Emma Grede

Now, those three people are going to give you three completely different perspectives on your weaknesses.

Your former boss is actually going to tell you where you fell short professionally.

Your colleague is going to tell you about what frustrates them about working with you.

Things that you miss, what you avoid, what you're kind of slower.

And your friend, your friend is going to tell you the personal stuff, the patterns, the blind spots, the things that you don't see about yourself because you're just too close.

And that, my friends, is gold.

That tells you what you need to hire for.

And honestly, it tells you where you might grow and you're probably going to learn a little something in the process.

And once you've done that work and brought the right person in, your job changes.

Now your job is to actually grow that person.

Now, the single best move I've made in my career is investing in people, taking my time to actually understand what they want and what their ambitions are and teaching them what I know.

giving helpful, thoughtful, honest feedback.

I'm always looking at the 120% people in my organization, the ones who are blowing my socks off.

And I'm thinking about how I can give them much wider remits, how I can move them into different functions and let them see the business from so many different angles.

The more the team understands your business as a whole, the better they can function with increasing responsibility and the better the business is going to do as a result.

Now, I have done so many sidesteps in my career from one department to another.

I've done that in a few of my jobs and it's always actually served me well.

So if you have somebody who's amazing in one department, they work in wholesale and they want to learn e-com and they want to learn how to buy for direct-to-consumer, I'm going to support that mission because I'm very invested in team members who are interested in the entire business.

and not just their lane.

Now, the next thing, another old thought I need you to contend with.