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

Posts tagged ‘supervising employees’

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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How to Turn Your Staff Meetings Into a Sharing, Mentoring and Training Session

As I finished up my weekly staff meeting today, I realized how far I have come with leading staff meetings. My first staff meeting was held in the spring of 2003 and I thought the purpose of a staff meeting was to address issues.  In fact, I hated conducting staff meetings. Moreover, I thought that staff meetings was a great time vent to my staff and listen to their complaints.

I also believe that my prior experience with staff meetings was simply a reflection of my leadership at that time and an indication that I needed more training in the area of conducting staff meetings.

Over the years, I have become quite effective at conducting staff meetings. In fact, I am a firm believer that practice makes perfect!

However, today I want to encourage you to not discuss problems at your staff meetings. Instead of discussing problems at your meetings, turn your meetings into a training, sharing and mentoring session and discuss problems in a brief informal one-on-meeting meeting.

What happens when meetings are boring and  problems are discussed at meetings…

It has been my experience that when you discuss problems at meeting, the staff members are up tight and afraid to share their point of view. Also, they may not give as much feedback. Moreover, I have noticed that at staff meetings where problems are discussed, the body language includes, “the crossed arm posture.”  Moreover, when arms are crossed, this usually means that your employees are feeling vulnerable and they are closed for argument.

Meetings take away valuable planning time from teachers and not to speak of how valuable your time is as a business owner. So…..why waste 30 minutes on discussing problems; when you can easily correct problems with mentoring, training and sharing at weekly or monthly staff meetings.

What happens when meetings are all about Sharing..Mentoring and Training...

Recently I decided to start my meetings with a thought-provoking question; to encourage the teachers to talk about quality care practices and how to solve problems in their classroom. Then I invite the teachers to give one another feedback. Furthermore, after the teachers coach one another through problem solving in their classrooms, then I offer suggestions and resources.

When it is my turn to offer suggestions, I notice that the teachers are writing while I am talking and this really encourages me to share more; and then I give a challenge for the week.

For example, a week before writing this blog post, we discussed “Excellence” at a weekly staff meeting. I asked the teachers this question; When you go to a restaurant or a hotel, what type of service do you expect and they replied..“Excellent Service.”

This is where I gave them the challenge to evaluate their classrooms with excellence and whatever was not excellent, to change it and make improvements accordingly. A week later, we discussed excellence and the teachers decided to focus on having a more organized classroom and they were really detailed about how they wanted things to look.

You may have noticed that I did not give orders, I simply posed a challenge and they delivered more than I could have imagined. I realized that the teachers were finally looking forward to meetings, when they all gather in our meeting circle without me and my Assistant Director, reminded me of the meeting today!

Today I want to share with you 5 easy ways to spice of your staff meetings  and make your meetings more enjoyable:

  1. Start your meeting with a question or a joke to loosen up the atmosphere
  2. Invite the teachers to share a funny observation from their classroom
  3. Be open and allow the teachers to challenge you or offer their suggestions
  4. Have one main focus for the meeting and discuss no more than 5 points
  5. Smile and always bring a resource or tips to the meeting that your teachers can use in their classroom

I encourage you to implement the tips above in your next staff meeting and be sure to share your feedback with me. What are your thoughts about this post?

For more Business & Staff management tips, I want to invite you to join me  in the Child Care Center Owner eClub!

Shiketa

Category:

Administration, Business Management, Child Care Center, daycare, Staff Meetings

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