If there’s one thing business owners shy away from more than holding their team accountable, it’s holding themselves accountable to their team. Many of us begin working for ourselves because we dislike the idea of having a boss. The truth is, you actually have many bosses: the people who work for you.
Keeping them happy, motivated, and committed to your vision is a challenging task. To effectively enforce policies and coach your team, demonstrate that you hold yourself to the same standards you place on them.
How a Team Survey Benefits You
In an effort to hold yourself accountable with the most transparency, we recommend conducting an annual survey of your team. This is an invaluable opportunity for your employees to give feedback on your performance, business operations, the effectiveness of recent changes and areas for improvement. To get the most value out of this exercise, you need to guarantee confidentiality and anonymity.
Commit to communicating with your team what you learned from the process and what changes you plan to implement based on the feedback. There’s nothing more discouraging than being asked to spend time giving feedback, only to have that feedback be ignored.
Crafting Your Team Survey
So, how do you go about creating an effective team survey? First, you need to identify who will perform the survey on your behalf. In some situations, there may be a member of your team who has the credibility and professionalism needed. Since the information provided is often sensitive, this person can’t be seen as having any ulterior motives. Because of this, it may be helpful to enlist an impartial third party. Your business advisor is a great option for this role, as they have seen what works and what doesn’t inside dozens of other businesses.
Next, you need to craft the survey. Creating a valuable team survey is a delicate balance. You want to gather as much information as you can about the different aspects of your business, but you need to understand that you’ll get more participation and buy-in if you make it quick and easy to complete.
Creating an effective team is one of the aspects our strategic team looks at when helping business owners to achieve their ultimate goals. And right now, we’re offering a ‘no satisfaction no fee’ opportunity to our clients.
