Two Critical Components of Self-Care for Women Entrepreneurs – Communication and Delegation
Delegation is a huge component of how to be women entrepreneurs and manage self-care
Women ask me all the time, “Monica, how do I find time to take care of myself and run a business?” This aspect of being women entrepreneurs and self-care is a challenge for all of us.
The ANSWER: Not doing everything yourself!
The REAL ANSWER: Learning to communicate and delegate to your team.
How, you ask? Well, let’s dive in! Because I’m all about women entrepreneurs doing really amazing self-care!
If you are a more visual person and would prefer to go straight to the video, you can check it out here.
Really quickly – if you are reading this and thinking – “Yeah, great Monica – I wish I could even afford a team!” Then you need to go back and get your money mindset in order – check out my series on women and money here.
Every day I talk with women entrepreneurs who are struggling with team communication and self-care. They tell me things like, “I tell my team member that I need something done by Thursday, and when Thursday comes it is not done.” Or they may say, “I ask my team member to research something and it never gets done, or it does get done but it’s not thorough enough.” Or “I don’t feel like I can trust my team members.”
It happens over and over again.
It doesn’t matter if you have full-time team members, subcontractors, or part-time team members — it happens across the board.
What it comes down to is that you have to understand that you, as an entrepreneurial leader, have different values than your team.
First, as an entrepreneur you thrive on three main values; challenge, creativity, and freedom.
Challenge
Generally, challenge refers to doing new things, having a variety of things to do, and/or being asked to do things that you may not know how to do yet.
Now, you may not think that you thrive on challenges, you might even think that you have too many challenges!
But, if you look deep down within yourself, you actually do thrive on challenges or you never would have started your business in the first place.
Entrepreneurship means handling new challenges every day. Having new things to learn constantly.
Creativity
We love the ability to create. Create our services, our products, newsletters, content, videos, programs, new processes with our team.
You are creating all the time!
Every time you solve a problem it is an act of creativity. That is part of why you got into your business, so that you can create, and exercise your innovation and your new ideas. This is a key part of women entrepreneurs and exquisite self-care.
Freedom
We thrive on freedom! Things like deciding our own schedule. We thrive on money freedom – the freedom to make as much or as little as we want, like when we are taking time off. We thrive on people freedom – the fact that when you go to lunch you choose who you get to go with, choose who you spend time and energy with. As entrepreneurs, we are freedom seekers.
If you don’t recognize these in yourself, I want you to take a deep breath because deep down you value these things whether you realize it or not.
Here is what you need to understand: Your team thrives on different values.
Now don’t get me wrong. It is not like they don’t like challenge, creativity, and freedom. But in order for them to be good team players they have to have a different set of values.
They thrive on consistency, structure, feedback, and connectivity.
First is consistency
We thrive on challenge, everything being new and diving into things.
They thrive on consistency; consistency in meeting with us, consistency in processes, consistency in tasks. A consistency of when they can reach out to us, when we show up.
It is interesting because as entrepreneurs this is why we struggle with team members; we don’t want to have to show up in the office every day and lead. We want more freedom. But they need us to be consistent.
Secondly, your team needs structure
They need a time when they are going to come in, when they will leave, what their job roles are, and what they need to do to win. Goals that are specific, task lists that are specific.
When they don’t have structure, they don’t know how to win. And they don’t know how to please you or do well. Plus, they don’t know what the goal is and how to hit it.
Again this is the opposite of being an entrepreneur –because we thrive on new challenges, we don’t need a lot of structure.
Lastly, they need feedback and connection
They need to connect with you and they need feedback. Part of having a team member is not so much that they do things perfectly. They are not going to do everything perfectly – that is part of why they are working with you – to get better.
As women entrepreneurs, we want freedom. We want to be able to go to a networking event, or leave the office early and we want our team to just handle it and do everything perfectly.
But what we don’t realize is that our team needs to be able to get feedback from us, even when we don’t want to give it!
Our knee jerk response as entrepreneurs might be to throw our hands up and say “Forget it! I will just do it myself — I don’t have the time or the energy or the desire to train you to do it, because you are cutting into my freedom.”
That is exactly the opposite of what we want, but your team needs to be connected to you and feel connected to you — this is so crucial to your personal success. They need rounds of feedback and time when they can meet with you and find you.
So these are the three things to keep in mind – the value difference between you as an entrepreneur and your team members. Ignoring these things is going to cause you to go in the opposite direction of what your team really needs.
And what your team really needs is consistency, structure, feedback, and connection.
So let me just give you some concrete things around that.
First, consistency
Consistency looks like you responding consistently to problems. Responding consistently to mistakes. Being consistent as to when you are in the office and when you aren’t. Being consistent with your communication. And consistency with how you deal with situations as they come up. This will help your team start to trust you.
Secondly, structure
Structure is really based on processes. Does your company have processes in place for how it does everything so that your team can follow them and feel comfortable in knowing how to win?
Here is an example from our company: for a one-day event we have a packing list. There is also a checklist for my assistant that has everything that she does during the event and it is extremely specific.
It has details on it like; take two pictures in the morning, check the bathrooms at the end of the day, relight candles, make sure that the snacks are refilled, etc. It has everything on it that she has to do to run the event. That is structure.
And it wasn’t overnight that I created this checklist. It came about through trial and error, and after every event we reevaluate and change things and add things.
Another piece around structure is job descriptions. I meet so many entrepreneurs where everyone in the company is doing everything and they don’t really know what their jobs are and what their roles are. That makes it really uncomfortable for them to be in their role and in their power. They need to know how to win.
Finally, they need feedback and connection
Really, what this means is that you have to be willing to allow your team members to make mistakes and then work with them to improve their skillsets. They aren’t working with you just so that you can take stuff from them and do it for them and not teach them.
That is a great way to ensure that people come and go. What they really want is feedback so they can improve and learn new skills from you.
I know that can cut into your freedom and cut into your time, but what I can tell you is that it creates a huge amount of loyalty.
They also want connection from you. For me what connection looks like is just taking the time to have random conversations with people. So if I just finished an event and I have an event assistant that wants to hang out and get a drink with me and hash out the event, even if I am tired, I know that this is a connection moment that is important for her.
So it is about creating random, or planned, connection moments with your team. Meetings, dinner, drinks, events, retreats with your team where they are able to spend time with you and each other on a regular basis. This is what creates the glue that holds the team together.
I hope that this helps you to think about why there might be team communication breakdowns or expectation breakdowns. I also hope that it helps with your questions about what it is to be women entrepreneurs and how to do self-care.
Be patient with yourself during this process. It takes time to have personal success. Know that it is OK that you value something very different from what they value — as long as you recognize it.
With that, my wish and hope for you is better team communication so that you women entrepreneurs out there can rock your businesses and your self-care!
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As always, go out, make tons of money, and make this world a better place!
