Inspirational and Empowering Child Care Business Owners To Build Successful Child Care Businesses

Archive for the ‘Staffing’ Category

Your Staff Members Are Not “Perfect”

One the most challenging things that I have ever done was  to supervise employees. In fact, to get away from supervising staff (in the past), I have even hired an Assistant Director to directly work with my staff.

However, I must say that as a Center Owner, I can never really get away from supervising my staff, because they look forward to my feedback.

I  motivated to write this blog post, because several days before writing this post; I found myself questioning  my staff supervision abilities. In fact,  As I ended my business day; I asked myself the following questions:

  • Am I really getting what I want from my employees?
  • Do they really know what I expect?
  • Am I assertive enough?
  • Am I too assertive?
  • Am I being too controlling?
  • Am I being too flexible with my staff?

Furthermore, after asking myself all of the questions above and some questions that I did not mention; I realized that I was being too hard on myself and the staff.

After reflecting on how I deal with my staff and having a long talk with a colleague, I discovered that I was so frustrated because of the following reasons:

  1. I am a Leader not a supervisor. Leaders empower and inspire and supervisors manage people. Moreover, managing people is impossible and that is why it is frustrating for me and many other Child Care Business Owners sometimes.
  2. I was looking for perfection and not progress.
  3. I was too focused on “me” and not how I can empower my staff to do an excellent job
  4. My attitude was wrong!

I hope that my experience has inspired you to not stress over minor staff issues, but seek to empower your staff to do their best and strive to show progress or even exceed your expectations.

Please, know that I am not suggesting that you tolerate a lack of performance, but I do want to encourage you to keep things in perspective and approach every situation with an attitude of gratitude.

Moreover, I have decided to look for progress not, perfection. Also, I must say that I have a great team; my staff members are positive, they come to work everyday (on-time), they respect me as a leader and they love working with the children.

In summary, I want to share with you, 3- tips that a mentor shared with me in my early days of managing employees and they are as follows:

  • Choose your battles wisely
  • Let it Go!
  • You can’t control the actions of others

With Your Child Care Business in mind,

Shiketa

Resources That Will Empower You to Be an Effective Leader

3 Books that every leader must read

The 21- Day Master Mind eClub

Director’s Handbook

Category:

Administration, Business Management, Employee Management, Staffing

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Men Can Make Great Child Care Business Owners Too!

The first childcare center that my son attended was owned by a man. In fact, the Owner was very active in his facility and I was quite comfortable with him.

Moreover, he was very nurturing with all the kids and the parents seemed to really connect with him. However, I could not help but to notice that his staff was predominantly made up of women and this caused me to wonder why there are so few men working in childcare.

In 2000, My uncle decided to care for children in him and my aunts home and offered to babysit my daughter Chasity; while I operated my home daycare. I was excited that he offered to babysit her. In fact, he was more than a baby sitter, he completed his CDA Credential, we attended childcare classes together and I gained lots of insight from him on how to be more understanding with my toddlers.

My husband is a co-owner of my center and he loves to stop by the center to give the children high fives. Moreover, he provides me with great business advice and the kids usually see him working around the building. Also, the kids do not hesitate to point out any broken items around the building, because they know that he does all the building maintenance.

According to Men in Child Care Network of Ireland, Children grow up in a society that is focusing more than ever on equality issues. However, many of the children in Childcare are left in a situation where they have no contact with men between 8 am and 5 pm. In fact, The Child Care Network  Ireland believes that there are many benefits to children working around men and they are as follows:

  •  Children benefit because men bring new ideas and ways of working into childcare.
  • Fathers benefit because they have someone to relate to and may feel more at home.
  • Staff benefit because more gender balanced staff
  • Teams gives different ways of looking at issues facilitating different approaches
  •  Having men working in childcare shows children that manliness can include caring

Do you have men on your staff?Do you know of any men that own their very own childcare businesses? If so, what are your thoughts about their childcare program?

Be sure to check out my eNewsletter: The Missing Element in Child Care!

With men in childcare in mind,

Shiketa Morgan

Source article: http://www.childcareonline.ie/files/1237391358.pdf

Category:

Child Care Center, daycare, Men in Child Care, Staffing

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