  or find someone to help who is a good recruiter and who understands your company and your culture!

I know you are really wondering if the bible uses the words job description.  The bible doesn’t necessarily use these terms, however, it is full of the best wisdom about what should be included in our job descriptions and why we should have them for our employees.  As Christian business owners who know how important our team is to our business; a job description can be a foundation for success.

First of all, the reason I believe God would embrace job descriptions is because His Word tells us so much about what is expected of us as a follower of Jesus Christ.  There are many words in the bible that give us a job description of a Christian.

—– spread the gospel message to all nations

—– honor your mother and father

—– take care of the poor, and the widows, and the orphans

—– teach others

And there is much said about the characteristics of the ideal candidate:

…..good, holy, faithful, generous, seeker of knowledge, etc.

If we mimicked the format that God uses in the bible, to explain to us what is expected of us as Christians, in creating our job descriptions for employees, I believe we would have more people on our team meeting our expectations.

Think about it….God provides the following in His descriptions:

1. He explains why our role is important.
2. He gives a general description of a true Christian.
3. He gives specific examples of our responsibilities.
4. He gives the characteristics of the ideal candidate.
5. He describes what good performance looks like and what poor performance looks like.
6. He tells us what the rewards are for our faith and the consequences of our lack of faith.
7. Depending on the job he even qualifies whether or not there is travel i.e. the disciples, the pay grade – i.e. sell everything, give to the poor, and follow me, and who we report to ie.  John 15:5-8

Why do you think God gave us so much instruction and description on what He expects from us and what it looks like to be His true followers?  I am sure it is because He wants us to be successful.  He knows that if we follow His Word our lives will be better.  Better as God defines it is that it will glorify Him.

Our employees have a better chance of glorifying God in their work if that have a good job description to start with.

Do you have job descriptions for your employees?  If yes, do you think there may be room for improvement?

If no, do you feel like this may give you some direction on where to start?  Have fun with it.  Bring it to life.  Picture the ideal employee for the job and describe him.  Pretend like you are writing a performance evaluation of his great performance and describe what success in the job looks like.

If you are nervous, you can always add the disclaimer that HR departments put on standard job descriptions:

And any other responsibilities and tasks as needed!

Jesus set the bar high when he said:

“If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”   Luke 9:23

Let’s set the bar for our employees and give them everything they need to achieve it.  After all, isn’t that how you would want to be treated?

Last night my husband was watching Sheryl Crow and her new tour band playing on television.  They were introducing her new cd 100 Miles from Memphis.  I sat to watch for a few minutes.

It was on QVC and she seemed embarrassed, but that is just speculation.

She was being interviewed between songs as the interviewer pitched the special QVC price and bundle for sale.  The interviewer was bragging about how Sheryl could play so many different instruments.  When she got around to the saxophone:

“You even play a little saxophone” stated the interviewer.

“A very little….that is why I have….”(and she named her sax player and pointed to him).

Then she introduced the rest of the tour band.  I think there were at least 10 members in her band.  It was diverse in many ways:

• Each played a different instrument or provided vocals.
• She had men and women represented.
• She had different races and ethnicity covered.
• And she had what seemed like a wide-age span  (but maybe that is just because I feel so old)

She seems to have the diversity thing figured out.  She obviously knows she can’t do it all herself.  She has build a special touring team.  And she has many different gifts and talents assembled a la the body of Christ concept.

I think sometimes we worry that if we hire team members that are too different from who we are individually that they won’t fit with our team.

They may not match the culture.

In this case, they did all have a common bond.  They all loved music and they were all talented musicians.  To effectively manage this diverse group of musicians and singers I am sure she had to lay out the vision of this cd and this tour.

We don’t need everyone to look exactly alike to make up a cohesive team.  On the contrary, we need other people’s gifts, talents and even differences to compliment ourselves and to fulfill our vision!

12The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. 13For we were all baptized by^[c^] one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.

14Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. 15If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. 16And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. 17If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 19If they were all one part, where would the body be? 20As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

21The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” 22On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, 24while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, 25so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

27Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.  1 Corinthians 12:12-27

It works for the church.

It works for rock bands.

I bet diversity will work for our businesses too!

And what a relief to have someone with the gifts you don’t have to help you out!  Thank God.

If you are a Christian business owner than hopefully you embraced the idea that you will work for decades and you wanted it to be meaningful work.  At some point in your life God gave you a vision for your business.  You know what it is like to follow God’s plan for you and your business.  Unfortunately, I am seeing many young people graduate high school, college, and/or graduate school and begin their career defeated.  Why?

• the economy is terrible
• no-one is hiring
• they are told by well meaning advisors to just be practical and get a job

I know some of these things can be and are true, however, these graduates have decades of work ahead of them.  We need to motivate them to go against the odds and seek, pray and search for God’s calling in their life.  I don’t want to set people up for failure, but in my experience attitude, hard work and perseverance have always made a huge difference.

Here is my passion-filled plea to graduates about why their career is worth their whole-hearted efforts!

Graduates:  If You Give Up on Your Career Now, You’ll Hate Yourself Later

If you have a graduate in your family or no someone graduating, please pass the link to this post to them.  Let’s encourage this generation to make the effort!

Also, please share any other positive advice you have for young graduates in the comments!

When I worked for a pretty big regional coffee company we had a board of directors with  very high-up CEO’s from much bigger national company’s on it.  Although there wasn’t a direct matching system, as the VP of my division I had a board member whose business most matched what I was responsible for.  His was a publicly traded company which today has 680 locations.  Back when I was with the coffee company this board member’s company was going through headquarter changes, business divestures and many other complex business strategy changes.

As his phone rang non-stop, and we were traveling Baton Rouge to look at my locations, I asked him the question I really wanted to know.  I wanted to know the answer to this question because I was working a ton of hours and there was so much to get done.  We were in a huge growth phase for us, trying to open 6-8 coffee houses a year.  I was having a blast, but I was worried that there wasn’t enough hours in the day to make the plans come to fruition.  If you are a busy small business owner you have probably felt this same sense of excitement and adventure tinged with “how will I get it all done”.  My questions was,

“Where do you focus your time?”

Seriously.  His situation was way more overwhelming than mine.  I believe it is a business advantage to effectively manage our priorities.  He was answering to the stock analysts on Wall Street.  They were in the middle of moving their headquarters and training center to another state.  He had hundreds of locations which meant thousands of employees.

It took him all of 5 seconds to respond, “At least 30-40% of my time is spent on employee issues – hiring, training, problems, opportunities, succession planning and turnover.”  Even at his level of CEO of a really big national company he was still spending more time on people issues than any other single area of focus.  He started the company and said that even in the beginning he had always spent at least this much time on his team.

His company employed dishwashers and CFO’s, waiters and marketing specialists.  The restaurant business has a turnover rate of over 100% by industry standard.  He knew that he could have a cracker jack HR team and that wasn’t enough.  It required his direct interaction.

Are People Your Most Important Asset?

As a Christian business owner we would all agree that our people are our Christian business advantage.  As Christians it is part of our Christian values to treat employees fairly and for them to in fact to be paramount to our business success.  We get that people are our most important asset.

My question to you is “How much time do you spend on the people who work for you?”  I don’t think we can get away with saying “I am not a great manager” or “I have an HR department to handle that”.

We all start our businesses for different reasons.  Most of us wouldn’t say I want to start a business so I can manage people.  We are usually passionate about baking pies or selling widgets.  We think we can do this as well or better for ourselves than we can working for someone else.  But, whatever the reason, at some point in our growth we will have other employees.  These employees represent us, fulfill our vision and become our business.

We need to be good managers and we need to prioritize our people as one of the most important areas in our business.

How do you do this?

1. Start with putting your time and attention into your team. They say you can tell where someone’s heart is by what they spend money on and where they spend their time.
2. Develop plans for who you need on your team. It doesn’t need to be complex.  Make a list of what needs to get done in the next 1-3 years and think about what skills are needed to compliment your current team and yourself.
3. Set up a structural safety net. As simple as another list.  If you were an employee (we all probably were at some point) what would be important to you?  How I was going to get paid.  What is expected of me in my job?  What holidays do I get off?  People perform better if they know what is expected of them and have a structural foundation.  (Just a foundation, we need a safety net, not a spider web!)
4. Practice Jesus commandments to Love God and Love Others. Jesus tells us that we are loving God when we love others.  We can’t effectively love our employees if we turn them over to HR or if we just expect them to “get it” by themselves.  Keep in touch with your team.  Make sure they are trained.  Appreciate them.  Discipline them – yes, part of God’s love is appropriate discipline and accountability.

I would recommend that if you do not feel that leadership and management are areas of strength for you that you make it a personal development plan to improve in this area.  The need won’t go away.  You may want to read one of John Maxwell’s books on leadership or his Leadership Bible.  Or attend a workshop.  The best leadership workshop I went to was at The Center for Creative Leadership.  If you need specific help on a few areas of development like delegation, recruiting or conflict management you may want to check out one of my many leadership coaching programs.  Leadership is a life long pursuit.  Let’s get started.

Where do you feel Christian business owners should spend most of their time?  What else works for you?

I value creativity over many other characteristics or traits of people.  I admire creative people and strive to reflect creativity in my work and life.  There are a few little hangups with true creative talent that I want to skip, yet I want the benefit of the results.

God, Can’t I Be Creative Without the Angst

I always hear that amazingly gifted artists suffer with a certain amount of angst to motivate their creation.  I would like to avoid the angst part.

Innovators express a journey of many paths before finding the one that births their next great idea.  I pray often for God to make my path straight.  This prayer must come from the left side of my brain that reminds me that the closest distance between point A and point B is a straight line.

Then there is the subjectivity of the creative endeavor.  Art is subjective.  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  Creators must subject themselves to criticism, as well as the praise.  There is nothing like a few bad reviews, on something a person developed with their own mind or hands, to add to the angst.  It is a self-propelling circular at times.

A circular that can lead to creative block or that may cause some to keep their ideas, art, inventions and other creative expressions to themselves.  If I don’t share I won’t have to deal with people’s opinions.  And the world doesn’t get to experience the God-given abilities of so many creative hearts and minds.

Creativity is more than art.  Or art is more than painting, writing, dancing, etc.  Creativity can take the form of problem solving, organizing, business development, planning and almost everything we do in owning a small business.

Keep Focused on God’s Word to Inspire You

If you have started your own business in any format your are a creator.  You must tap into your creativity daily!  I haven’t figured out how to avoid all of the pitfalls of the creative process, but I look to Jesus and God’s Word to inspire me to continue to value and instill creativity in my life.

Add focus and structure to your creativity.

• In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1:1 God was structured when he created the world.  He had a plan and began and finished different parts of the plan each day and didn’t stop until his project was complete. Then He rested on the 7th day!
• Jesus understood we needed focus when he summed up and prioritized the commandments into the two greatest commandments of loving God and loving others.

Don’t give up – perseverance is key to finishing what you start!

• By faith the walls of Jericho fell, after the people had marched around them for seven days. Hebrews 11:30 (I would have quit on day 2 – sigh! )
• Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. 1Corinthians 9:24 (If that isn’t the goal, why bother?)
• Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Hebrews 12:1

We are created in God’s image – He is THE Creator – we are made to create.

• When we aspire to be more like Christ we glorify God.  This is our chief purpose!  When we create I believe it gives God immense pleasure. (When we create garbage, thankfully, He has the patience of the Holy Spirit and smiles anyway.)
• God gave us our gifts and talents.  He wants us to use them.  Through exercising of our gifts the Holy Spirit can work through us for God’s Kingdom.  (Do you want to hold out your gifts from God?  Eek, not me!)
• Fear and self-criticism are from Satan, not God.  Don’t let fear keep you from leading the life God has planned for you.  (I tell myself this one daily!)

As a Christian small business owner we are challenged in the creative process every day:

• How do I find good employees?
• What kind of end cap display will really sell this product?
• We need a new creative incentive plan.
• What should the new flyer, store, product look like?
• What new features can we add to our product?
• Can we package up our services in a different way?
• What is our strategic plan for the XY division?

We are just like everyone else, yet don’t forget our secret weapon.  We chose to turn our lives over to Jesus.  We are okay with being totally dependent on Him.  Okay, some of us still struggle with control, but go with me conceptually for now.  He has promised to work through our weaknesses.

Even if…..Keep Going!

So even if you don’t feel like the most creative person in the world….

Even if you are tired and scarred by so called constructive criticism….

Even if your ADD is making it difficult to focus and follow-through….

Keep persevering and call on the Creator of the Universe for a little helping hand!

Do you have any other Godly wisdom to keep us creating to share? Please comment!

As a small business when we hire a new employee he/she usually represents a double digit percentage of our entire team.  We better make a good decision or 50%, 25% or at least 10% of our team is a potential handicap.  We can’t afford that!  We need to become EXPERT RECRUITERS.  Let’s look at one of the most important steps a small business can take in the recruiting process.

In “big business” recruiting you think of the poor candidate sitting in front of a panel of corporate managers assembled to drill the guy about why he feels himself worthy of the interview much less a job at their fine institution.  Okay, now come back to reality.  WE aren’t APPLE or P&G or STARBUCKS!  We are SMALL BUSINESSES.  We are working on our image and brand, but most of us need to help the candidate envision what we are destined to become!  We want to cast our vision whether that is to be the #1 player in the local market or just to make a small difference in the lives of the customers God brings to us.  We have a vision.  WE HAVE PASSION! (I didn’t think it would sound passionate in lower case letters.)  We love what we are doing.  If we don’t, we shouldn’t be doing it.

And if we are not able to illustrate what we can be….

If our passion does not shine through…..

If we can not capture the candidates imagination….

then who can???

It is our job to sell the candidate on our business first!  We want them salivating over the opportunity!  Why?

• We want to attract candidates with successful track records, not someone just in need of a job.
• We want to set the bar clearly for all new hires so they will hit the ground running!
• We want full buy in to our vision and mission.

• We want to hear through the interview how they feel they can contribute to achieving the company’s dreams.

• We want them talking about us to everyone they know.
• We want to have the negotiation leverage, not them.

Selling our business to candidates motivates and inspires them and it motivates and inspires us.  It is fun.  It creates momentum.  It is our job!

As a business coach I am involved with many different types of small businesses.  I work with service companies, private practice, retailers….  One common situation that I run across more than 90% of the time is businesses struggling with employee problems.  Common issues are:

• employee missing work alot due to family problems or personal health issues.
• processes mysteriously disappear after a few months.
• lax work ethic while at work.

When questioned, the small business owner has not communicated that the reliability, work ethic, or follow-through is not meeting expectations.  And then guess what happens next.  Other employees seem to lower themselves to the least productive employee if the company is accepting of the poor performance.

There are many strategies and tactics to fix these issues, but I want to focus here on preventative measures.  Above all else – START OUT RIGHT WITH A NEW EMPLOYEE!  At least stop the bleeding.   Even if you are running around like crazy and plugging all of the holes, you must be prepared to set the expectations and properly train new employees. If you have to work on the weekend or come in at 4 am, make sure you have a plan for a new employee.  Also, make sure that the new employee knows what unacceptable performance and habits look like.  If not, when they see it around them they will quickly fall into line with the “office norm”.

Just setting expectations one time is not enough.  It needs to be reinforced regularly.  Meet at least one time per week to go over with any new employee how they are doing.  If you see an “office norm” occurring from the new employee, address it immediately.  Hopefully, they WILL say what about “so and so”.  Perfect intro to explaining to them that they need to trust that you are addressing any indivividual privately and that they need to focus on your communication to them.  Basically, you are telling them to worry about themself!

In Summary,

• Hire good talent.
• Communicate very clearly the expectations for job and behaviors.
• Train well on job responsibilities.
• Reinforce through frequent and consistent feedback addressing problems as they arise.

If you don’t address the problems as they arise, you know you won’t come back to it later.  You will start to blame yourself for not communicating.  Then you have now added more overhead with minimal positive impact.  The cost is astronomical!

Remember, as hard as it is to address employee problems as they happen, it is excruciating to do it once the problems have snowballed over time!