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BNI & The Power of One
BNI 829: Concerns Picking My Leadership Team
00:14:20
This episode we answer a submitted question regarding concerns over picking a new leadership team.
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Sam Foreign welcome back to BNI and the Power of One podcast. Thank you for joining me again. We are back with your suggested topics and questions and today again ask to remain anonymous, which is perfectly fine for anybody who has a question that you might be. I don't fearful that somebody knows who you are or talking about your chapter and you don't want people to know you're talking about your chapter. It's always perfectly fine. So today says love your podcast, help me grow as a business owner and a B and I member in ways I can't express. So first of all, thank you for providing this amazing source of learning. Thank you. I really appreciate that I've been offered to be the president of my chapter and I'm excited to accept it. I'm currently VP and our chapters on the smaller side we have a we have had a struggle with leadership in rocky times with the chapter that have gotten a lot better. But there's serious room for growth and improvement. My question is what is your advice for picking leadership teams after being VP and worrying about the majority of the members ability to handle any of the leadership team roles? So that's a really good question and timely in the midst of leadership team selection. I know in our regions are probably most regions across the US and maybe even globally at this time. I know October 1st is a transition date. We start this process really early because of what I'm going to advise for you as well, and I do. For any leadership team it's all about proper communication and expectation setting prior to taking the role. What happens in a lot of chapters is they wait to the very last minute to pick teams. They kind of scramble to see who's willing to do stuff. Most people will look at the leadership team roles as this obligation that they have to do versus the opportunity that they gain from doing it. And because of that the team gets kind of, you know, put together half assed, gets, you know, out of urgency. People are taking roles because they didn't really like the role, they didn't have any expectations of the role, what have you. They feel like they're being forced to do it. They don't really pay attention during training or, or even engage in the training part of it. And then we start the year and we just kind of keep getting more of what we've always gotten. So, so the key is, first of all, I believe anybody in your chapter or most of your chapter members have the ability to handle any of the leadership team roles because the leadership team roles aren't that complicated and they shouldn't require too much of a significant effort. They definitely require more time, they definitely require more focus and commitment than not having one. But they're not overwhelming. What happens is they, they can become overwhelming for some people because they're trying to do everything or more than they should be doing. Because of what I said before, because the team was not put together, didn't buy in. It was just kind of like, hey, listen, we got to fill in leadership team roles so that we have a chapter here and sign people up. Or people sign up, but they, their heart really isn't into it. There's no communication, planning anything else beforehand. Then a lot of those things will fall on one or two people. They get overwhelmed. Everybody looks at them being overwhelmed and goes, wow, I don't want a leadership team role. Look how overwhelming that leadership team role is. And it becomes that problem. So the majority of your members actually have the ability to handle it. It's a matter of two things. One, you want to ask where do people think they could be the most effective? So you can use like a little survey. We do a nomination form in our chapters where the first name you write down is your name. Like where do you want to serve or would you be willing to serve? And then they nominate through all the others. It gives you insight on where do people think they might be able to participate. Now even with that, you're going to ask some people to do roles that they didn't put their name down for, but it gives you some kind of indication and the communication around the fact that everybody's probably going to be involved. I don't know the size of your chapter. Obviously you say it's on the smaller side. Likely everybody's going to have some kind of role. There's a minimum of 14 people on the leadership team. So it's just a matter of trying to figure out where do people's interests might be and then based off of the skill sets you do see of them, where might be some key roles that they could really excel. So if, do you have a detailed orient person that's going to be somebody who's going to be really good as a vp? Do you have somebody who's really well spoken and can communicate really well? That's a really good, you know, education coordinator, potentially. Do you have somebody who's routinely on time, if not early, outgoing, friendly, good visitor hosts? Right. So you can start lining them up based off people who are not overly emotional or don't get caught up in drama, good membership committee members, and so you can start lining up from there. Build out your ideal team on paper, then go step by step, go to who you think will be the great VP and ask them and tell them, listen, I'm lining up a leadership team. I think you'd really excel here, and here's why you want to be complimentary, right? I think this skill set that you've. You've really shown could be really helpful here. And I think it's a great opportunity to put some more light to that skill and who you are. And this is the big difference for leadership teams. Again, I said it earlier, obligation versus opportunity. There's an old podcast I did on that. When you look at something as an obligation, it's something you have to do. You don't really want to do it. You're being forced to do it. It's just, you know, you don't really want to put in all your effort because it's something you have to do. When you look at something as an opportunity, something that can be captured, you could be more bought in. And that's what taking a leadership team role is. It's actually. It's an opportunity. It's an opportunity to increase your visibility and your credibility, thus your profitability over time to your fellow members. You get more time in front of everybody. You get to showcase some skill sets, you get to showcase your professionalism, you get to showcase your leadership. That is a massive opportunity. However, the flip side of the coin is it's a massive opportunity to destroy all those as well. If you don't take it seriously and you don't do it, and you're always, you know, behind schedule or you don't do your reports, or you just don't care. You're not prepared. You're highlighting somebody who is irresponsible, unprofessional, unprepared. So when we're asking people to be on the team, we want to highlight. Why would they want to be on the team? It's the opportunity to increase your visibility and your credibility. And I think the best way is to have, you know, to highlight this skill set. You're an amazing presenter. I think you. You do great presentations every single week. I want to showcase that skill set and have you be our education coordinator because people will listen to you because you're such a great presenter type of thing, and then fill out your team from there. You want to do that now. In fact, you might even be a little late. But do it now, because then, even though your leadership team may not take over until October, you Want to spend the next couple months getting that team together and start having the conversations around, where do we think the chapter's at right now? Where do we think we can be making improvements? How are we going to work best as a team? What were. What will our goals be? What will our strategies be to achieving those goals? What are we expecting of each other? What are you expecting of us? It's a great opportunity to sit down and have a conversation around and great. Before and after you go through your chapter success training before, hey, what do we see that we think might need improvement? Where do we think, how can we work as a team? What are our goals? What are our strategies? Go to chapter success training. Learn more about each role, what it entails, all of that. Have another meeting after. Before October 1st and share. Here's what I learned. What did you learn? Here's what I heard the expectations of my role are. What did you hear the expectations of your role are? And make sure everybody's in alignment around who's doing what and how do we all work together and how and why every role on that team is vitally important. And then start your year with a great base of good communication, good expectations, good goals and a good strategy and you'll have an amazing year. I would tell you there's a lot of chapters and a lot of people would probably feel very similar to you when you say words like, you know. I worry about the majority of my members being able to handle leadership roles. That's based off what you've been perceiving and seeing going on. I don't think it's a lack of ability. I would bet it's just a lack of. It's a little bit of culture and is a lack of all those things I just talked about from prior leadership teams. And so I wouldn't be afraid of picking teams. It's more about what do you do after you pick the team that really matters. I would bet your members have the ability to really step up and do good things. They just need to be approached about the opportunity differently. They need to be encouraged and held accountable a little bit differently. You need to really create that team culture and not wait until October to try to figure out how to do that. Use this time ahead of time to do it. Leadership team selection is a really big deal. I mean, we started in April in our regions because it's such a big deal. And even when we started that early, that's. There are a lot of chapters that drag their feet. Look at it as like it's Only June. Why are we even dealing with this? Do it last minute and then wonder, hey, why does our chapter seem to struggle out of the gate compared to other chapters? It's because of this, right? So be if you're hearing this and you're on a leadership team or going into a leadership team, be different by taking advantage of the time you have between now and October 1st. Don't be the chapters like, oh, we got time, we'll just throw it together and whatever. And look at if you treat the leadership team selection as just as an obligation itself and as just like this task we have to complete and you just kind of half ass and throw a team together to say you did it, you're going to continue to get similar results from that. Like your results will match the effort, the time and the focus put into picking the team. If there's not a lot of effort, time and focus in picking the team, there's not going to be a lot of effort, time and focus coming out of it. And so it really is an important part of the year. And I think this is a really timely and great question and I really appreciate it. And again for everybody, continue to go to bni powerofone.com submit your questions, let me know how I can be of help and I appreciate everybody who continues to engage. I hope you have a great day.
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