Partnering with Other Businesses, Managing Employees and Things We Love
Work Well With Others
In this episode, we talk more about partnering with other businesses and then we interview Tim Orellano of Human Resources Team on how to manage employees.
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Partnering with Other Small Businesses
We discussed partnering with other businesses in Episode 8 of Season 5.
And, we covered the issue in-depth in a recent blog post. But we thought we’d revisit the topic.
Previously on Couples Inc
Here is a quick re-cap of what we covered in our previous podcast and in the blog mentioned above.
We talked about WHY you should partner:
Strengthening local community
Supporting a charitable cause
Entering a new market/new revenue streams
We also offered a few examples:
· Location based (sidewalk sale or community festival)
· Complementary Industries (bridal show; make-up artist & photographer)
· Same industry (restaurant week, independent book stores)
In the show, we talked about about HOW to partner.
A small-business partnership might be informal or it can be a full-fledged retail association that creates marketing opportunities all year-long.
Let’s discuss three main areas to consider when setting up a partnership.
1: Purpose of the Partnership
You and your partners need to ask the following questions:
o Is this a one-time, seasonal partnership or do you hope to create a long-term plan?
o Are you doing this solely to increase foot traffic or is there a charitable cause to tie into?
o How will you measure your success?
2: The Decision-Making Process
Then decide:
o Will there be a committee to make large decisions for the group?
o Will partners vote on expectations?
o Who will manage relationships with outside parties, such as media outlets or government contacts?
3: Expectations
Next discuss:
o Time: How many hours will be required by each partner for planning and implementation?
o Store Policies: Will partners need to adjust their operating hours for the campaign/event?
o Money: How much will each partner contribute to event supplies and promotion?
For even more information about this topic, check out this blog post.
THE INTERVIEW: Employee Management
For our interview, we talked with Tim Orellano, PHR.
Tim is president of The Human Resources Team and has over 30 years of human resources management experience.
Here is an edited transcript from our interview…
Question: Is it possible to truly have a friendship with someone you supervise? Sure, you can you be friendly, but can you be friends?
Answer: I really think that there is a big difference between being friendly with your employees and being friends in the traditional sense.
Being friendly is certainly what we should be doing in fostering a positive, respectful, open working environment. And to me, friendly means that you generally care about your team members, your employees, you're showing empathy. You have good rapport. That certainly helps build trust.
I think becoming true friends means or defined as, well, I'm going to hang out with my coworkers outside of work. I'm going to share personal details.
And so that becomes very tricky from my experience. You know, perception is reality. And even when you're making decisions regarding that person, it looks like favoritism. If you're friends with somebody and here's a situation, be it a scheduling change or getting off or I mean, you know, the list goes on and on.
Other people see that as favoritism.
Q: What skills do you think that you need to be a supervisor?
A: I think that the first thing is communication. You really have to have some good communication skills to clearly articulate your expectations, the ability to give constructive feedback and that you actively listen.
Actively listen means that that you're really tuning in to what that person is saying so that you can understand what's going on.
I think the second issue would be called emotional intelligence, and there's lots of work and research into that area called emotional intelligence.
In a nutshell, what does that really mean? Well, you better know who you are and how your emotions are in terms of self-analysis, because if you don't understand yourself and how you communicate, then it's hard for you to identify what that emotional intelligence is with the other person, particularly in difficult situations.
Q: What if you have a difficult time with conflict. Are there some tips that you can give our listeners if they have issues with conflict or giving negative feedback, how they can maybe overcome that?
A: That's interesting that you should bring that up. I have a client right now that is a small company. And one of their supervisors, she has her own job, but she also has this responsibility for a couple of employees.
And there was an attendance problem. The person that she was supervising would either leave early or come in late. And she just would avoid dealing with that situation because she doesn't want to cause a conflict to address the issue.
The problem here is that the performance issue festers. It gets bigger and bigger until at some point it probably doesn't end well and termination happens. If that had been addressed earlier, the employee who actually ended up being terminated could have maybe had the opportunity to fix the problem. So I think avoiding conflict makes it worse.
Let’s re-frame that perception of conflict. Instead of seeing it as a negative battle, you view that as an opportunity for growth and resolution. That allows you, the supervisor, to grow. And it also helps that particular employee that maybe is causing the issue to fix it.
And here's the key to it. You're addressing the issue, the problem, or even the behavior. You're not attacking the person.
