Never in my life would I have thought that making a decision about hiring a person to join the team would be so long, it literally took me about five to six months to get here. I mean it should be pretty simple, right, I know the role I am hiring for, I know the qualifications the person needs so picking someone should have been easy. But, it actually wasn’t and that is something I don’t take for granted because in as much as I had to be calculative, and technical, I also had to understand my thoughts and feelings about the whole process, so I sat and asked myself these five questions to help me:

1. Have I grown enough as a leader: Being a leader requires growth, learning and unlearning, and as someone who has worked alone, mainly, on the day-to-day running of the business and so forth, I had to introspect and understand what type of person I will need to come into the business and understand the type of support that they will need, and decide whether or not I would be ready to avail myself and to give my time to be that support structure for them. This is so important because as you build a time you have to understand that you will have to set time aside for mentoring and coaching your immediate hires. They don’t know your business as well as you do and you also need to know why you don’t know. 

2. What does the business need vs what I need: The biggest mistake small businesses make is trying to find someone that is like them as their first hire but it’s a huge mistake. I am sorry to tell you this but you probably don’t need a PA. It is very important to understand the actual work that needs to be done to take the business to the next level. There is a lot of work to do, and not just the work to creative work, there is business admin, planning and strategizing that happens in the background and I needed to understand that in as much as I need to free up time, I am going to have to give up some of my time  to ensure that this person is well equipped to take the business where it needs to go. I had to choose someone who would make sense for the culture I wanted to build, not someone who excited me. 

3. What is the vision for the business and does this person fit into that: I had to put in a lot of work into solidifying the back end of all this pretty and functional AGENDA WOMEN that you see, and trust me when I say, it challenged me both emotionally, and psychologically. Establishing company culture and ways of working is crucial before onboarding new people in your business. You will not know who fits a culture that does not exist. 

4. Have I reviewed alternative options: I definitely took my time to get here because I also spent a lot of time thinking about what role would move us forward. I had already built an organogram of all the roles I need to fill for this business to deliver what I know it can deliver but we do not have the financial muscle to carry that organogram yet. It was important to investigate which role to hire for with the budget we had at our disposal. I even asked myself,  should I get a freelancer instead? Maybe that would be a cheaper option. Should the person be a contractor? And the reality is none of these options would have worked, and this goes back to understanding exactly what your business needs and what it looks like in the next few years, and having to make some of the sacrifices now, to get there later. 

5. What do I value: Bringing someone in meant I had to be intentional about understanding what it is that we value as a business and to find someone who matches that. I had to be intentional about the culture and environment that I wanted to bring the person into and work on living that first before I want to try and teach it to someone. Understanding that there are areas where I will have to let go of the grip and control, and to also be ok with things being done differently and some ways of work changing. I needed to also shift my mindset to TEAM MODE. 

Do you have key learnings from your environment, I would love to hear how you are solving for some of your leadership challenges in the comments below.