Good leadership starts with good communication. As you build your team and start to delegate and to give your team members tasks, the ability to communicate clearly is critical. The problem is that we all communicate so differently, and if we don’t have a system for communication, it can become one of the biggest time-sucks in our business.
The first thing you want to keep in mind is that your team members cannot read your mind. YOU are the leader. It is on you to be clear. It is on you to communicate. And if you can communicate in a way that honors your team members and how they process information, even better. But where do you even start with that? Last episode, we talked about finding the best apps for your business. Today, I am talking about three apps my company is using to communicate.
Right now, we are using Todoist, Marco Polo, and Loom. Each of these apps works a little differently, and they help us communicate in unique ways. I find that using more than one tool to communicate increases clarity and gives us versatility. I don’t force my team members to communicate in the exact same way as me. Instead, we find ways to communicate together, and this increases our productivity and creates bonds of trust. Using these apps has helped increase positive communication.
All of these apps and tools have free versions, so if you think they’ll be a good fit for you and your business, give them a try! As you increase efforts to communicate, you will see so many productive rewards! If you want detailed information on all of these apps, listen to the podcast! I hope you’ll be back again next week for even more tips and tricks!
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Your team members cannot read your mind, and YOU are the leader. It is on you to be clear. It is on you to communicate. And if you can communicate in a way that honors your team members and how they process information, even better.
Many of the business owners I’ve worked with over the years are incredible people. However, they can also be intense, especially when there is stress involved! That intensity oftentimes means that they are reacting and not always creating a team environment that allows people to thrive.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIBED
To help your business stand out on social media, you've got to consistently share compelling content that catches the attention of your potential clients. But keeping up with that daily grind is draining your creative energy. As you brainstorm, create and share your posts every single day. Not to mention when things get busy, your content is the first to go. I'm Angela Proffitt and clients are my agency for five figure strategy days to batch and create magnetic content for social media. But in my upcoming free training, I'll share the methods my team uses to create amazing social content that allows you to stay consistent without spending all your waking hours on social media.
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Welcome to business unveiled podcast. This is the place where we help overwhelmed time starved entrepreneurs like you make the profitable shifts to get more done and get more out of life. I'm your host, Angela Proffitt, award winning eight figure entrepreneur and CEO. And in every episode of business unveiled, I'm bringing you conversations that will give you the expertise and strategies that will scale your team and business so you can get shit done. That's GSD in our world. So get your time back and grow a business that helps you be present in your life. Let's do this y'all.
Good leadership starts with good communication. As you build your team and start to delegate and give team members ownership over the things that you used to spend all of your time on. Working on the ability to communicate is so critical. The problem is we all communicate so differently. And we come to our jobs bringing all of these communication habits. We don't know how to express to our team members, and they don't know how to express them to us. And if we don't have a good system for this, and how to figure out all of this stuff, it can become one of the biggest time sucks in our business. Communication is so important. Many of the business owners I've worked with over the years. They're incredible people, however, they can be so intense, especially when there's stress involved, that intensity oftentimes means that they are reacting. And they're not creating a team environment that allows people to thrive. I have one client in particular that I'm thinking about. He had team members that worked best with deadlines, but because he was so busy, he never created Devon's for them. And his team was so frustrated and confused. And they weren't meeting his expectations. But those expectations had not been communicated to them. Now if you're a leader, and you're listening to me right now, you might be thinking, this team members should ask questions to clarify what they should be doing or asking for deadlines. But keep in mind, your team members cannot read your mind. And you are the leader, it is up to you to be clear. It is on you to communicate. And if you can communicate in a way that honors your team members, and how they process information. That's even better clarity is speed. But where do you even start with this? In my signature course GST Academy, I spent an entire lesson talking about the psychology methodology that we use to make sure that we know what motivates and inspires all of our team members. And I share with you how I use that information, so that you make sure that your team members are doing the work that motivates and challenges them. So we're not going to go into all that right now. But I do want to cover three tools that we use in my business to make sure instructions and details beyond our standard operating processes. We talked about how we decide which apps will work best in our business in my most recent solo episode, so be sure to check that out. But in this instance, I want to talk about three apps that we use currently that are specific to communicating with team members. The first one is called to do list it is an app that you can get on your computer and on your phone and I want to share with you guys how we use it.
And why it's effective for different types of psychology's on the team, there are a ton of apps out there that call themselves project management and to do list and get more done. But what it comes down to is how to your team members need to see it in order for their brain to process the information correctly, and the way that you're communicating and the way that you're communicating the deadline matters. So for example, we've tried a lot of different ones. And I feel like we've used them all. And we've changed over the years as we've evolved the business into what it is today and continues to grow. So changes, okay. But the reason we use what we use is because my team members need to see it a certain way. And I want them to be able to see something the way that it's going to be easy for them to actually do the task and actually assign a deadline to it. Now there are other apps that we use in conjunction with a to do list. But instead of sending a bunch of emails back and forth, and things falling through the cracks, I really try my best to list out everything that my team needs to know. It's also a way for me to keep up with things. And more importantly, a way for them to keep up with things so that nothing falls through the cracks. That app is called Marco Polo, it is a video texting app, it doesn't take up space on your phone. And we use it to clarify anything that needs to be done. Why is it so effective for us with different types of personalities on the team, because people need to hear it differently, we customize the message the way that people need to hear it. And we've also put processes in place for actually how to use the app, I'll give you a few examples. So for example, if I am in between meetings, and I'm driving in between meetings, and I'm about to do a brain dump, and I will marcopolo one of my team members and say, Please make sure that you're at your computer, and you have headphones in or you're alone or turn this off, listen to it later. So set up the expectation for what the person is about to hear. A lot of times what I'm saying is confidential information, I don't want other people around or in the background, hearing what I'm about to say. And that's really important to let the person know what's about to happen. And so I'll say these things need to be done and follow up, here's a deadline, etc. Now, if I put things on our to do list, and I feel like it needs an explanation, I'll put a note in our to do list that says, you know, see Marco Polo on this date, so that the team member can go back. And I can clarify what I'm talking about. Because it's really, really easy to read a text message or an email, and not understand it the way that it was meant to be understood, it's so effective to make sure that you're communicating clearly. And if you're not, it can really set you back. Also, I don't want to be misunderstood. I'm a really sarcastic person. So making sure that people can see the emotion and the tone of my voice, the facial expression that I'm making, so that someone doesn't take something the wrong way, it really helps with miscommunication. The next app that I absolutely love is called loom, it is a way that you can record your screen. And we use it in house as well as with our clients. It is super, super easy to use. And it is a Google Chrome extension. So if you have Google Chrome, if you don't go download, download Google Chrome actually like Chrome better for business than I do Safari. But there's a lot of great plugins, but we'll stick to loom right now, you can actually record your screen. And then you can show your face if you want to. Or you can show your logo, if you don't want to show your face, record your screen, and then it saves it in the cloud. And you can share that link with someone so that they can actually follow along. I'm very visual. And again, I don't want to be misunderstood. And so I like to record my screen and share it with our clients or share with the team member to make sure that we're on the same page about a few things. And I also appreciate when people do it with me, and they screen share and they walk through what I need to do or what I need to be paying attention to because it helps me focus if I'm actually watching a video. All of these apps and tools have free versions. So if you think that there'll be a good fit for you or your business, give it a try. And when you do take a screenshot and share with me on social media, tag me at Angela Proffitt on Instagram
And I'll share it on my stories to show everybody that you're GSD Dean. And I'd love to know what apps you find useful and if you need more help like this in your business, but you really need to take it step by step and you need more guidance and processes, and habits and practices in everything you're doing. You're going to want to check out GST Academy, go to the GST academy.com right now, and make sure that you get your email address in there. Depending on when you're hearing this episode, you may have a chance to sign up for the waitlist, but we're going to be opening the academy really soon. And you don't want to miss it. It's absolutely life changing per some of our students. So I'll see you back here next week. Y'all have a GST day. Bye. What's up GST leaders thank you so much for tuning in. And I would love for you to text me your number one takeaway, any feedback that you have, and we're also starting a new series called The number one time suck how you can be more productive and GSD and everyday life so you can be present. So if you can help us out and let me know just text me your number one time suck 6155 to 78755 Let's get shit done.
