Do you trust your agency team members?

Agency Leadership Podcast

In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the pivotal role of trust within agency teams. They explore common scenarios where agency owners struggle with trusting their employees, often due to micromanagement tendencies, ill-defined roles, or unrealistic expectations.

They emphasize the importance of clear communication, proper onboarding, and creating an environment where employees feel trusted and empowered. They also address the importance of identifying whether the lack of trust stems from the owner’s behavior or if the employee is possibly not the right fit for the role. Practical steps such as implementing standard operating procedures and incremental training are suggested to foster a trust-based work environment.

Key takeaways

• Gini Dietrich: “Not trusting your team is a symptom of a larger problem, and the larger problem is usually things like, I’m a perfectionist, I can’t give up control, I want things done exactly my way.”
• Chip Griffin: “We talk about it a lot, and I know we probably shouldn’t do that because our primary audience is owners, but owners are the root of most of the problems.”
• Gini Dietrich: “Just like any other relationship. You have trust with your partner, you have trust with your spouse, you have trust in your family, with your friends, you can’t have any relationship without trust. It’s the same thing with your team.”
• Chip Griffin: “The stronger the bond of trust is between the employee and the employer, the more performance you will get out of them, the better your retention of key employees will be.”

Related

• Micromanage your way to agency failure
• Building trust and letting your team shine
• Letting go as an agency owner

View Transcript

The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: Gini, do you trust me?

Gini Dietrich: I do, actually.

Chip Griffin: Wow.

Gini Dietrich: Very much.

Chip Griffin: That’s probably your first mistake of many on this episode. So no, we’re going to talk about trust today. And we’re not-

Gini Dietrich: We are, but before we do that, I have an announcement to make.

Happy birthday.

Chip Griffin: Thank you.

Gini Dietrich: You’re welcome.

Chip Griffin: When people listen to this, that will be well in the past, but Yeah, for now. For now it’s a day in the future.

Gini Dietrich: When we’re recording it, it’s tomorrow, right?

Chip Griffin: Correct. very much. I appreciate it.

Gini Dietrich: You’re welcome.

Chip Griffin: I appreciate even more that you’re not going to sing to me, so.

Gini Dietrich: No, you don’t want me to sing.

Chip Griffin: No. Just as I do not sing to you, you will not sing to me. And all will be good. And we’ll continue to trust each other. Fair. All right. So, trust. I see a recurring theme with a lot of agency owners that either explicitly or implicitly, they do not trust some or all of their team.

And if you ask them that most of them will not say, well, it’s not that I don’t trust them. It’s that I just don’t know if they can do this or, you know, I need to keep an eye on this or all of these things. But I, I think trust is fundamental to any relationship. I think it is critically important to the relationship between an employer and an employee.

And, and the trust needs to go beyond, well, you know, I trust they’re not going to steal from me. I trust they’re not going to, you know, do something directly harmful. It means you need to trust them to do their job on a daily basis. And, and if you do not trust them, you need to do something to address that.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I think, I think one of the. I think that trust, not trusting your team is a symptom of a larger problem, and the larger problem is usually things like, I’m a perfectionist, I’m a, I can’t give up control, I want things done exactly my way, it’s that. The trust piece is a symptom of those things. And as agency owners, and this is something we continue to talk about on the show, and I think we both talk to, advise with our clients, is, If you’re going to trust your team, you have to trust them to do the job that you hired them to do.

And one of the things I see is that somebody will start and the agency’s owner is really excited about their new hire and they are going to do this and this and this together and 30 days or 60 days or 90 days later, they’re completely disenchanted. And it’s because they haven’t been honest with themselves about what that role is and what those expectations are.

And I think that they expect. People to come in and work magic and, and work miracles. And that’s just not the, that’s just not the case. Like you, if you hire, let’s say you hire somebody with two years of experience and they come in and you’re all hot to trot and they’re really good at research. And they’re really good at drafting content and they’re really good at building media lists, but they don’t..

They’re not good at client communications yet, or they’re not good at strategy. And we expect them to be that even, and we forget that they only have two years of experience. And if they’re going to get that kind of experience and be good at those kinds of things, it’s up to us to coach them and mentor them to get them there.

And I think that’s one of the biggest challenges is we expect people, no matter what experience level they have, to be able to do more and to just sort of come in and go here, let me take all that crap off the plate and go up here and do it, and that’s just not how things work. Unfortunately.

Chip Griffin: Absolutely.

And so I think anytime that you are saying to yourself, I don’t trust this person or you even have that inkling, like, I’m not sure I trust that person. You really need to get to the root of what that is. Because it, it can be that your expectations are simply mismatched, as you say, right? So it, you may be expecting far more from them than what they are capable of, either at that point or even ever.

And so, you know, you may feel like you don’t trust them for that reason, in which case you need to reset what their responsibilities are. It might be that you are just a micromanager, and we’ve talked about this a lot, you need to let go of certain things. And so, that might be what you need to address.

But it also might be that that employee is actually not a good fit. And so if you, if you cannot resolve the trust issue, then you have to move on from that employee. You can’t just continue to work with someone that you don’t trust. You absolutely need to adjust the situation in some fashion. And if you cannot solve it, then you need to move on from that employee because it’s not fair to either of you to continue that kind of relationship.

It’s just doomed to fail.

Gini Dietrich: Absolutely. Yeah. And you’re, you’re right. There are going to be situations where they’re not going to fit, but I think if you, if it’s a year into the relationship and you don’t trust the person or the trust has eroded, then that’s probably, it’s probably not a benefit. But if you’re within the first 90 days or the first six months or even the first year, and you haven’t built that trust and you haven’t trusted that person to do their job, then I venture to guess the problem is usually you.

And for all the reasons we’ve just said, right, because as agency owners, we all, I’m, I’m the same way. We all tend to sort of hoard things ourselves. We think the clients want to only hear from us. We don’t trust other people to do things like pitch top tier media or write strategic plans or write long form content or whatever happens to be.

And, and we don’t give up the control. We, and we micromanage it. And so when I’m working with clients, one of the first things I look at as we start to investigate is. What’s happening right now? And I’m telling you, 99. 9 percent of the time it’s the agency owner.

Chip Griffin: No, I mean, we talk about it a lot, and I know we probably shouldn’t do that because our primary audience is owners, but owners are the root of most of the problems.

Gini Dietrich: Yes, absolutely, yes.

Chip Griffin: That we see, it’s not actually the employees. It’s that the, you know, to the extent that employees are involved, it’s that the expectations are wrong. The training is wrong. The management is wrong. Or you hired the wrong people. And I think a good test for you is if you have a lack of trust in more than one employee at any given time.

Right. If you’re questioning your level of trust in more than one employee, it probably is you. If it’s one, maybe it’s an outlier. Maybe there’s an issue with that employee. But if it’s multiple, then chances are you are either not setting expectations, you are not training, you are not managing, or not hiring correctly.

Because keep in mind, if you’ve got a, if you’ve got a bad employee, it usually means you made a bad hire. And that’s not, there’s no shame in that. We all make bad hires. I have not made 100 percent perfect good hires in my life. Absolutely not. I don’t know anybody who has. Even the best performing organizations have people that they let go because they didn’t make a good hiring decision.

So don’t blame yourself too badly if you have a bad hire. But you need to solve it. You don’t just keep sitting there and saying, You know, banging your head against the wall every day saying, I can’t, you know, I got to do this all myself. I got to redo all this work because I don’t trust them. I can’t, I can’t delegate stuff.

It’s just sitting on my plate. Deal with it.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, if you’re, if you’re, if you’re hoarding the work and you can’t delegate because you don’t trust them, that’s a big problem. So one of the things I always suggest is. I actually just had this conversation about two weeks ago where somebody was, was saying I’m having a really hard time with the person on my team getting the work done because everything that they submit isn’t right.

And so we dig into it and I say, okay, is it not because it’s not right or it’s because it’s not the way you would word it or phrase it or the way that you would do it. So we’ve discovered that it’s, it’s that, right. Okay. So what are you doing to train that person? Well, I think what I need to do is I need to go in and I need to tell them exactly how to do it.

Let’s, let’s not do that. Why don’t you go to your one to one with them and say, I’m having a challenge with this. How would you solve it and coach them through that? You know, we’ve talked about asking ourselves, so what? So what is the big problem with this? Why am I having such a big challenge with this?

Let’s let them tell you how they’re going to solve it. And then you can coach them through that. Okay. You know, I like that approach. Maybe we should try tweaking this or changing that, or, you know what? That’s a great approach. Let’s do that. So, Instead of saying, well, you need to do this, this, this, and this, which is not good for anybody because nobody likes to be told what to do.

Nobody likes to be micromanaged. You give them the opportunity to tell you what they’re going to do and you can coach them that way. Instead of saying this is the way it has to be done.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, and that’s so empowering to the employee by, by saying to them, how would you solve it, right? So they’re more likely to buy into it.

More importantly, it’s a signal that you trust them. And believe me, employees know if they are trusted or not by you. Absolutely. And their performance will continue to degrade the longer they feel like you do not trust them, because they will just, they will phone it in, they will be frustrated. So you need to demonstrate, not just actually trust them, you need to demonstrate that trust and make sure that you’re not doing things that undercuts

that feeling of trust. Because the stronger the bond of trust is between the employee and the employer, the more performance you will get out of them, the better your retention of key employees will be. So trust is just glue that holds you together as a team.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. And you, I mean, just like any other relationship, right?

Like you have trust with your partner, you have trust with your spouse, you have trust with your, in your family, with your friends, you can’t have any relationship without trust. And it’s the same thing here. How do you, how do you build that mutual trust so that you can, their career thrives and your agency grows and scales and you meet all the goals that you want, you want to meet.

Like, that’s the basis to every relationship. It’s you have to have that trust.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And if you operate from that position of trust, then your, your default should be to assume. That your employees have done things the right way. And you should challenge yourself not to question them unless you really have to. Because it’s really demoralizing to team members when you nitpick every little thing.

And, and it’s, it’s a good idea to sit there and say, okay, what are the most, even if there are multiple things wrong with something that they’ve done, you know, a piece of writing or a project. Focus on the most important ones, the ones that make the biggest difference. Because if I sit down with a team member and I go through 30 things that they did wrong in the last month.

That’s an awful conversation. It’s not fun for either one of us. And even if you do actually trust them, that doesn’t come across as constructive. That comes across as you don’t trust them, and you’re going to tell them exactly how to do their job. And you do need to think of yourself as that coach or mentor to your team.

And I think we’ve talked about this before, but it’s a real challenge for folks, particularly if you’re relatively new to managing. Managers are not there to dictate what people do and how they do it and quote unquote, hold them accountable, which is, I hate that when I hear, I need to hold my team accountable.

No, you need to trust them to do their job. You need to tell them where to go. You need to give them the resources and training they need to get there, but you need to trust them to get there. And if they don’t, then you sit down and figure out why and you ask them what they would do differently. That’s not holding them accountable.

That’s helping them. You need to be helpful and supportive to your team because if you trust them, that’s what you do. You micromanage when you don’t trust.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, and, and like I said earlier, nobody likes to be micromanaged. When you, you said something that I, I will repeat because I think this is really important.

When I, usually when I’m working with a client about once a year, I do phone calls with their direct reports just to like understand how things are going and sort of do a 360 review You know, it might be informal. But like understand how things are going and one of the things that I hear pretty consistently with the clients who can’t give up control and micromanage is that their team, even really senior level people who know what they’re doing, stop providing their best work because they know it’s just going to be redone.

So they’re like, yeah, I just get it off my plate. I just check it off my list and I get over there because I know that the I know that the agency owner is just going to redo it. And that’s a really shitty place to be in as an employee It doesn’t make you feel good. Your morale sucks the culture sucks and it’s a really shitty way for them to behave because of the way that you’ve created this problem for them not wanting to do their best work because you’re just going to redo it.

No one wants to work like that. No one.

Chip Griffin: No, I mean, it doesn’t make any sense for anybody to, I mean, it’s just, it’s a bad relationship overall and completely unproductive for everyone, including you as the owner.

Gini Dietrich: Yes. Especially for you as the owner because imagine like some of you are probably in this where you’re like, I hired all these people or I hired this person to help me and I’m doing double the work.

That’s not the point. If you’re doing double the work, you’re not doing something correctly because, and to your point, It could be that that person’s a bad hire, but I’m, I would venture to guess that 90 percent of that is not the reason.

Chip Griffin: Well, I agree. Yeah. I mean, most of the time it’s, it’s not a bad hire.

It may not be an ideal hire, right? You, I mean, the, the number of, of, you know, A plus hires that you do is, is certainly going to be relatively small over the course of a career, right? I mean, you know, but, but most of them should be at least B’s or C’s. If you’ve got a, you know, a D or an F. You know, that should be relatively few and far between.

And for most, it is relatively few and far between. But you need to sit there and ask yourself, you know, why are you feeling compelled to do this? And how can you solve it? And part of that’s working with them, but part of it’s also looking at yourself and what do you need to change? And to your point, as far as, you know, doubling your work, part of the problem is that, that a lot of owners or even your mid level managers, if you happen to have a mid level tier in your agency, you’re not spending enough time with those employees when they first get started.

You’re throwing them into the deep end of the pool and expecting them to be able to just do everything instantly, without any training, without bringing them up to speed on how you want to do things, without trying to do a knowledge transfer between you to them. So if you’re, if you’re not willing to invest that up front, yeah, you’re going to be doubling your work for a long time, because you haven’t set them up for success.

You need to assume when you bring someone in, and it’s tough because most small agencies are really slow to hire, which is good. You don’t want to overstaff and cause yourself financial problems, but because you’re slow to hire, it usually means when you bring someone in, you’re desperate for the extra bandwidth.

And so your, your inclination is just to throw them in and say, Eat as many hours as you can. Do as much as you can to get it off my plate. I need relief. But that, that relief needs to wait. You can’t get relief until they get up to speed. Until then, you’re going to have to invest extra time in them to set them up for that success.

Gini Dietrich: Absolutely. Absolutely. One of the things that we, we talk about, you know, I have this group of PESO model certified guides. It’s 10 agency owners that are in there that are going through the PESO model program so that they can then graduate and become a guide for the PESO model to other agency owners and businesses.

And one of the things that we talk about pretty consistently in that group is standard operating procedures, having your processes written down or video, whatever happens to be. And the biggest pushback I hear on that, which is understandable, is that I don’t have time because I’m running the business and I’m doing HR and, and, and, and, which is true, but to your point, without those SOPs, without the onboarding, without the time spent up front, you’re not going to get out of employees what you need, ever.

So, it does take time. But it’s one of the most important things that you can do to build into a company that’s willing to grow so that you can hire and onboard employees the correct way. And so, so we, what I’ve challenged this group to do is let’s take one thing at a time. So when you’re doing your work, do, Click zoom or click zoom or loom or whatever video platform you want and screen share and show the work as you’re doing it, right?

Like there are things that you can create tutorials for as you’re already because you’re already doing it. Just record yourself doing it. So create those tutorials and allow people that then you can share the videos and you can say, okay, as you’re doing this, this is how we do things. This is where you can find this.

This is where you can find that. Here’s the document for that. Like, and have it all so that they can easily find it and do it in a video tutorial, which is one of the easiest ways you can create your SOP. And that’s probably the best way to start, to build into something a library that you can then say to an employee as you’re onboarding them.

Great. What I’d like you to start with is this. And here’s everything you’re going to need to be able to get started. Go ahead and get started with that. Come to me with any questions. And then we’ll move on to the next. And that’s a really good way to onboard them in an efficient way that allows them to get up to speed really quickly so that they can relieve you from a lot of the stuff you’re doing.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, and I really want to underscore what you said about picking one thing at a time. It is, it is so much easier to make progress if you focus on one thing at a time. And it’s, it’s very, I think I’ve mentioned this before when I used to train new umpires for baseball, we would always tell them, pick one thing each game to work on, whether, and it can be something really simple.

It doesn’t have to be an elaborate detailed thing. I mean, it might be just make sure you take the mask off with your left hand, every single time, left hand, every single time. And until you nail that, don’t go working on the next thing. But if you do that and you focus on that one thing per game, you’ll make great progress very rapidly.

And your employees are the same way. If you give them, if you give them a focused thing to work on, they will improve. Or not, in which case that gives you feedback and information you need to know. As well, that they’re either not capable of that particular thing. And so you need to rethink what their assignments are, or again, perhaps they’re, they’re not a good fit overall.

But I think to me, the key thing is the, the very moment that you think to yourself, I don’t trust this person. I don’t have trust in this person or worse that once you say it, you’ve already been thinking it for a while. So as soon as you hear yourself telling that to someone else, whether that’s a friend, a spouse, a colleague, a coach, whatever, as soon as you verbalize it, you know, you have a serious problem and your, your focus needs to be, how do I address this?

Because if you don’t address it, if you’re not at least making progress on that trust issue, that relationship is doomed to failure. So don’t, don’t just brush it off and say, I can’t really trust them and, and then move on. You can’t. That needs to be, that needs to be a giant stop sign, a red light in front of you that says, you need to fix something right now.

Gini Dietrich: And, and you’re right, you like go through all the things. And it might very well be that the person is not the right fit, but go through all the things first.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, and they might just not be a fit for the role that they’re currently sitting in. They might still be a good contributor to your team. You might just have have put them, you know, square peg in a round hole.

Yeah, and it might just be one aspect of what they do, right? You might be able to just shave it off and then they all of a sudden fit in in the right slot.

Gini Dietrich: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think figuring out what we can do differently is one of the first steps and then move on to the next. And I’m just as guilty of it.

Chip Griffin: Oh, yeah. I mean, the thing is with this show, we talk from experience, right? And we’re pretty much just sharing the things we’ve screwed up over the years. So even though, even though you as listeners may feel like we’re beating up on you on a regular basis, we’re, we’re beating up on ourselves first for the mistakes we’ve made.

And now hoping that, that we can prevent some of you from making them

Gini Dietrich: from making the same ones

Chip Griffin: Either at all or whatever. If we made no mistakes, we’d have nothing to talk about here. That’s true. With that, that will draw to an end this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And it depends.