Prudent Team Expansion

In order to work as efficiently as possible, you will eventually need to delegate your tasks and hire anything from assistants to web developers to consultants to other real estate agents. However, it is important to know when and how to make these additions to your team so that they can be the most profitable, both in fiscal terms and in terms of morale and company culture.

There are a few things you should consider before hiring an assistant or another team member. Keep in mind that you are investing in yourself and your business when you do so, but you are also investing in another person. The best thing you can do for yourself is to be prudent and conscientious about vetting your investments and ensuring to the best of your ability that they are wise ones.

Inventory your needs

What are the needs that you currently need met? Include in this overview the needs that you may take for granted because you or another team member has already filled the roles required to meet them. What would it look like for you to be able to delegate these tasks to someone else whose position is dedicated to fulfilling them?

You should also take stock of the needs that you foresee arising in the future. This includes the needs that will come hand in hand with the hiring of new personnel. Every decision you make branches off into countless sub-decisions, which will in turn inspire their own eventualities.

However, don’t think too far ahead. You can’t plan for every scenario, and doing so will prevent you from focusing on the issues you need to address in the here and now. Try to strive for a balance that incorporates a majority of your needs in the present and a smaller but still significant part of your potential needs in the future.

Take stock of what each role offers in your current plan. Can you re-imagine the current system of delegation so that you can function just as effectively without another body on the team? If you were to hire another person, what would be the things you would tackle with your new executive freedom?

Plan practically

Once you know what purpose your new team member would serve and what needs they would meet, you will need to come up with a basic plan for how you will measure their delivery on global team goals as well as individual ones.

It helps to already have in place a comprehensive style of communicating goals and expectations to your existing team, and for communicating them to and measuring them in yourself.

However, it is also wise to recognize that the addition of a new team member will change the dynamic. This is not simply due to the introduction of a new personality, but to the simple mathematical fact that you will have less time and energy to devote to individual team members when there are more of them. Your chain of command may also change as the delegation of tasks and responsibilities is altered.

If you do not have a relatively concrete onboarding plan, this will ensure that you make the most out of any decision to hire a new team member. It will also provide a blueprint for future growth.