As a business owner, you might be familiar with the following business journey.

At first, it’s just you, operating your business as a solopreneur, doing all the things. Then you hire your 1st team member (probably a VA), and they take some tasks off your plate – yay!

And as the business grows, more things need to get done, so you hire your 2nd and 3rd team members (and possibly more from there). The new hires could be copywriters, designers, or tech support VAs.

Then all of a sudden, you’re too busy again. You think to yourself, “why is this happening? I’m paying all of these team members to take care of things for me. Why does it seem like I am back in the middle of everything again?“

Because managing a team is a lot of work – even if they are awesome.

Yes, even when you’ve got the right people, doing the right things with lots of skill and heart, someone still has to manage them.

So if managing a team feels like a lot, that’s because it is.

Here are just the top 3 reasons you exhaust your time and energy when managing your team:

Answering Questions 

Your team will have questions no matter how organized a task or project is. Questions you never thought of come up, and if someone with the answers isn’t available for guidance, tasks are delayed leading to incomplete projects and past-due deadlines. 

Checking Work

No one wants to be a micromanager, and no one wants to have someone looking over their shoulder – all the time. But here’s the absolute truth: we have to inspect what we expect. A big part of leading a team is walking around ‘the office’ to ensure correctly executed tasks. As much as we might like, we cannot assume things are happening the way we expect them to. Great teams do their best work when working with a manager who is active and engaged in the process. 

Operating from Systems

Businesses cannot run on people alone. Team members will come and go. Even the most loyal, been there since the beginning, can’t imagine the business without them team members will move on (or be unavailable) at some point. Because team members come and go, documented SOPs are so important – critical in fact.

A big part of managing a team is 1) making sure everyone has processes to follow and 2) ensuring everyone’s processes get documented and maintained. Someone on the team has to own setting up systems.

When it comes to building and leading a team, it’s not a “set it and forget it” job. Instead, it’s the vital part of ensuring your business runs smoothly. And if you feel like you don’t have time for all of this (not to mention hiring, on-boarding, and training), listen to that feeling because you don’t!

Once you’re beyond one or two team members, you’ll have difficulty looking after the entire team. And if you are managing your team, you’re taking yourself away from the things only you can do for the business – hindering your business’ success.

As a Certified Online Business Manager® and Director of Operations, people management is one aspect I manage for my clients.

If you know you’re the bottleneck with your team and core business tasks are not happening as they should, or if you know your business is reliant more on people than processes, I’d love to connect and learn more.