A high school coach I knew used to greet his team for weekend practice by sniffing a basketball and saying, “There’s nothing like the smell of leather on a Saturday morning.” His players may not have agreed, but we all have favorite sensory experiences that we remember, or still appreciate.
For me, years ago, it was the scent of soil and last year’s grass in early spring, the day my pals and I played our first after-school game of baseball, dodging remnant snow piles in the vacant lot behind the neighborhood tavern. Or maybe it was the aroma of black earth when I turned over the shovel in digging worms in the woods for the first bullhead fishing trip down at the river.
Maybe for you it has to do with earthy smells, too. There has to be something nice about getting back into the field after a long winter, pulling the backhoe off the trailer and taking that first scoop of soil. It’s the scent of enterprise, of money, and of being able to do as a grown man, with full-size machines, what you did as a kid with toys in a sandbox.
(I know how much the attendees at last December’s NOWRA Installer Academy enjoyed the Roe-D-Hoe competition.)
Feeling free?
Maybe more than that, it’s the scent of freedom. Sure, owning a business can be stressful. Sure, there are times it feels more like the business owns you. Sure, sometimes from the viewpoint of an owner, a 9-to-5 job looks pretty good.
But hard work and long hours feel different when you’re the owner. I don’t think that’s just because when you own there’s a straight-line relationship between effort and reward (which most times isn’t the case if you’re an employee). It’s because what you choose to do as a business is something you enjoy (or else why would you do it?).
Right now, if you live in a northern latitude, you’re getting ready for another season. Maybe your off-season is a time when you slow down and enjoy life. If so, maybe it’s a little difficult to contemplate another several months of long days in the saddle. Or maybe you’ve had your fun and you’re glad to be busy again.
Whatever the case, now is a good time (a better time than January 1) to take stock and think of how you want the year and the future to look.
The tough part
For many, the toughest part of running a business is working with the people. There are some who thrive on watching good people develop and grow into new responsibilities and better pay. And there are some who see managing people, with all their problems and petty issues, as a huge headache.
Most of us fall somewhere in the middle. In my own life as a supervisor, I am most ashamed of a bad hire I made — a young person who meant well but simply didn’t have the skills to make it in the job he was asked to do. He moved from another state to take the job; six months later we had to let him go. His failure was my fault, not his.
I am most proud of the next person I hired for the same job. Learning from my mistakes, I looked carefully for someone who clearly had the tools he needed. Then I nurtured and mentored him with care. I watched him progress up the ranks and ultimately into his own business.
You can probably recall successes and failures of your own. But where do you fall on the continuum between good boss and bad boss? Ben Simonton, author of Leading People to be Highly Motivated and Committed, offers a simple, 10-question test that lets you assess yourself.
Take the test
For each question, rank yourself on a scale from 1 to 10, where 10 is the best or almost always, and 1 is the worst or almost never.
“Add up the points for each question,” says Simonton. “If you score close to 100, I would expect that your employees will be over three times more productive than if your score was 30 or less. In addition, employees will unleash their full potential of creativity and innovation, love to come to work and have very high morale.” Here is the test:
1. Do you provide regular and frequent opportunities for employees to voice complaints, suggestions and questions? Do you provide reasonable and timely responses, and give employees what they say they need to do a better job?
2. Do you, at least weekly, elicit answers/responses from the team and get them to use their brain-power to solve problems?
3. Do you listen to employees with 100-percent attention, without distraction, without trying to figure out a response, and with the use of follow-up questions to obtain missing details and suggested fixes?
4. Do you refrain from giving orders, since by their nature they’re demeaning and disrespectful and destroy innovation and commitment?
5. Do you treat members better in terms of humility, respect, timely and high-quality responses, forthrightness, trust, and admission of error, than they are expected to treat customers and each other publicly?
6. Do you recognize employees for their contributions and high performance and never take credit yourself?
7. Do you openly provide all company information to employees to the extent they need/desire?
8. Do you use values and high standards in order to explain why certain actions are better than others?
9. Do you use smiles and humor with subordinates, not frowns or a blank face?
10. Do you generate in employees a sense of ownership?
No little quiz like this is perfect, but perhaps this one gives you something to think about as you head into a new season.
