JULIAN SAYS:

Two obvious potential routes to take to solve this problem seem apparent but in reality, the implementation of both might be the best approach.

Firstly, the development of a member of your team into a back-up valuer role is crucial. Presumably when you are on holiday or taking the odd well-earned day off, nobody is sufficiently skilled or knowledgeable to step into your shoes to carry out the appraisals. This is bound to lead to lost business, due to the appraisals being conducted poorly or not being booked until your return. This will perpetuate the problem with your own personal workload as you come back to a stack of appraisals keeping you out of the office while you might be better employed in getting your feet back under the desk and reviewing the progress while you were away.

Talk to the team, see who might be interested in broadening their role, select an appropriate outside training course and put together a coaching plan which includes them shadowing you on a selection of appointments, then vice versa, as well as short practice role play sessions with you to cover areas of weakness or particular difficulty (convincing clients on correct price, closing, presenting fees, overcoming objections).

A coaching plan demands time and planning. If it seems onerous, keep your eyes on the prize: the extra time you’ll have to run your business !

Such a coaching plan demands time and planning, if it seems onerous and challenging to adhere to, keep your eyes on the prize – namely all the extra time that will be freed up for you to manage your business properly.

AND THERE’S MORE

The second route (to run parallel) is to ensure that an effective focused team meeting provides the right starting point to the day and that you have an appropriate second-in-command to whom you can confidently pass the baton prior to leaving the office for your appointments.

The meeting needs to include the issuing of the key tasks of the day for each member of the team and the recording of them in writing for ongoing reference during the day. A portable A1 size whiteboard is ideal for this rather than just entering agreed actions into a software system – at the close of the meeting it can be positioned out of public view but somewhere that staff will regularly see it during the day (such as the kitchen or back office) so it serves as a constant reminder of the duties you have assigned them to undertake in your absence.

These recorded priorities should be those which directly have an effect on business results (canvassing, client care, hot applicant contact, offer negotiation, sales progression and so on) and which must be achieved that day.

Your second-in-command need not be the most senior but will need to be organised and assertive. Their role is to do what you would do yourself if you had the luxury of actually managing the business yourself – in other words to apply ‘gentle pressure relentlessly’ to make sure the aforementioned priority tasks get done.

Get your deputy to chair the morning team meeting in your presence once or twice a week so you can be sure he/she is doing so to the right standard. You need to coach them through this process to accelerate their development in that discipline. Once they are up to scratch, you will be able to relax in the knowledge that you are not 100 per cent indispensable.

DELEGATE TO SURVIVE

Having been in your position myself as manager/valuer many times over the past 34 years, the only way to succeed is to accept that if you try and do those two jobs in one, you will inevitably do neither to full effectiveness. Or at least if you do, you will have absolutely no home life!

However, by coaching and developing a second valuer and assigning a trusted member of your team to be your ‘lieutenant’, the team and its component parts will prove to be a much more versatile and competent unit. You may actually end up with team members who prove to do an even better job of valuing and/or managing than you do.

Plenty of owners/managers fail in the key skill areas of staff development and delegation. Sometimes this failure is as a result of lack of coaching skills or poor time management. More often it is due to the manager/owner’s fear or insecurity. But the best leaders recognise the truth in Frederick W. Smith’s words “A manager is not a person who can do the work better than his men; he is a person who can get his men to do the work better than he can.”

Julian O’Dell is founder of TM Training & Development