Pet Sitters Associates. Use ‘Confessional’ at checkout
Pet Perennials- Visit: https://petperennials.com/pages/register-for-a-business-account
Does your team experience you as an enforcer, an encourager, or both? We discuss why maintaining high standards and recognizing good work are two essential responsibilities of leading a pet care team. We explore how the vigilance that helped us build our businesses can keep our attention on mistakes while everyday contributions go unnoticed. We share practical ways to offer specific appreciation, recognize good judgment, and let encouragement stand on its own. Through honest reflection on our own leadership, we examine how to hold people accountable while helping them feel seen, supported, and equipped to succeed.
Main topics:
Balancing Accountability With Meaningful Encouragement
Breaking the Negative Feedback Cycle
Recognizing Good Judgment and Initiative
Making Everyday Employee Contributions Visible
Building Trust Through Specific Appreciation
Main takeaway: “Our employees shouldn't have to make a mistake to get our attention.”
Our teams need us to uphold standards, address problems, and protect the quality of care we provide. They also need us to notice their thoughtful decisions, consistent effort, and everyday contributions. Both are part of our responsibility as leaders.
It’s easy to slip into being the enforcer when mistakes are what demand our attention. Becoming an encourager takes intentional attention, too. That might mean acknowledging someone’s careful follow-through, recognizing a good judgment call, or explaining how their reliability supports the whole team.
We can correct what needs to change and appreciate what’s going well. In “The Enforcer and the Encourager: Your Team Needs Both,” we talk about making space for both responsibilities as our pet care businesses grow.
When your team hears from you, do they know there’s room for encouragement, too?
Links:
Buy Me a Coffee — Support an episode you found helpful.
Give us a call!(636) 364-8260
Follow us on: Instagram and Facebook
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
Email us at: feedback@petsitterconfessional.com
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Pet Sitter Confessional, its hosts, or sponsors. We interview individuals based on their experience and expertise within the pet care industry. Any statements made outside of this platform, or unrelated to the topic discussed, are solely the responsibility of the guest.
A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
Unknown Speaker 0:02
We as small business owners often become excellent at identifying and correcting problems because that's what building a successful business requires, right? But as our businesses grow, these same instincts can create problems in our businesses where employees feel that their mistakes are noticed more than their contributions, there really is a deep problem with that because we operate in an environment where negative feedback is often more visible than positive feedback. It also takes what is it, 10 positive affirmations or acknowledgments to combat one negative one. That's pretty scary, but unless we intentionally interrupt that cycle, we pass it directly on to our employees. So on this episode, we want to talk about enforcing the standards, but also encouraging people along the way, and that those really are two different leadership responsibilities, and both of those are necessary. Hi, I'm Megan. I'm Collin. We are the hosts of Pet Sitter Confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. We'd like to thank our sponsors, Pet Sitters Associates, and Pet Perennials, our Patreon supporters as well. We love them. Thank you so much for supporting the show. And last week we just had our first person, Yvonne, buy us a coffee with buy us a coffee. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 1:20
So thank you so much. It's not about going and buying physically buying us a coffee. It's kind of a poorly named way to contribute and give back to the show with a tip. If that sounds like something you would like to do, you can go to
Unknown Speaker 1:34
buymeacoffee.com/petsitterconfessional. We appreciate it. This is kind of general in life, but also in business. When you when the only thing that you hear about is the thing that you did wrong, it can feel pretty demoralizing. Yeah, imagine you've got an employee and they encounter a completely unexpected and difficult situation while working and on the clock for you. They've responded well and compassionate. They exercised judgment and met everything according to your your vision and your goals and your morals, and they they took additional responsibility above and beyond what you would have asked them to do, so that someone, your client and their pet, receive the help that they actually need.
Unknown Speaker 2:11
And then later, management reaches out about a procedural oversight, a document missed, a step not followed.
Unknown Speaker 2:21
Naturally, the the employee is going to become really frustrated, and it's not because the correction was unjustified.
Unknown Speaker 2:28
They're not going to be feel frustrated because they they they were corrected and taught and coached and on something here. They're really frustrated because the extraordinary effort that they just did, the above and beyond thing, the passion that they are living out, that went completely unrecognized and noticed. Now, from a management's perspective or an owner's perspective, we were addressing something that needed correction. We hadn't even reviewed the earlier report yet to know, oh, this actually did happen. We just needed to find out what happened in this other scenario, but from the employee's perspective, they're going well. You didn't recognize me, or you didn't acknowledge the thing that I did. You just pointed out the thing I did wrong, and ignored everything that the employee did right. Both perspectives here are completely understandable and natural in this circumstance. From management, from the owners, they see an issue that needs corrected. From the employee, they have effort that needs recognized. I think the really important thing that we have to tease out here and distinguish is intention from impact. The management, the owner, had no intention of dismissing the employee's efforts, but that doesn't mean the employee's frustrations was or are unreasonable. Just because it wasn't intentional doesn't mean that there wasn't an impact. There wasn't. It wasn't received in a certain way. There are definitely times when we can be so accustomed to correcting problems that sometimes we forget that there's a person on the other end of that correction, and we're not trying to be mean or unnecessarily cruel, it's just we may have a lot of other things going on or a lot of other things on our plate, and we're not able to really be as maybe empathetic or compassionate in that moment. And we just need to find out what's going on, and then make yes, make the correction and then move on. Especially when we are dealing with our employees remotely in this industry. Of if I'm doing this through Slack, if I'm doing this through phone call, it's easy to bang out a message and shoot it over. And and yes, we we all know we're not supposed to read tone or anything like that in a message, but we also have to recognize that every single person on the planet does that, including your employees. And so, when you send out the harmless, hey, tell me more about this, they may receive that in a different way. And we just have to acknowledge that that is a thing that's going to happen. And while it
Unknown Speaker 4:52
is a an unfortunate aspect, it is also a reality. And while we don't send messages, we're not acting like okay.
Unknown Speaker 5:00
There's not a person behind here. It's just when we don't see people every single day, face to face, working alongside and with them, it gets harder and harder. And a lot of times, that's why we kind of become the enforcers, right? When we started our own business, we were responsible for everything. Everything fell to us. If if the company messed up, that means it was our fault, right? We were the company. Then, when we hired people, it was oh well. Now we need to enforce our standards. Well, when it's just us, again, we're the sitter, the scheduler, we're the customer, customer representative, service agent, quality control. Every mistake that we have when it's just us has immediate consequences that we feel when you miss a visit, you're going to lose a client. You never have to go to anybody else to figure out oh what happened in this visit because you know exactly what happened because you're the one that did the visit. You don't secure a gate that dog's going to be in danger, or you didn't give the medication becomes a serious emergency that impacts you directly. And so what we learn to do in the early stages is we learn to look for problems.
Unknown Speaker 6:04
We that's what we do, and and here's the process we all follow. Ready? Okay, you're gonna hire. Okay, I got to build checklists. I'm gonna have procedures. I'm gonna have safeguards. I'm gonna have systems, and all of a sudden we become the vigilant person at all times because vigilance is absolutely necessary. We've got to catch our own mistakes because no one else is going to do that. When we're in the beginning of our business, or it's just us, this works. This method is okay. Your vigilance is important and necessary, and it's what keeps clients coming back time after time. The issue really comes in when our businesses start to grow and our roles change, and we're no longer the one solely doing the visits. We may have a couple of employees, or we may have a massive team of 1020, 3040, 50 people with admins and managers and everything else. And so, Morgan Weber always says, "New level, new devil." Right? Well, when it's just
Unknown Speaker 6:58
us, the consequences are immediate. When we have a team and our role changes, we're no longer personally performing every visit. We're now overseeing people who are performing the visits. But your attention is still trained on the exceptions here, right? You have a missed photograph that was in a report that was supposed to be added in there, or somebody is late to a visit and you get that alert, or you have an unanswered message from a client, and they really needed a response, but nobody is doing it, or nobody is responding back to them. These are all issues that bubble up to the surface, and sometimes we can miss the hundreds of successful visits that really do become like background noise. Yeah, Megan and I think about this a lot. The the people on our team that, and this is going to sound bad, but when they're in the field, we don't think about them. They are just not top of mind because we know they're doing everything right. And what that means is that I am not praising them for the amazing work that they're doing because I'm not thinking about them. Well, and I because I'm not thinking about them. That but that gives me such peace of mind, right? I don't have to think about them, but at the same time, I do need to be thinking about them because we still need to be giving that recognition, that appraise, that praise, that approval. That yes, they still did a great job. I don't want them to just hear me when only bad things happen, right? Like that is the trap that we can fall into because we're not thinking about them. I don't need to say what a great job they did because they didn't hear from me, so they know they did a good job. And so we find ourselves now where the very instincts that helped me establish my high standards. If you are listening to this, I guarantee you, you have high standards. You talk about it a lot on social media. You brag about it to your team and for everybody in your community. Your vigilance got you there.
Unknown Speaker 8:43
Those same instincts can prevent you from recognizing the people around you who are maintaining them and continuing them. Suddenly, the asset that we have becomes a liability to the people around us. Where my ability to hold high standards through my constant vigilance, and we hear this a lot, right? Of I'm so hard on myself, I'm really hard on myself, and I take this really seriously, and I feel this, and so I obsess over the work, and I can't find anybody else who does that. But when we do find people who get it, we don't recognize them because all we can think about is we've got to be vigilant. We've got to be vigilant. It's this kind of paranoia that we bring into our business, or maybe it's that we don't appreciate them enough, or we don't tell them enough.
Unknown Speaker 9:31
Everyone has their own way that they want to be recognized, and so I think that's why it's important when somebody does come onto your team to kind of send them a little questionnaire or a little get to know you of like well how how do you want to receive feedback how do you want to be acknowledged in what ways like our gifts you know the love languages basically is that how do you want to be acknowledged in our company we should be encouragers and have pet business insurance as pet care professionals.
Unknown Speaker 10:00
Your clients trust you to care for their furry family members, and that's why PetSitters Associates is here to help. For over 20 years, they've provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance. Because you work in the pet care industry, you can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connections, and complete freedom in running your business. Learn why PetSitters Associates is the perfect fit for you, and get a free quote at petsetllc.com.
Unknown Speaker 10:23
As a listener, you get $10 off your membership when you use the code confessional at checkout. That's petsetllc.com
Unknown Speaker 10:29
because your peace of mind is part of great pet care. But it can't just be that we're asking for it, right? We actually do have to follow through with this because otherwise, we're just going to be seen as the enforcer in the business. We become the standard bearer and the maintainer of of the standard that we've set of our high quality and our we become the only quality control and again we are the only reaching out when we when we see those problems we can't be having that our team cannot be receiving messages in Slack or text or time to whoever, however you're communicating with them, only when things are wrong. That's a huge imbalance. That now in this feedback loop that we have of, I'm only getting bad news
Unknown Speaker 11:15
instead of more good news, and the problem is, is that it starts with us, the owners. We ourselves receive more bad news than good news on a day-to-day basis. That is a very great point, and it's also well. We, at least for our business, I'm sure you listening are going to acknowledge this as well in your own. But there are certain clients that we have where we only hear from them when it's bad news. Yes, and I cringe every time I see their name pop up, I'm like, "Oh no, here we go again. What did we do wrong?" And so we definitely don't want to bring that type of culture into our employees. But it is very tricky, and we do have to regulate ourselves as as business owners because when we are hearing these negative things from clients, and we're not necessarily receiving the the feedback, the positive feedback that we need. Of I, I love this company that you've built. You do, you guys do such a great job. You know, we don't often hear that. We hear more of the why wasn't this food done this way, or why wasn't my door propped open like I asked, or the blinds open, or whatever the specific request is. And so we definitely need to make sure that we are praising our team in the good times as well. Well, I mean, again, just think about this: when you execute 100 visits
Unknown Speaker 12:30
in a week,
Unknown Speaker 12:32
99%, 98% are completely successful
Unknown Speaker 12:37
to our problems. Who do you? Who are you going to hear from most likely,
Unknown Speaker 12:42
because I know from our experiences when everything goes right, the dog gets walked, the medication gets administered, the house gets locked, the client receives the report. We hear
Unknown Speaker 12:52
nothing,
Unknown Speaker 12:54
but do one thing wrong, and we hear about it. And it sometimes we get it immediately and emotionally and considerable length.
Unknown Speaker 13:02
That means that the feedback reaching us as the business owners is not necessarily representative of the work actually being performed. We only get the feedback from the clients who are angry and frustrated and unhappy.
Unknown Speaker 13:16
So,
Unknown Speaker 13:17
what do we then carry when we talk to our employees? Everything's horrible. All the clients are angry. I'm going getting emails all the time about this stuff. When actually 98, 99% of the visits went flawlessly that week, and that's the perspective that we have to keep in mind. Because again, those two problem visits, what are they going to be doing? There's going to be multiple emails, multiple phone calls, tons of internal communication between you and your team and your admin and managers, and corrective actions and and feedback and and forms that are going to be filled out. But those other ones, those didn't require any work for you. You have no idea. They completely slip your mind because they required literally nothing of us. And so, what's occupying our attention? The problems, the problems, and so what do we communicate? The problems,
Unknown Speaker 14:09
and now what's happened? the The employees' experience with us, with interacting with us, it's shaped entirely by those exceptions. The only time they hear from us our problems because that's what we hear, and this is the feedback cycle that we have to be so careful about, and we have to work to actively break. Right, clients disproportionately report problems, so we often spend more time investigating the mistakes, and thus our employees primarily hear our corrections, and they begin associating us or the management team with criticism, not what we want. Obviously, this cycle you know continues, but we need to break this. If we only communicate what comes to our attention naturally, we're going to communicate disproportionately about the problems, just like our clients were to us. So, step number one is recognizing that this.
Unknown Speaker 15:00
Is an issue, or at least could be an issue in your business. We want to intentionally
Unknown Speaker 15:06
undo this, compensate the complete other way for it. We don't want to ignore the problems. We want to actively look for the evidence of good work. What is one thing you can pull out of that employee's report that you can praise them on today? It is often easy now to correct in the complete opposite direction of well, I can't correct anybody, or I can't bring up bad news at all, or that is a one thing that we have to completely avoid and push back against. We still have high standards. We still have things that need to be taught and coached through. However, we also must build in systems like you said, Megan, to compensate for the 99% of successful things that happened that nobody paid attention to, because everyone was quote-unquote just doing their job. There's also another aspect here of you know they're just doing their job. Well, frankly, us as owners, who's coming and patting us on the back, right? I mean,
Unknown Speaker 16:04
sometimes clients will say, "You guys do such a great job. Thank you so much. I have so much peace of mind while I'm traveling or away. I really appreciate you." But again, a lot of times we just hear the negative, and so when we ourselves are not thinking we're doing our our business is doing a good job, or that we are excelling, we can start to get in this negative mindset because I'm not hearing the positive comeback on me. You know, I'm not receiving the the kudos or the cookies, and so it's hard to push that out to our employees. But it is super important. I think also there's this aspect of as small business owners, as entrepreneurs, we tend to be very internally motivated anyway. We tend to find satisfaction and purpose internally and not need external validation for our work. And unfortunately, the thing is, is that your employees, most of them, are not like that. Otherwise, they would have their own businesses. But that is just a characteristic of entrepreneurs: is you don't typically need the validation of other people to say you're doing a fantastic job because otherwise you wouldn't be doing it, right? Because a lot of us say, "Well, come hell or high water, I'm going to be serving clients. I love this. I love to do whatever aspect of the business that I'm doing. We serve our community, and we are awesome. So we we don't want we we we tend to not be encouragers to ourselves, and yet we fall back into that enforcer mindset again to uphold my standards. But there are a lot of consequences that come can come from that when I'm only having an enforcer management style, right? I I think the thing here is that from the outside, businesses who have enforcers at the head, they look successful. They look fantastic, right? The the employees are following procedures. Reports are complete. Problems are documented,
Unknown Speaker 17:52
but
Unknown Speaker 17:54
but there are more insidious things here, right? What's their turnover for their employees? Are their employees actually happy? Is there a good culture in there? That is our responsibility as business owners to foster those types of things. Well, employees may just be walking around anxious
Unknown Speaker 18:09
because they they they're worried that management is going to contact them, or I only do things out of worry. I'm concerned about things going, so I'm I'm acting out of worry and concern about what you, the management, you, the owner, might actually say to me. Right. Well, I don't certainly. This is probably bad on me, but I don't go out of my way to contact the clients that only contact me with problems and say, "Hey, Joe, hope you're having a great day with Fluffy. We sure miss you guys." Like, I don't want to contact the clients that are kind of terse with me, and so same thing here with employees. Of well, there's not going to then be that communication feedback when things go wrong or they're needing something different from you because yeah, they're kind of scared of you. Right, so they may hesitate to take action, or or what happens a lot of times is they become defensive about their mistakes because they are they feel like they're having to fight on this, or they just stop volunteering and talking at all. They stop completing that loop, and really, ultimately, the thing here is is that the good employees are going to start asking themselves a question that you, as the owner and manager, do not want. It's when they start asking themselves, "Why am I putting in all this effort if nobody notices?
Unknown Speaker 19:26
Why am I even bothering doing any of this? Because I only get yelled at, quote unquote, yelled at when something goes wrong." And that's a scary place to be as a business owner because that leads to employee turnover, or they're going to talk to other employees, and the culture is going to erode. Well, remember, employees don't need constant praise. Like this, every time they do something, they don't need a parade with glitter and a banner and time squares. That's not what we're talking about. We're also not talking about the fact, and this is something that we've struggled with personally. Of my.
Unknown Speaker 20:00
Role and responsibility in this, and what it's not
Unknown Speaker 20:05
is I am not responsible for making everyone feel good all of the time because you simply can't. You don't have enough hours in the day to praise everybody the way that they want to be praised, and so that is a tricky line that we have to walk between. Well, I do appreciate you, and sometimes I show it in different ways, and we have to get creative sometimes. At the same time, if you are depending on me for your emotional stability and your happiness, well, I can't take that on. That's not really my role as your boss to yet yes I can I can hear you and I can listen on on one on ones to the things going on in your personal life and I can be empathetic and compassionate at the same time
Unknown Speaker 20:54
there is a business that needs to be run here and we all have to kind of
Unknown Speaker 20:59
walk this together and be adults. Well, it's that difference between expecting professionalism and taking it for granted when it actually happens.
Unknown Speaker 21:07
Yeah, expect professionalism. Expect excellence. That's what we want our culture to be. We want to have a team of people who are driven to be excellent and serve clients with professionalism. The one caveat there is is that as the managers, as the owners, I cannot take it for granted when people actually live up to that,
Unknown Speaker 21:30
because if suddenly my employees are only caring about completing a checklist because that's all they ever talk about,
Unknown Speaker 21:40
well, then they're not going to be so much concerned about making good judgment calls or having that compassion or doing anything anything beyond the scope of that checklist because I'm not praising them for that. So it's not just hey, great job completing the checklist. Hey,
Unknown Speaker 21:57
I know the door was hard to get into, and you made a really good call by going around and checking the back door to see if that was unlocked, and I'm really glad that you did that. It's it's about us looking deeper at the work that actually is done. You know the work is hard.
Unknown Speaker 22:12
You know the work is really difficult and takes a lot of effort and ingenuity and creativity to actually accomplish. Is that what we're actually praising and encouraging in our team. One of the hardest parts of this work is when a client loses a pet. Pet Perennials makes it easy to show up for your clients in those moments with sympathy gift packages shipped directly to them. Their gift perks program has no fees and no minimums for small businesses like ours. Learn more and open a free gift perks account at petperineals.com.
Unknown Speaker 22:40
We should never assume that our best employees already know how much we appreciate them, right? Again, everybody is different in how they want to be appreciated, and we should try several things with each employee to know. Okay, they they really latched onto this one and and really said thank you and really were appreciative of my appreciation for that.
Unknown Speaker 23:01
But I think, on the whole, in this day and age, I don't think that there is a way that you could do too much for someone. Now, obviously, if you're going out and buying them car, like that would probably be too much. But a lot of people these days don't hear that they did a good job or a simple thank you, and so even just some of the mundane words like "thank you" or "we appreciate the hard work that you just did" that can go a long way for someone. Well, and we again we have this tendency of "I'm an enforcer." I feel like I need to be an enforcer, so how to become an encourager? And it feels tends to feel fake for a lot of us. We're forced. I'll say that because what is it? Well, I don't want to. I don't want to tell somebody a good job when they're just doing their job. I don't want to praise somebody when they're literally doing what's in the contract. Well, and again, we don't as business owners we don't typically get that either, right? Nobody is throwing me a parade because I completed three visits today or because I routed the schedule today. No, nobody is saying good job, Megan. But we have to find ways to connect with our team and the work that they did. There is a difference between flattery and encouragement. This is where we go wrong. Okay, so flattery. You're the best sitter ever.
Unknown Speaker 24:12
A genuine encouragement for that person may actually be you. You handle that difficult situation thoughtfully.
Unknown Speaker 24:19
I know one that is easy to throw out, right? Amazing job today.
Unknown Speaker 24:24
That's flattery.
Unknown Speaker 24:26
Genuine encouragement. Maybe
Unknown Speaker 24:29
I I noticed you had to stay late to help resolve the issue with the door and the client. That meant a lot.
Unknown Speaker 24:36
Or or hey, we've got the greatest team ever.
Unknown Speaker 24:40
Well, what so I like to take this, and the the next step is well, what makes them great? Why are they great?
Unknown Speaker 24:47
Your consistency
Unknown Speaker 24:49
with the visits makes a real difference to the people we're surveying.
Unknown Speaker 24:53
That that's the specificity. That's the sincerity. That's the genuine nature.
Unknown Speaker 25:00
Of what we're after here,
Unknown Speaker 25:02
yeah. So not just complimenting them, but going a little bit deeper on what the compliment is. You don't have to be loud or emotional. You can be analytical and direct, and still be deeply encouraging to people. All of these emotions can can live together. But a lot of times, when we are specific, it can mean a whole lot more. We don't have to manufacture this enthusiasm. We just have to genuinely communicate it and genuinely feel appreciative of them. So, how do we actually get better at this? How do we get become a better encourager and not feel like we need to lower our standards? And I think the first one is just recognize, like I said, good judgment calls, not just completed tasks. Instead of praising someone for just finishing a visit and closing out the day,
Unknown Speaker 25:47
actually recognize when they made a good decision.
Unknown Speaker 25:51
But maybe they communicated before that it was necessary. Maybe they anticipated a client's need. Maybe they caught something and followed through three more steps before letting you know about how things were going, and it and it turned out really well.
Unknown Speaker 26:05
That's the kind of thing that actually moves the needle on people feeling seen in their work because it's meaningful. And then don't attach criticism to every compliment.
Unknown Speaker 26:18
We often think of the oh, I have to have a compliment sandwich here. I have, I have to. I've got to say something bad, so I've got to have a compliment here. This just starts to become trite, and your team will start to expect there to be something hidden in this level of communication, and they'll start to think, "Oh, he's only coming to me. He's going to tell me the good thing first. Then he's going to have a correction, and he's going to say, "I'm still doing a good job, and I'm great to be part of the team"
Unknown Speaker 26:43
Oh man!
Unknown Speaker 26:46
If if every single one of your expressions of appreciation, if you say thank you and you're doing great, if it's followed by a correction,
Unknown Speaker 26:54
they've just learned that it's an opening act for the bad news. We have to be better. I have to be better at letting my encouragements stand on their own, and and it exist in nothing else other than the judgment calls and everything that they did well. And so we want to look for the ordinary things that they do, seemingly ordinary, but can become extraordinary. They're reliable. They're consistent. They have paid attention to detail to the thing that the client said was really really important. They did the thing and complimenting them on the things that are easily overlooked, but they paid attention to. Just because something is expected, a locked door, a food in the bowl, doesn't mean that it isn't valuable. It's just as valuable work as when the client has a specific request, so make encouragement part of your management systems. You probably already have some type of system alert that alerts you to mistakes or things that fell through the crack. Hopefully, it's not when the client notices. Hopefully, it's before then. But consider how you can call out the normal everyday things. Recognition shouldn't depend entirely on something dramatic happening. Again, just like we don't want to only be criticizing and only contact when something is super wrong, we also don't want to swing to the complete other side and go, "Oh my gosh, you 80 star love, love, love, awesome! You are the best employee I've ever had, and our company is so much better because you're in it, and I am so super duper thankful. Like there is a point where we can get too much, so we want to walk the line, but obviously have more compliments than we do criticisms. Well, and those systems that you talked about, I know AI and automations are a really big thing right now, and a lot of people are having AI systems or automations scan the emails, scan the messages sent to clients to then highlight four things they're saying. Okay, I want you to look for if you're trying to poach a client or if you didn't use the right grammar, if you didn't follow directions, if you didn't follow SOPs.
Unknown Speaker 28:52
How many of us are actively building in highlight when this person did an amazing job and went above and beyond? Because again, that's our enforcer. That's our vigilance coming in. Catch the bad, catch the bad, so I can correct it, and we don't have to go that. So we have to continue correcting the problems. We we don't want to abandon accountability. We don't want to abandon our standards in an effort to be more encouraging and loving.
Unknown Speaker 29:15
Safety issues will always be safety issues. Missed procedures, missed medications will still need corrections, but our team members, our employees, should understand that correction is just one part of our relationship with them, not the entirety of it. So, having those systems in place to remind us, hey, this bad thing happened, but this amazing thing also happened. We need to say both.
Unknown Speaker 29:40
It's not about creating an arbitrary complement quota. That's the other system that we fall into. I've got to systematize this, so I need to have one good thing for every bad thing, or I need to have make sure that every single person gets one compliment every single day. No, if you or your managers or admin have to manufacture.
Unknown Speaker 30:00
Compliments 20 times a day.
Unknown Speaker 30:04
Your team members are eventually going to recognize that they're just participating in an exercise.
Unknown Speaker 30:10
That it doesn't. It's that it's not meaningful anymore.
Unknown Speaker 30:16
When we compliment in genuine situations,
Unknown Speaker 30:20
and we encourage people. Then, when it's necessary, when it's needed, and when it's earned, that's what actually lands with our team. That's what they actually remember. That's how they actually feel seen. And in order for them to feel seen, we have to make sure that we have a habit of paying attention, which is harder and harder, especially as our businesses get larger. If you have more team members, more levels, how do I actually pay attention to the work that's actually being done, and not just hear about the issues? Because then, again, at the end of the day, we are the ones holding the bag. We are the business owners, so we have to become the leader that our business needs now. When we were starting our business in the early years, we grew by being attentive to everything. Every little nook and cranny, every little client request, it got done and it wasn't missed because we were the only ones doing it, and we weren't going to make those kind of mistakes. We noticed every detail, we caught every mistake, we personally ensured that our standards were maintained. There was no one to hold accountable because we were the ones that was us. We were the setting the standard, so of course we were going to have the standard and hold to the standard. But as our business expands, you you can't personally control everything, right? We train our team to the best that we can. We know that they are human just as we are. They are going to make mistakes. They are going to mess up, and hopefully we we pray it's not on the big things, but sometimes it is. You know, our success increasingly depends on helping other people exercise good judgment when we're not there. There's only so much training in the world that we can do. We cannot possibly, unfortunately, we cannot possibly prepare our employees for everything that they're going to encounter in the field, there are some things that our businesses just haven't encountered yet, so we don't know there's going to be a problem. And so we can't just continue to rely on enforcement, can
Unknown Speaker 32:10
we? As your business grows and expands, or as you get more and new and varied clients,
Unknown Speaker 32:17
this kind of thing, this kind of scaling, actually requires trust. You have to implicitly trust one another. They, your employee, trust you, and you trust them. Hey, you wouldn't be on in this company if I didn't trust you to be here. I also am going to have to coach at sometimes. Of here's where you are. Here's how we get better. Then when they do get better or they're doing amazing, I've got recognition. I've got systems in place to do that because, yeah, remember, I've got to be better at recognizing the amazing stuff instead of just pointing out the bad.
Unknown Speaker 32:48
We've got to have accountability with people, and ultimately, a willingness to see
Unknown Speaker 32:53
our employees as people who are developing, who are trying, who are training, who are working hard? Well, and same goes for us, right? When we're wanting to be this encourager over this enforcer all the time, we are learning as well. And so, yeah, we're gonna mess up. We're gonna have to go to the team and say, "Hey, we didn't do as good of a job as we did here. We should have been more encouraging instead of just always trying to stick to the rules." And don't hear what I'm not saying. Again, rules are good. Rules are there for a reason. You have boundaries. You have standards. You have structures. These are all good and necessary things. We have to basically walk the line and exist in both arenas here. Of yes, being the enforcer and also being the encourager, and it's not easy. And we're continuing to learn as leaders, and to know that it's a daily process. I may I may be better one day than the next, but I am always continuing to push forward in both areas. And like you said, being honest with your employees when you didn't do this too well, when you botched a situation, when when when you didn't say the thing that you actually knew you needed to say, that kind of vulnerability really helps them see us as human as well, and not just the big dark doom cloud that swoops in when things happen. That they this is we need to humanize the workplace, humanize the interactions that we have, because when we we all say, "Hey, I want my employees to actually take ownership in their work," I want them to take ownership and take full, and that means responsibility and decisions and whatever. But but if we
Unknown Speaker 34:32
that kind of ownership cannot, I can't say it would never. It cannot be built through correction, because like we've said, if they only hear from us when the bad things happen, all we're doing is teaching them to avoid mistakes
Unknown Speaker 34:48
and not report on things. And that's definitely what we don't want. We want that open line of communication, that two-way street, not just one way of I yell at you and you take it.
Unknown Speaker 35:00
No, it has to be open. That open door policy always. And how do we do that? Well, we encourage them, even the people who are newbies to the team who are continuing to kind of mess up.
Unknown Speaker 35:13
You have to find some sort of encouragement, otherwise they're just going to get so demoralized that they're going to leave. Yeah, we want to encourage them to excellence. Remind them that excellence exists here. We want employees who think critically, exercise good judgment. We want them to care deeply, take initiative, and fulfill our mission, vision, values, and goals as a business. And I hear so many people, and we get frustrated times too. Why aren't people doing this? Why aren't people doing these things in my business? Where is this going?
Unknown Speaker 35:42
Well, what do they get corrected on? The checklist. The checklist. The checklist. If I want to see more of those qualities, more critical thinking, more good judgment calls, more initiative,
Unknown Speaker 35:57
I need to recognize them when we actually see them, and not just take them for granted and say, "Booh!" Well, they're finally doing the thing.
Unknown Speaker 36:04
Encourage them. I think any question for us as the owners, as managers of our business, is: It's not whether we're enough to hold people accountable.
Unknown Speaker 36:17
It's not whether I'm doing enough. It's not whether I have enough procedures, enough things in place. It's not. It's none of that. I think it's whether we're doing enough to help our people succeed.
Unknown Speaker 36:28
Do I have those in place? Do I actually, from my viewpoint as the owner, do I want to see people successful, or am I just looking to hold them accountable and catch them in the act of doing something. Our employees shouldn't have to make a mistake to get our attention. Right? Again, we need to be kind of in their face with the good things, as well as the bad sometimes. And on the flip side, our employees shouldn't have to do something extraordinary to know that their work matters. They should. There should be a balance as best we can of both things, enforcing and encouraging.
Unknown Speaker 37:04
We hope this episode has been helpful to you. If it has, feel free to share it with a dog walker or pet sitter friend. Thank you for listening. Thank you also to our sponsors, Pet Sitters Associates and Pet Perennials. We will talk with you next time. Bye.
Double-click to edit...
