#258 Why Your Team Isn't Doing What You Asked (And How To Fix It)

I talk about positioning and pricing a lot because I know that tends to be the biggest challenges that you have, that my audience of firm owners generally have in terms of how do we get new clients, how do we price our services, how do we get more prospects to say yes and therefore my content does lean heavily on those areas because I know that is the biggest challenge.

But also as you grow and as you get larger, then your challenge will be how do you attract the best talent? How do you retain your high performers? How do you maximize everyone's potential? And that means that we need to get better at becoming better leaders.

We need to get better understanding employee motivation and employee psychology.

And I did a lot of learning on this, probably going back.

about nine years now maybe ten years one of the first books I read was Drive by Dan Pink and that opened my eyes to a new way of thinking about people because I never had really given it much thought I came into the practice and I just did what had always been done and I managed people how I thought they need to be managed but without any clue as to what are the real drivers of employee motivation what makes them tick the role that money has to play and doesn't have to play and how can you get the best out of people and what do you need to do? So I read all the books out there.

I followed the kind of leadership experts.

So Drive by Dan Pink was one of the first books I read where ultimately the premise of the book or the summary of the book is that employee motivation is driven by three things, autonomy, mastery and purpose.

And that stuck with me.

the fact that we all want to be autonomous in some way shape or form we want to have independence around what we do where we do it when we do it uh to some degree and that's why you know even as teenagers people get to get around i've got a house full of teenagers now 18 year old 16 year old 14 year old And, you know, everyone wants their independence.

Everyone wants some sort of autonomy.

People don't like being told what to do.

And same with your people.

Yes, there is a place of, obviously, they need to be told what to do in terms of tasks, but then some autonomy in terms of, you know, how they go about doing it or, you know, where they do it, how, you know, they... that kind of thing of not having to be in a strict place of of work like office all the time giving them some kind of flexibility autonomy about where they do it people want that independence not always being micromanaged and that in itself gives them flexibility i know every time that i at the moment you know we are recruiting for new roles and in my calendar i have several questions that i ask people even before they book on the call for the interview with me So there's several layers where I'll put out a job ad or I'll put out a post on LinkedIn and I'll invite people to ask for details or message me on LinkedIn.

And then if I feel they're a good fit, then I'll send out my initial interview link of 20 minutes, which has quite a few questions in it.

So in the same way that I make sure that I get intelligence on my prospects when they're booking in for a call with me, I also use the opportunity when I'm having a conversation with a potential candidate to get as much information from them, as much intelligence as I can, in advance of the interview.

So I know what kind of person they are, I know what they're looking for, I know what's motivating them to get in touch.

All the stuff that we would probably ask on an interview, I get it in advance.

And there's no reason why you shouldn't either.

So actually, you know, I always give away something in my podcast to my loyal listeners.

And if you're listening to this and thinking that actually I could do something like that, then I'm happy to send you my link with all the questions that I put in.

Just message me on LinkedIn and ask for the interview link that I sent, the Calendly link.

And that's got about 10 questions that I ask.

Things like, you know, what's your motivation for applying for this role? Describe your ideal role.

What's your current salary and expectations? Yep, I absolutely ask that.

If you don't ask, you don't get.