I worked in my grandparent’s Italian Restaurant from ages 13-18. I started by pointing arriving customer cars to unpainted stalls in the dirt parking lot. When I graduated to busboy, my grandfather personally trained me. Imagine George C Scott as General Patton on a bad day. That was my grandfather’s system of training employees. If I survived, I walked out with the skin of alligator. I was then well-equipped to work for anyone. However, when I screwed up, he called me a jackass in Italian, “cucci.”
As a business owner, I take great care in training my employees. Alix Stuart’s article, 7 Easy (and Cheap) Ways to Develop Employees offers some advice, some of which I don’t agree with.
- Set up a feedback framework. This network deminishes in importance with smaller businesses. Usually, companies with 20 or fewer employees that work at a single site, communicate better unless the owner has an ego.
- If you’re planning to hire, share with the team how the organization will likely evolve over the coming year and give them a sense of what opportunities might be available. We strategists call this “Tier 3” of implementing a strategy. Tier 3 is the alignment of the plan at the employee level. Available opportunities should be a part of this.
- To build communication skills, regularly ask people in your group to stand up at staff meetings and give a brief overview of what they’re currently working on, with the right context for the group. I disagree with this. Meetings are such a waste of time. There are so many opportunities to communicate in smaller workgroups. If you want other departmetnts to know what you are working on, send an email or newsletter.
- Help staffers develop a two-minute “elevator pitch” on your company, and have them present it to you and to others in meetings for practice. This may have some benefit, but I believe the downside outweighs the practice. Not everyone is a sales person. They should understand the company vision, but not practice reciting it.
- Let a finance staffer tag along when you make customer visits. Again, this advice seems to try to develop a person outside of their expertise. If there are finance issues, then the finance person is valuable. But, only in that case.
- Get everyone in finance to regularly help with certain tasks that might otherwise fall through the cracks. This type of cross-training can be valuable. Never train only one person to do a task. If that person were to leave, it could cripple your business. In finance, it is an invitation to fraud.
- Encourage employees to ask their managers, “What’s on your plate that you don’t want to do?” and to then find a way to get it done. It is hard to find employees that ask to venture out of their comfort zones. The ones that do are golden.
Employee development is often overlooked, but just like in football, it’s what’s up front that counts. My grandfather knew that concept, he just had his old ways from Italy of implementing it. By the way, he would still think of me as a “cucci” if he were alive today. We all miss him.