How to Get and Keep Ideal Support Staff
While it’s entirely possible to practice a profession as a one-person operation, it’s not typical. More often than not we operate with support from one or more individuals who help us leverage our skills and knowledge. In “normal times” this may be a cast of thousands physically present in cubicles or it may be one virtual assistant in the Philippines. But there are a few principles which always apply, and to a large extent, these principles apply even to “one off” support such as web designers.
This analysis assumes that you understand and apply the Alignment Doctrine (https://mailchi.mp/6b3a4cdf5bd3/resolution-for-2646253?e=[UNIQID]) , that is, you are practicing your profession in the zone where your personal attributes, life experience, and training all come together. It also assumes that you understand the Client Code, that is, discovering and super-satisfying the ideal clients you were born to help. With those assumptions, here are the cardinal principles for getting and keeping the support personnel who will supercharge your practice.
1. The Alignment Doctrine applies to support staff, as well. They too are professionals, and they will be most effective, efficient, motivated, and satisfied when they are doing the work they were born to do. If this doesn’t sound like your candidate, don’t hire.
2. No matter how smart and capable an individual may be, if they don’t understand your very unique giftings and your very unique client value proposition, don’t hire.
3. If they can’t amplify, multiply, and elevate your giftings, let them work for someone else. This may sound “airy fairy”, but it’s not. You need your assistant to be, and continue to be, personally excited about helping you do what makes you personally excited. Otherwise, it’s just a job. For both of you.
4. Compensate fairly, plus. This is not only morally correct, but it’s smart. You will be investing a lot of time in training and cultivating your staffer, so don’t do it for someone else’s benefit down the road. You should be thinking lifetime, not how much you can squeeze out for a year or two.
5. Have their backs. Generally speaking, staff take a lot of flak from clients and other professionals, most of which is not deserved. If you defend them, they will follow you through Hell and back. If they deserve it, deal with it for the betterment of you both, and if you do it right, they’ll still follow you through Hell and back.
6. You don’t own them, you just borrow them. In their real lives they have partners and kids and ailing parents and mortgages and dogs and churches. There will be crunch times when their other lives need them more than you do. Work with them. I guarantee the reward will more than make up for a few lost hours.
7. Support them. Just as you need them to help you maximize your potential, they need equipment and resources to maximize theirs. Don’t nickel and dime in this area. Ask them, hold them accountable, but don’t chintz.
8. Explain and train. Be a teacher and a mentor. You will never make a better investment.
9. Respect them. Respect their privacy. Respect their aspirations. Respect their dignity, especially sexually. I shouldn’t have to say this.
10. Listen to them. If you’ve followed all the foregoing, they will have your best interest at heart and they will know, perhaps better than you, how it all works at the street level. Don’t waste that.
11. Don’t be afraid of hiring family and friends, provided that you have all the foregoing nailed down. My dear wife Karen saved my bacon more times than I can count, and over the years I have had every one of my four kids working for me, not because they were my kids, but because I knew they were smart, honest, and had world-class work ethics. Similarly, many of my best hires were on the recommendations of friends and clients, because they knew me and my operation and knew exactly what was needed.
If I could summarize this in a single sentence, it would be this: Hire only those who can amplify what you do best, then support them like your life depends on it. Because it does.