Have Trust

I work in an environment where it is absolute controlled pandemonium. What I mean by this is everyone is doing what they are suppose to be, but it is loud, busy (with both work as well as many people being in one area) and extremely tiring. I spend a lot of my time trying to talk on the phone to sell out program while also checking in students and helping their parents. With over 1000 families enrolled it is hard to do everything by yourself.

When we place new employees up at the front it is my responsibility to train them. I am responsible for teaching them how to multitask, work with our computer system, customer service skills, sales skills and much more. Initially I take over and have them watch me work. Then I slowly start letting them do it on their own. And finally in the end, they have the knowledge and skills to take over all task without any supervision.

I have one trainee that I have never really “let go” I cut in a lot while she was talking because I was afraid she was not going to give the correct information. I gave her more simple tasks because I felt it was too hard to for her to do the others correctly. And I made her feel like she “wasn’t good enough” . I could also see it on her face that she was annoyed that I wouldn’t let her do things on her own.

Finally, tonight I made some changes. After a week of stressful presentations and overbearing workload I finally stepped back and allowed her to take the rains. It was once again a crazy night filled with upset parents, scared children, loud energetic children, and many phone calls. For the first we got all of our work done, no one was upset or stressed out and we left on time.

I stepped back and realized I cannot do it all. Sometimes you have to put enough trust into not only yours staff members but yourself as well. You must trust that idea that you taught your employees well and they are capable of doing the work they are suppose to do. You must also trust yourself to let go and allow for others to help.

People are your best tools to help with stress or heavy workloads. They are the tools we need to utilize. We need to not spend our time trying to make organizational lists or alarms to remind us to do all the things that we could be delegating to others. Spend your time utilizing your people. Trust me, if you give them some freedom, they will do their work with better quality then if you are not allowing them to do anything.