Q: How do you move from being a solopreneur to growing and managing a team if you don't enjoy managing people?
Gina Horkey, founder
Horkey Handbook
A: Our perceptions of what "managing people" means are generally colored by our past experiences managing or "being managed." In turn, these perceptions are often powerfully impacted by the organizations in which we managed or were managed. Generally, these organizations impose many constraints that may be good for those organizations, but may have nothing to do with your business now.
So, my first suggestion is to blow up all the assumptions you have picked up in your career to date. Other than legal requirements, you get to make this up from scratch. For example, I might reframe this from "managing people" to "finding and working with partners excited about serving my customers." The mind-set of "the boss" has a huge impact on the experience of working with others in organizations, both for the boss and for her partners or employees.
Research on the leadership aspects of managing suggests that at its core, it is about relationships. My guess is that you are good at relationships, as you seem to have highly valued relationships with your two toddlers and, I'm guessing, many adults in your life. At their best, though different, the relationships you form and invest in with the people you partner with to serve your customers could become some of the most highly valued relationships in your work life. Just as in other relationships, you are in a role (mother, partner, friend), and here, your role is "boss and leader."
In my experience working with "bosses," work relationships are either their biggest pain or the greatest joy of their work life. Learn about how to create your reality to be more in line with "greatest joy."
After considering all that, you may decide that working with others to serve your customers really is just not for you. If that is the case, you might want find a people-oriented partner or manager, or you may want to ask yourself why you are hiring in the first place. A better solution might be "right sizing" your business so that you can continue to solopreneur. If you need higher income, growth and hiring are not the only options.
Teresa Rothausen is a professor of management and Susan E. Heckler Endowed Chair at the University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business.
