Hiring staff is a significant challenge for entrepreneurs. Hiring Friends and Family can be an even more costly mistake. Imagine if you could clone yourself and delegate the tasks you dislike to someone else.
As an entrepreneur, it’s crucial to view your business as your child and protect it from hiring mistakes that can harm its growth. This article explores the pitfalls of hiring friends and provides insights into building a successful team. We certainly want to hire and help those around us, and we want to leave our businesses in the family but if they don’t want it, we will inevitably wear ourselves out. You can’t make someone want something they don’t want. This is not to say that ALL friends and family will mistreat you but you need to be aware of the signs that they might be to keep your own mental health on point.
Do Your Due Diligence When Hiring
One hard-earned lesson is that people can be skilled at presenting themselves but fail to deliver what they promise. Rushing the hiring process without thoroughly checking backgrounds and references can be detrimental to your business. Taking the time to gather information upfront can save you from making costly mistakes. This article emphasizes the importance of conducting proper due diligence before making hiring decisions.
Hiring friends for your business can create complications, as it becomes challenging to separate personal relationships from professional responsibilities. The article shares personal experiences and highlights the potential risks involved in hiring friends. It emphasizes the need to prioritize the growth and success of your business over personal connections.
Setting clear goals for your business and reviewing them regularly is a powerful practice. The article encourages entrepreneurs to write down their business goals, read them daily, and even create vision boards. This proactive approach helps align focus and attract positive energy toward achieving business objectives.
Reasons to Reconsider Hiring Friends and Family or Unqualified Individuals
Emotions Lead to Poor Management
Hiring friends out of a sense of financial obligation can lead to detrimental outcomes. It’s better to provide financial assistance separately, maintaining a clear boundary between personal support and professional operations. This article advises entrepreneurs to prioritize the success of their businesses and avoid allowing negative energy from personal relationships to impact their operations.
Compassion and Sympathy Can Exacerbate Poor Management
Friends and Family have insights into your weaknesses, making it difficult to establish an effective professional dynamic. If a friend needs financial help, providing money rather than a job is often a better solution. Entrepreneurs should recognize the distinction between supporting friends personally versus hiring them for their business. It’s crucial to prioritize the needs of the business and hire individuals who can contribute positively without compromising professionalism.
Entrepreneurs should avoid using their businesses as a means to solve personal problems for friends. Focusing on the growth and success of the business requires a clear separation between personal relationships and professional responsibilities.
Hiring Friends and Family: Feeling Obligated
Hiring a friend can put you in a difficult position. They may use the friendship as leverage, knowing that you have more to lose, including the friendship itself.
Consequently, you might tolerate behaviors that are out of the ordinary, diverting your attention from the bigger idea of growing your business and maintaining control over your team. While your friend may need financial support, your priority should be attracting clients to expand your brand. Sometimes, it’s better to provide them with the money they need rather than hire them.
Feeling Obligated to Help
As an entrepreneur, it’s natural to want to solve problems and help others. However, there are times when we take this desire too far. It’s essential to ensure that your acts of support don’t negatively impact your business or hinder your growth strategies.
Stay focused on your goals and avoid getting too caught up in the personal struggles of others. While your intentions may be good, you may eventually realize that you’ve made a mistake and now have to invest more time, money, or stress to rectify the situation. Their problems can become your problems.
Instead of finding yourself in such a situation, consider implementing a higher-level hire strategy. Bring in individuals who are qualified for the job, not just someone looking for a paycheck.
Remember that your business should always be the top priority. Surround yourself with people who can complete assigned tasks efficiently and drama-free. Otherwise, you may find yourself paying them to leave, making you the “bad guy.” Your mental well-being and health are far more valuable than dealing with stress-induced conditions like strokes, aneurysms, or heart attacks.
Reluctance to Express Concerns
When it comes to friends and family, you might find it challenging to express your concerns about their performance. You may fear that addressing the issues could strain your friendship, leading you to remain silent. However, this hesitation will undoubtedly contribute to increased stress levels.
It will impact your creativity, innovation, and overall performance. Remember that you put yourself in this position, and now you have to find a way to navigate out of it.
Sacrificing Time and Money to Preserve the Friendship
The desire to maintain a friendship can often lead to sacrificing your time and money for your business. In hindsight, taking a step back and assessing the situation from a broader perspective could have prevented this predicament. At this point, you may feel overwhelmed by the commitments you’ve made. However, finding a solution and extricating yourself from this mess is necessary.
Impact on Your Overall Performance
If your inability to control your friend or a poor hire is evident to other employees, it will undoubtedly create tension and discord within your organization.
This can escalate into a much larger problem that negatively affects your performance. Rather than viewing it as cancer within your organization, consider it as rotten fruit. When it’s in proximity to healthy fruit, it has the potential to destroy it as well.
Lack of Control Over Friends and Family or Poor Hires: Impact on Performance
If your employees witness your inability to control a friend or a poor hire, it can lead to dissension and strife within your organization. This can escalate into a much larger problem that significantly affects your overall performance. While the saying goes that cancer can spread within an organization, I prefer to liken it to rotten fruit. When the rotten fruit is in close proximity to the healthy fruit, it has the potential to destroy it as well.
Friends and Family May Neglect Assigned Tasks
Friends and poor hires often prioritize their own situations over the tasks assigned to them. It’s understandable that their survival may be their primary concern at the moment, but it leaves you as a secondary priority. Consequently, they may overlook their responsibilities, causing disruptions and setbacks within your business.
Poor Management Witnessed by Other Employees
When you knowingly hire individuals facing financial problems, and their poor performance becomes evident, it reflects poorly on your management abilities. Other employees will observe your decision-making and question your judgment. It’s essential to consider the impact of such actions on the overall morale and productivity of your team.