3 Simple “Money Heist” Lessons for Maximizing Motivation – Part 3

Good leadership means removing roadblocks for your team members.  It means clarifying requirements for them, addressing the issues your team cannot for lack of expertise or something else.  It's getting them the resources they need to do their job efficiently.

In this part 3 (which follows part 1 and part 2), I give the final lesson exploring how El Profesor from the "Money Heist" provides the leadership then need by serving them.  He does it well so let's see what we can learn from what he does.

As with part 2, here's your spoiler alert.

Lesson 3 - Serve Your Team No Matter What

El Profesor is the mastermind behind the 2+ billion euros heist from the Royal Mint of Spain.  El Profesor never enters the mint.  He stays outside. It's the team that goes in an executes.   He is communicating with the team serving as their eyes and ears.  He is the chief negotiator with the police who have surrounded the mint.  He is as engaged in the heist as his team is, but his role is different.

He watches every move the police make.  He infiltrates the police and listens in as they plots against them.  He gets to know the police inspector heading up the effort and he gets pretty intimately involved with her.  He's taking one for the team here making sure to keep close company with her.  Talk about personal sacrifice...right.

There are times when the team is at odds with his instructions.  There are times when they need him and he is unavailable yet we see him 100% committed to them and their cause.  There are things he does because without that the heist will fail.  He shows his brilliance and creativity.

When I started my business, I relied heavily on my subject matter expertise.  My skills were online marketing, website development and marketing automation.  If you are a lawyer, an accountant or a consultant, you may have started the same way.  What happens as you grow your business is the same skills that made you successful begin to get in your way.  You end up having to "work" on client deliverables and those keep you from building your business.  A key move you must make is to transform yourself form that valued expert to the even more valuable business owner that leads your team to success.

If I look at my business, where I need to spend the majority of my time is in sales, marketing and growing my team.  By growing the team I mean training them and enabling them to completely take over m operational duties.  To that end, I need to get my team the resources they need to be as effective as possible so I don't need to worry about customer delivery and customer satisfaction.

I've seen many business owners, including myself, hold onto responsibilities that need to handed off.  My current struggle is handing over my customer interface role.  I still intend to be in my sales and marketing role.  I need to define an effective way to hand over that customer interface or account rep role to someone else.  I need to produce a process that introduces these new customers to the rep and assure then that's the person that going to take care of them to the end.  As a matter of fact, the message I need to deliver to these new customers is, "You don't want to be interfacing with me.  You want to be in the hands of someone that can best care for you."

I write about this and know the struggle.  I know how difficult it is to train team members, adjust the systems we have in place to make these transformations.  However, without that, we are stuck in a role that handcuffs our business and keeps it from thriving which is what we all want, right.

I'll say right on your behalf, because we all want the freedom and results that come with taking these badly needed next steps.