Hiring people with complementary skills

Know your weaknesses and hire people with the skills you lack, says salon business expert Antony Whitaker When hiring people to join your team, particularly at the senior level, look for people with different skills to you, people who can bring a different point of view. Above, all don’t be afraid to employ people who are better than you. What holds a business back from real growth is often the owner’s fear of not being the best and not being in control of every area. Real confidence, real leadership and real growth come when leaders understand that for the business to grow and flourish they cannot ‘do and be’ everything themselves, and for the business to grow they need to employ competent people who bring a range of skills and expertise that any one person alone doesn't have. I often say to salon owners: ‘Your real job is not to do all the work yourself; your real job is to make yourself redundant by replacing yourself with competent people and systems that allow the business to run without you, not because of you.’ The real job of the owner is to focus on growing the business, not running it, but that can happen only when the owner is freed up from the day-to-day routine of running the business. Not everyone wants to have their own business, and not everyone should have their own business, because in many cases the skills they possess are simply not the skills of a business owner. They would be better off working with someone else who has skills that complement theirs or employing people with the skills they lack. Building a senior team As your business grows you need a senior team of people who have a variety of skills. While they might share the same values, the skills they have should be diverse but complementary. I often look at successful businesses and ask myself what it is that sets them apart. There are usually many points, but the one thing I frequently see is a strong owner who realises and acknowledges what he or she is good at, and not good at. Such leaders find people who are good at doing what they can’t and build a team of people around them who have the skills they lack. So what are the qualities you should look for when building a senior management team? There are many ways to categorise people, and finding individuals with all the skills needed to build a successful business is rare. If you are the owner it’s probably wise to start by assessing your own skills, as in your strengths and weaknesses. That will give you a starting point for filling in the gaps. Some of the skills you are looking for may be practical – like IT, social media, book-keeping, marketing, teaching or technical and creative abilities. Others will fall under the category of character attributes; you may need someone who has a talent for leadership or an eye for detail, an ideas person, an influencer, a visionary or a great organiser. The human zoo I once heard it said that a good business is like a good zoo, and to get a good zoo you need variety of animals. You need the leopard and you need the snakes and you need the elephant and the antelopes. They’re all animals but they’re all different. I believe that genetically we come pre-programmed with certain character traits, many of which will be beneficial in our business. But we will also come up short in certain areas, and this is where you need to supplement with training and by recruiting people with the skills needed to fill the gaps. There’s an old saying that goes something like: ‘In management, if two people agree with each other all the time, then one of them isn't needed.’ Antony Whitaker is about to launch his summer seminar tour, with dates in London, Manchester and Glasgow. For more details and to book a place, visit: www.growmysalonbusiness.com. You can also follow him on Instagram and Twitter