190 | Why Hiring More People Isn’t Always The Solution

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In this episode, I explore what’s really driving the desire to hire more people in your business and why it isn’t always the next step.

This conversation looks at how hiring can sometimes amplify what’s already happening internally and operationally, and how slowing down to look at your mindset, your team, and your systems can lead to more clarity and more sustainable growth.

In This Episode, We Discuss:

• Exploring what’s actually driving the desire to hire
• Checking in with your thoughts, emotions, and nervous system before making decisions
• Recognizing how overwhelm can lead to reactionary growth
• Assessing whether your current team, roles, and systems are truly aligned
• Identifying where you may be the bottleneck in your business
• Making decisions from vision and clarity rather than urgency

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Human Design Chart 

Foundational Resources

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➡️ Schedule your free clarity call here

From my soul to yours,

Erin

Transcript

What Hiring Is Really About

Erin Gray 0:00

Welcome back to Your Money, Your Rules Podcast with me, your host, Erin Gray. Today I want to discuss something that I see founders experience at some point is maybe feeling overwhelmed, wanting to grow. And so the first answer or the solution that they go to is to hire more people. And I know that it might sound like the next logical step because obviously more work means you need more manpower. But what I have found is that hiring more people isn't always the next step. And it can actually amplify some of the things that are already occurring in your business. It's just going to make them even bigger. So let's dive in. When I first came on to my family's construction business, I think we had like 32 employees. It was around there. It definitely was over 30. And when I came in and I started kind of just digging through everything, financials and employees and all the things that we needed to start changing and making some changes on, what I recognized was we had some employees who were all in and wanted to grow with the company. And there were some employees that weren't. And over, I don't know how long it was, but there was some attrition. I think we ended up being getting down to around 25-ish, I think, employees. Obviously, some left. We hired some new, but like we ended up around, I think, 25 employees. And one of the things that I realized over this time is really being like, I'm always looking at it now from the lens of like, how can we be so simple and so efficient? And before we take any action, one thing I'm always asking myself, and I'm asking my clients is what are you thinking? What are you feeling that is creating this action? And if we can get in the habit of, because our actions are always going to come from our thinking and our feelings. And there's not going to be one thought or there's not going to be one feeling, right? But you have to start thinking about like, what am I thinking and what am I feeling that is creating me to want to hire someone? So I like to start with first and foremost, when someone says, Hey, I want to hire someone, I always like to start with the founder first. I always say that like the founder is the endless vessel. Like we can only grow to the level that you are at, whether it be nervous system-wise, emotions where you are in terms of leadership and things of that sort. So what is your emotional system or emotions, your natural state of being right now? Are you one of calm and like directional? And when I mean directional, I it's like you know where you're going, you know what you want to create, you're excited for what's to come, or are you more in that like burnt out, overwhelmed, and thinking that like hiring is going to air quotes, fix an issue, which I don't believe we actually need to be looking at. And I think a lot of business coaches or gurus or experts or whatever you want to call them, look at like, oh, let's find the problems in your business. I don't really subscribe to that because I think when we look at we have problems in our business, then our brain is going to look for the problems versus where do we want to go? What is our vision? What do we want to create and focusing on that? So, first you have to check in with where are you in terms of your mindset? What is your self-concept as a leader? What is your capacity in all areas of your nervous system, your capacity for time, your capacity or like what you have in terms of boundaries, your money mindset, your overall mindset. And when I say mindset, I mean like your brain, your body, all of it, right? Like what are your thoughts and your feelings and what does the body feel as well? Because wherever you are, you're going to take yourself wherever you go, right? So if you are feeling right now overwhelmed and burnt out, then if you haven't actually gotten to the root cause of what that is feeling, because I believe a lot of our burnout, a lot of our overwhelm actually starts in the mind first. And so if you are trying to solve some external thing, you're trying to make the solution some external thing, but you actually haven't created or corrected your thinking, you're going to create more of it just at a bigger level. So if you feel overwhelmed most days, adding more people to the roster and obviously the payroll is going to mean more overwhelm for you, not necessarily less. And so we always have to bring it back to the mind and the body. What are we thinking that is creating this? What are we feeling? And like I already mentioned, our actions come from our self-concept and our thinking and our feelings. And so if we aren't tuned in and tapped in and taking care of ourselves, we're just going to create more stress, not less. Think about like from your money mindset. If you are thinking like in terms of adding more people to the payroll and that stresses you out, then what do you think that that's actually going to do for your nervous system when it comes time for payroll and that, you know, adding that person or whoever else you're thinking of and moving from that place of fear, right? Versus expansion. The other thing that I want to say here is I think a lot of us have, and it's probably a multitude of things, but when you are in this reactionary place, when you haven't slowed down enough yet to recognize that you're trying to do something to stop feeling a certain way, like I always encourage my clients, like, hang on a second, take a seat, take a breath, hang on a hot second, right? Like so many of us are trying to take action to get rid of a feeling. Like we don't like this uncomfortableness in our bodies. We haven't been taught, we haven't practiced feeling this discomfort in our bodies. And I always say, like, if you're trying to make a reactionary or decision, no decision needs to be made. Like if it is coming from a very emotion-heightened place, you just need to chill out for a bit because anything that we enter into, any type of decision that we enter into from that place, it's not like you're gonna, you know, you enter in with overwhelming stress and you're gonna get calm and chill on the other side. Doesn't work like that. So really starting to ask yourself, okay, what am I feeling right now in my body? What am I wanting to feel? And then correcting that first and then moving forward versus I'm feeling stressed on a regular basis. I need to go do X, Y, Z. I want you to come back to, I'm feeling stressed. What do I need to change internally with my thoughts and my feelings? Do I need to allow myself to have more time and space? Do I need to put boundaries on? Like, what are those things I need to change within myself first before I go looking externally? Then what I talk to women about is what about your current employees, right? Like I'll take a look at your organizational chart. Is everyone where they need to be? Are they in the positions that they need to be in? And what I mean by that is, are they at the places where they are best thriving? I remember we had a project manager who didn't need to be in a project manager, right? Like he did not like doing the detailed stuff. He was more of a field manager, if you want to call it that, or superintendent. So there was some mismatch there because we were expecting him to do this detailed project management work and he was more so big picture and talking to the guys. So you really have to start looking at every single employee is are they in the best position for them? Have you, as the leader, as the founder, empowered them to lead and do what they need to do? Or are you trying to micromanage? Are you trying to control? And I know that might sound like a severe word, but like, are you trying to just watch and, you know, make sure every little thing goes just so? And a lot of times when we're doing that, we're the ones that are the bottleneck. You know, do you have systems in place for what is needed? Do they know exactly what their work is and what their work isn't? Sometimes I'll see like duplication in organizations, like not clear boundaries, or one person thinks they're supposed to be doing something, the other person's kind of doing that similar. So we're not working as efficiently as we could, and we don't have clear boundaries, SOPs, job descriptions of what each employee is required to, what is expected of them and what is required of them. I also like to always ask about like what is the mindset of the employee? Are these all a players? I think sometimes we tolerate because we think that we can't get somebody else, or we don't like the feeling of letting someone go, which that's a whole nother topic for another podcast. Like we can let someone go in the most loving space. It doesn't have to be a good guy, bad guy scenario. And so if they're not all A players and you've got some people that are more like B players on your team that they don't actually care, maybe they're just like there to get a paycheck, or it's not really what they want to be doing. Your A players are going to get frustrated because they're gonna feel like they're the ones pulling the cart. And then this ultimately trickles down and affects the morale in the organization. And I think the fastest way to run off an A player is to keep your B players around. And this isn't to say that because they're a B player, they don't have a space in the workforce, right? It's just where you want to go with your organization, what you are expecting, what you expect from your employees and from yourself. When you have people that want to grow and that want to help you and are on board with your vision in your organization, and you have other people that are like, eh, just here for the paycheck. It's very frustrating for your A players. And I think that really recognizing who are my people that are all in and who are my people that are like, mm, and why am I here? You go back to it, doesn't need to be made overnight. The decision doesn't necessarily need to be made overnight. And also know where you're going, right? If you have done everything that you as a leader need to do to cultivate this person and put them where they need to be, and their heart isn't in it, there's nothing that you're gonna do to make their heart be in it. I also want to say here that knowing your own human design, allowing your employees to understand their human design, I think is highly beneficial because you have to know how your energy works, how you make decisions, as well as how the employees do, how they make decisions, how their energy flows. And this is something that I really wish that I would have had. I would have had this tool when I was helping my family in the construction business because I would have been so much of a better leader. I would have been able to help them see why they were doing what they were doing. So if you are curious, you can head over to my website. You can get your human design chart. Your employees can pull their chart too if they want. And I've got a lot of information under foundational resources that they can watch on human design as well as you. Watch on human design, understanding different centers, understanding human design. There's obviously tons of stuff on YouTube. I always just say just look at it, one, as a tool, and two, make sure that whoever's teaching it to you is coming from an empowered place, because I have seen a lot of educators or teachers, whoever you want to call it, like that are not coming from an empowered place. And I only use human design with my clients to help them fan empowered place. So going back to the founder, real quick, I do want to say if we are reactive, if we are hiring because we think that there's a problem that needs fixing, we haven't actually looked at what our systems are like. If we don't have good systems, good workflows in place, there's no amount of hiring that is gonna solve that. If your communication throughout your organization and with you is unclear, it's uncertain, you feel uncertainty. Adding more employees is going to add to the confusion. It's not going to minimize it. So, setting all of that aside, if you are all clear on your mindset, your emotions, your nervous system, all of that, you've also looked at your employees. Everybody's running efficiently, everybody's in their correct places, all of your systems are in place, your SOPs, everybody knows what they need to be doing. And you're like, yep, and I do want to add someone on, then these are the next couple of things I would think about. Number one, training. Who is going to be training this person? And whoever is going to be training this person, have you actually talked to them and are they up for training this person? What systems are you going to develop or have you already developed so that training this person and people following it's going to be as seamless as possible? Like you want to be able to have it duplicatable so that whoever trains this person, if you hire someone else to, you know, be in this person's position, that person can then train the next person, right? Like you want to have systems in place so that you can make it as seamless as possible. What's your onboarding process like? Who are they going to go to when they have questions? Which typically it's that more experienced employee. So sitting down, and this is where I think, like as a leader, empowering that employee and also getting their feelings about it, right? Because if this employee is used to doing stuff on their own, they're totally fine. They just want to go to work, they want to do the thing for you, they want to grow the company, but they're like, uh I don't necessarily know if I want to, you know, spend my time training someone right now. I think that's really good to know up front because then it's going to be like, okay, well, who is going to want to train this person and be in alignment or in congruence with what you are wanting? It's also, if they are on board, obviously, you know, training someone, when I say takes time, it's going to, I don't want to say slow them down. I don't necessarily like that, but like it does take away from what that person is training, what they can actually do in their job because they're going to spend time being involved with the training process. So just having that conversation before you get on board. I think that from the employee side, it really goes a long way when you sit them aside first and say, this is what I'm thinking, this is what I want to do. Give me some of your thoughts and feelings around this so that versus like, oh, well, we just hired this new person and oh, by the way, you're going to train them. I also would look at the communication piece and then the decision making. How clear are you and the person that the new employee is going to receive training from? What is the communication like? What is the decision-making process like? This isn't the place where we just like throw stuff out there and like hope it sticks, right? It's like, oh, we're just learning as we go, which I know I do say that. Like a lot of what we learn is by doing. But I think that like everyone involved needs to understand, like, hey, there's going to be some little ripples in the river for a little bit, but we're going to work together. And what is your decision-making process? What is your person training's decision-making process for following up, for checking in, for seeing how things are going? Like feedback, I think is extremely important from the new employee, from your person that's going to be training, from you, like the whole ecosystem. And I'm always thinking about like, how can we be the most efficient with our time? I think when you're small, it's easy to get away with like, oh, we can just like either text back and forth, or we can like have Slack, or, you know, I can call you. But as you continue to grow, there's not enough time in your day to answer all the text messages that are coming through. So, like I was having a conversation with a client the other day, and I was like, why don't you sit down with her for an hour a week or split it up 30 minutes twice a week? You know, maybe you need more touch points during the week versus this back and forth texting. I think it does a couple of things. One, it tells the employee, hey, you're important to me. I'm giving you some of the time on my calendar to be with you. So phones off, focused. Let's get to work and let's talk about what are the things that we want to talk about in this meeting. Two, they know that they can expect to sit down with you however many, you know, minutes or hours you want to give them a week. That way they know that they can save a lot of the things that aren't like, okay, this actually is a decision that needs to be made today or within the next day. And let's say that, you know, your meeting with them is a couple days down the road, then they know that they can put all of that on the docket to discuss with you at some point, you know, whenever your meeting is, versus this text messaging back and forth. So a 15-minute once or twice a week might be more effective than like Slack or text messages back and forth for however many hours in the week. I mean, if you were to sit down and actually look at how often are you texting everyone versus, okay, I answer my text messages at this time in the morning and I answer them before I go home or whatever it might be, even that is a change or an upgrade to what you might be currently doing. So with everything, you I always like to like start at the end and then work backwards, right? What's the vision for this employee? You know, what do I want them to be able to do? What do I want like the end result and then, you know, coming back from that place versus okay, where I am is feeling frustrated and I have to go and hire somebody to just like take care of the stuff, right? Always be thinking from your vision, from the end goal or end result. Okay, so to recap, so if you are thinking of hiring someone, I always like to ask myself or have clients, I should say, have clients, right? Am I running the most efficient, simple team that I can right now? Is like everything on the up and up, it's all we're like a well-oiled machine. And if the answer is no, then the next question is, okay, how do I get what I currently have working more streamlined and more efficient? So maybe that means I need to put different systems in place or stronger systems, better delegation or automation, or maybe it's just something like, why are we still doing this? Just stop doing that, you know? Like you really have to slow down enough to look at everything and be like, why did I start doing this? Are we doing this from a habit, or is this actually adding value and helping our organization, getting out of your own way, stop being the bottleneck, clear priorities, things of that sort. And if all that is streamlined and on the up and up, then obviously, like I said, go to the hiring place. But I think for a lot of us, we just have gone to, oh, we just hire somebody versus everybody, like I said. I mean, we started with 30-something employees and we went down to 25. Now, I increased everybody's pay, right? So our payroll stayed the same, which was amazing because everybody got a pay raise and they got to have more ownership and I think they felt more empowered and they were able to actually sometimes more isn't always better. So ponder this. Think about okay, if there's urgency and you wanting to hire someone, my advice is always okay, we need to calm the urgency first. We need to look within, and then we need to start like picking through some other things first before we just set out to hire somebody. Okay, as always, thank you for listening, for letting me be in your ear and ponder this, contemplate this, and I'll see you in the next episode.