“chaos into clarity”
One of the biggest challenges I have in owning and running my martial arts school business is finding the right staff members, managing them for their personal and professional growth, and leadership development. I had the privilege of Melissa Jones offering to coach me on how to improve my process of staff selection. Mrs. Jones was quickly able to identify multiple areas of improvement in my process, including how to better identify the type of individual who would want the type of position I had to offer. She taught me how to develop questions that would reveal insight on a behavioral level each candidate’s true personality, fit, ability, experience and decision making skills. Because of my work with her, I was able to identify that I needed two part time employees rather than one full time. I quickly found people that wanted the positions I had to offer and were a good fit for them (after having struggled for almost 6 months to hire someone on my own).
I was also overwhelmed in the daily functioning of the business, and was not spending time on planning the future of the company or on the development the staff. I was missing clear ideas of what each staff member should be doing, and my school manager and I were both trying to take on far too many responsibilities on our own, rather than developing ownership and skills within our staff. Mrs. Jones took us through a creative and fun process that helped us identify key issues we had neglected, how to prioritize our focus and that we needed to clarify job descriptions. Her process helped us to identify some big holes in our structure. It helped us to identify areas where we were underutilizing our staff, and created a system to support us in keeping clarity and focus in a meaningful direction. She coached us on how to communicate better with our staff, how to understand and address their behaviors and how to maintain a long term outlook of the business, with a structure that has allowed us to prioritize our focus. She took areas where we felt like things were out of control and she helped to create a clear, workable structure.
Since our time together, I no longer have the overwhelmed feeling that I once struggled with daily. I have made some positive choices regarding the direction of my business and the management of my time. She turned my chaos into clarity. Mrs. Jones has been invaluable to me and the future of my business.
Melissa Callison Jones 