313. Letting Go or Leaning In? The Leadership Gut Check You’ve Been Avoiding

If you’ve ever had that feeling about someone on your team—the subtle “something’s off” whisper in your gut—you’re not alone.

In this episode, Megan is joined by her longtime COO and teammate of 14 years, Gina Johnston, to unpack one of the trickiest leadership challenges: knowing when to coach…and when to cut ties.

Whether you’re leading a team of 10 or just thinking about hiring your first assistant, this is the honest, behind-the-scenes conversation every business owner needs to hear.

Because sometimes, leadership isn’t about waving pom-poms. It’s about setting clear expectations, having hard conversations, and asking yourself the uncomfortable but necessary question:

Is this a coaching opportunity…or is it time to let them go?

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

✅ The 3 must-dos for onboarding a new team member
✅ What’s actually coachable—and what probably isn’t
✅ The leadership mistake Megan made that cost her time and energy (so you can avoid it)
✅ Why you shouldn’t hire in a moment of panic (and what to do if you already did)
✅ How to avoid getting stuck in the dreaded “gray zone” of mediocre team performance
✅ The one thing people pleasers need to hear when it’s time to let someone go
✅ A free resource to improve your team’s communication and event debriefs

Free Resource:
Post-Event Team Feedback Questionnaire
Get Megan & Gina’s go-to tool for checking in with your team after each event. It’s simple, practical, and a game-changer for team growth and accountability.
Download it here - https://learn.theplannersvault.com/teameventdebrief

Timestamps:

00:00 – The hiring gut check no one talks about
 02:27 – Meet Gina: 14 years, one unicorn hire
 04:11 – Why panic hiring is usually a mistake
 08:01 – The 3 non-negotiables for onboarding
 13:21 – How to give (and track) meaningful feedback
 16:10 – What you can coach (and how)
18:55 – What you can’t coach—no matter how nice they are
20:41 – People pleasing vs. leadership
24:24 – Boundaries when you’re also friends
28:15 – Using vendors as a feedback loop
29:21 – Let your team fail (seriously)
30:07 – How to navigate the gray zone with clarity
31:27 – Final takeaways + how to lead with intention

Weddings for Real on Social Media:

Instagram: @weddingsforreal

Facebook: @weddingsforreal

twitter: @weddingsforreal

Hosted by Megan Gillikin, Weddings for Real is presented by The Planner's Vault, and is produced by Walk West.

Feeling the pull to pause and realign? Join me October 27–30 in Ocean Isle Beach, NC for my Restore & Realign Retreat, only a few spots left! Reserve yours here: https://www.theplannersvault.com/restore-realign-retreat-application

Creators and Guests

Host

Megan Gillikin

Wedding Industry Coach + Founder of The Planner's Vault

Producer

Jason Gillikin

CEO and Executive Producer at Earfluence

What is For Real: Life, Leadership, & Unlearning?

For Real is a top 1% podcast for high-achievers who look successful on paper but feel like they’re one group text away from burning it all down. Hosted by Megan Gillikin - serial entrepreneur, business coach, keynote speaker, and recovering people pleaser - this show explores burnout, boundaries, identity shifts, and the brave act of unlearning who you thought you had to be.

With unfiltered conversations, “I thought it was just me” moments, and just enough humor to keep it from feeling like group therapy, For Real is your permission slip to evolve.

Formerly Weddings for Real - and glow-ups look good on us.

00:00:00 - Megan Gillikin
You're listening to episode 313 of the podcast and I'm your host, Megan Gilliken. Today's episode is all about determining when someone on your team is worth investing time and energy into coaching or whether it's time to let them go. We'll also talk about the most important things you need to do when bringing on a new team member to increase the likelihood that they'll stick around and be a great fit for your business. Ready to dive in? Let's go.

Hey there, I'm Megan Gilliken, and this podcast is for fellow wedding pros that know what it really takes to thrive as a professional in the wedding industry. Because it's not what they show you in the movies. Spoiler alert. It takes more than a wave of a wand or toss of confetti to take someone's special day from big idea to big success. As for me, I recently sold my luxury wedding planning business and now I'm a business coach, international speaker, online educator, number one cheerleader of wedding pros, and a mom of three. This podcast is a wedding professional's safe space to laugh and dish about the glitz, the not so glam, and all things weddings for real. Hey everyone. Welcome to today's episode where we're tackling the nagging question of how to know when someone on your team is no longer an aligned fit, or whether you can see the opportunity for growth and improvement with some coaching and guidance. Now, it goes without saying that hiring a team is one of the best ways to grow your business. But it also comes with a whole new set of challenges, like knowing when to lean in and coach and when to trust your gut and let someone go. So if you've ever hired someone, whether it's a contractor, an assistant, or even just someone to help with social media, you've probably had that moment, the one where your gut whispers, something feels off here, and instead of listening, maybe you keep coaching, keep adjusting, keep hoping they'll get it. But weeks or months or even years go by and you realize you're still doing the emotional cartwheels to try to make it work. Well, this episode is for that moment when you're stuck in the question of is this a coaching opportunity or is it time to move on? And I'm joined today by a very special co host, my own COO and a member of my team now for the last 14 years. Welcome, Gina. Thanks for joining me today.

00:02:27 - Gina Johnston
Hello. Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be back on the podcast. I'm loving this topic I can't wait to dive in to all of the little pieces of it that we've kind of brainstormed. I've had a lot of coaching clients over the last, I'll say, couple of months that we've talked about team members, and I am currently in the middle of coaching one that has one that's not doing so great. So we're navigating that process. So it's an exciting topic.

00:02:55 - Megan Gillikin
It's an exciting topic and it's a tricky topic. Something I want to talk about right at the beginning is a spoiler alert that sometimes the hardest part isn't determining, you know, whether the team member in question needs to go or be coached. It's knowing as the boss what your next steps are. So learning to listen to your intuition, learning to set better boundaries, having a better onboarding system in place, and figuring out how to stop carrying the weight of trying to make that square peg fit into a round hole.

00:03:29 - Gina Johnston
Yes, exactly. So what I would love for everyone listening to do is really close your eyes for a moment, think about your own team. Maybe you don't have a team, maybe you want to build upon a team, but this is really for you. If you have that team and think of maybe it's somebody that you're not quite sure what's going on with them. You want to make it work. You really like them as a person, but it just feels so hard to make it click. Right? Make it work. Make them understand how you want things done. So I want you to really think about that person as we're talking through this to maybe really help you and help guide you in the direction. So hopefully this conversation will hit home for you.

00:04:11 - Megan Gillikin
Oh, yes. And I feel like we cannot do this episode without me covering a piece of advice that I have given hundreds, if not thousands of times on coaching calls. I had to learn it the hard way in my early days as a leader. And that piece of advice is do not hire in a moment of panic because it is likely going to end badly for both parties. And I have an analogy here that comes to mind just as I'm talking about this makes me think of, you've got this boat and it's got a giant hole in it and it's taking on water, and you're trying to bring on an untrained crew member that you're wanting them to immediately know how to help you repair the hole, bail out the water, keep the boat from turning over, and they need to know all of these things right now and all at once. And I know you know, this is a funny analogy, but it makes sense when you think about hiring in a moment of panic. When your business needs someone you know immediately or needed someone three months ago, it's unfair to this person and it's unfair to your business. And I won't say that it has a hundred percent fail rate, because I'll give you a personal story in just a moment, but the odds are against you. I share this because I know that it is a common problem that small business owners are up against. So if you're listening to this and you're like, well, Megan, I'm in that moment of panic and I, I absolutely need to hire someone. I really needed to do it three months ago, know this. If you're in that place, you've got to be really transparent and upfront with this new hire about what they're getting into. You've got to have realistic expectations of what they can accomplish and take off of your plate and what you actually have the bandwidth to pour into them and train them on. And this is where having a seasoned person with a lot of experience that can jump in and start taking things off your plate really quickly can be really beneficial. You know, the reason why I say that this doesn't have a hundred percent fail rate of hiring in a moment of panic is Gina. I think back to 14 years ago when I was in my mid-20s and I was a new entrepreneur. I had this business and I was absolutely in that place of, oh my gosh, I need more support. And I found you. I, I didn't have a job description. I didn't have SOPs, I didn't have everything that I needed in place to be really discerning and intentional with who I hired. And I got lucky. And that is not the norm. I can tell you now, 15 years later, I've never hit that jackpot again in the way that I did when I hired Eugenia. So I feel compelled to share that piece of advice with you. And I also feel compelled to share that I did get really lucky when I hired Gina.

00:07:09 - Gina Johnston
Ellen, I think it's important to honor and to note that just like you said, sometimes you are going to be in this moment of panics, right? And you just need to hire somebody to come on and hopefully, you know, fingers crossed, right? You do your due diligence and you do look for the most qualified of what's available to you at the moment. You set those expectations, you lay the foundation, you give them kind of a, hey, I'm in a, oh, Crap moment. And I'm hoping you're going to be here to save me. And hopefully it does work out, but it happens and it's okay if it happens. You know, as we go on and talking, we're going to talk about this a little later. I think there are things to come back to these people that you bring in to make sure that if they are the right fit, you're growing them in a direction that you want and they want. And if it's not working, you can see that pretty quickly and really course correct. We'll talk a lot about that in a little bit.

00:08:01 - Megan Gillikin
Well, Gina, this conversation isn't about onboarding, but as you and I were talking about this episode, we really came up with the three must dos. So these are the things that set the foundation for really bringing in someone that is going to be an ideal fit. And these are a reference point to understand when you're looking at the big picture of growing your team. So let's talk about those three must dos of onboarding before we jump into coaching or letting someone go.

00:08:35 - Gina Johnston
Yeah, absolutely. So these are going to be those foundational pieces, those reference points that you can come back to when you're in those moments of is this coachable or is it viable to understand? Did I do my part as a leader, as a boss, Did I onboard them correctly and give them those tools to set them up for success? So when I was onboarding them, did I let them know what success in this role looked like? Did I let them know what my non negotiables are in this role? Did I share my mission statements? Did I share my standards for how we interact, how we email, how we talk on the phone, how we present ourselves in meetings? So did I set them up with all of what I would say, the basics of your business and how you run your company? So that's number one. Number two, have you given them the SOPs? Do they know what's needed? So your standard operating procedures? Do they know how to do something from start to finish? I think these are great to have not only for a team, but even for just yourself. Right. A lot of times the planners mainly that we coach, they're like, crap. I don't. It all lives in my head. That's such a common phrase for us that it lives in your head. So how are you expecting somebody to succeed in the role that you've hired them for if you're just going off of maybe the things that you remember to blurt out to them of how this is how it goes. So I think there's, there's two parts to an sop. It's one, having it written out, having a visual aspect. We love loom. So even recording yourself when you're doing something so they can watch a visual of you going through it but then also sitting down and talking through it with them if that's something that you're able to do once you've hired them. So number two, so ease and then number three, making sure that you do have that onboarding guide that again gives them the list of here are my expectations, here's what you know, we expect of you in terms of the language that we use, how we dress, how we act, our mission, what is the brand, what is your brand voice and what do you stand for and represent. And then having your onboarding meeting. So a 30, a 60, a 90 day meeting just to do a check in, see how they're doing, give them those points of reference of I like to do compliment sandwiches, right. So you say these are the things that you're doing really well and I can see you love this part of it. Here's where I see some opportunities for you to adjust or to change or where I saw that maybe I didn't explain something very well. And then you know, again, wrap it up with I see that you're doing great in something else. So I think having those plan check ins and that onboarding guide is going to be really helpful.

00:11:14 - Megan Gillikin
I want to really highlight the importance of those 30, 60 and 90 day check ins. This is something that Gina and I have done so many coaching sessions on with entrepreneurs. It is absolutely key to the success of the person that is coming onto your team. And it's also so important for you as the leader to be able to holistically look at this person and see are they meeting the goals that I've set for them? Are they living up to what I said as Gina mentions what success looks like in this role. And it's so important to be able to recap those teachable moments instead of they mess up and then you're having to say hey, that was wrong, we need to fix that right now. So pre planning those, when someone joins your team, making sure that you have those 30, 60 and 90 day check ins set on both of your calendars from the beginning. And then here's something really important to note. I can't remember what I did last weekend, so I absolutely am not going to remember what occurred over the last 30 days with my new team member unless I'm writing it down and I'm holding myself accountable for it. So for example, some things that would be worth either sending yourself an email over, having a private Google Doc or keeping a note on your phone saying okay, this person showed up 10 minutes late to our team meeting or they forgot to send the timeline to the client when the date to do so was set for Tuesday at 3pm but you also want to note the things that they're doing really well as Gina mentioned with that compliment sandwich. So this is where you say a client sent me an email saying that Sarah was phenomenal in the meeting and answered all their questions and reduced their stress so much. So make sure that you are keeping a living document of some sort in whatever form works best for you so that when you get to those 30, 60 and 90 day check ins you have real time feedback to share with them.

00:13:21 - Gina Johnston
I love that so much because yeah, you're right, you're not going to remember every little thing. And if you think you are, your brain is tricking you.

00:13:28 - Megan Gillikin
Yeah, it's lying to you. I'm sorry. One more thing I want to add to this before I forget is those meetings that you're having with that team member, you also really want to make sure that if you're doing it virtually so if you're having a zoom with them that you have some sort of AI note taker that is there there to note the things that were covered. And if not, if you're doing this meeting in person, make sure that you follow up with a written recap. So this can be hey Gina, it was so great meeting with you today. As we discussed, these are the areas that you're really nailing it and these are the areas that we both agreed are opportunities for improvement. Looking forward to our next meeting on X date and here are the two resources that we discussed that we both agreed would be helpful for you moving forward that way. Again you are able to, when you then get to that 60 day or 90 day, you can look back and say, okay, I'm prepping myself for this meeting. These are the areas where she was supposed to show some level of improvement. And I can sit and ask myself like has that actually occurred?

00:14:32 - Gina Johnston
Absolutely. So Megan, I want to, we've talked a lot about what's coachable, what's viable, but let's actually talk about what is coachable because I feel like there's a lot of skill sets, there's a lot of personality traits, but what can we coach versus what is just not possible? Let's do it. All right, so to me, and if you have anything else to add, let me know. But to me, those coachable skills or those soft skills are going to be that time management, especially as planners. For us personally, as planners or just in wedding pros in general, we have a lot to manage all at once. We have new clients, we have clients that are going to get married in the next couple of days. So how to figure out all of the pieces and how they fall into place. So I feel like that is something for the most part you can co ch communication and your tone. So again, setting them up for success in that beginning, sharing a brand guide or a brand voice with them, of course for us at least we each had our own tweak to it. We do want to be our own person. But as a standard in general, here's how we like to communicate, here's the style that we like to communicate in, here's our standards. So we want to get back to clients within 24 hours and vendors within 48 hours, whatever that looks like for you. So coaching them on the communication and the tone, coaching them of course on your systems, your processes. So again those sops are going to come in handy. Teaching them and walking them through each of those steps and then asking for help and making sure that they understand and that they feel comfortable coming to you and knowing that, you know, if they don't understand something or they need more clarity or they don't feel like they're nailing it, they can come and ask for help. Whether that is to you or maybe it is another team member that you want to link up and say, hey, here's, you know, somebody that is a lead planner that is going to be your go to person if you have questions as well. So just someone that they can feel comfortable going to and asking for help.

00:16:27 - Megan Gillikin
Yeah, I absolutely agree on those things. The time management, knowing when they should be in their email, when they should be taking time away, knowing how to organize their day with their meetings versus their admin work, those things are absolutely teachable. Communication, as you mentioned, your actual client process, your systems, the workflow that can all be taught. Asking for help, like knowing when they need to raise that white flag and know where they don't know what they need to know and you can lean in and help. All those things are absolutely funny story.

00:17:01 - Gina Johnston
That I just thought about when started working with my field. I remember because I used to help you manage the inbox. Right. I think this was within the first month of us working together and I don't know why looking Back at it. I'm like, why would I do this? But I was freshly out of college and I would start my emails, hi, Megan Space. I wouldn't put a comma, I wouldn't put any sort of punctuation. And I remember you so kindly, one day you're like, gina, can we please put a comma after it? Like, hey, name the greeting coachable. Right. And I changed it and now I can't imagine not doing.

00:17:35 - Megan Gillikin
I know. And those things really matter, right? Yeah, I love that story. Okay, so what's not not coachable? And I want to give a slight disclaimer here because when I say that I don't think these things are coachable, I believe there is a small margin that may be coachable, but to get it to the level that perhaps you need, if they're super far off from it, you're not going to see a leap from a zero to a hundred. You may see zero to ten. So the things that I don't think are really coachable are work ethic, the showing up, the putting in the effort, the initiative that is really hard to coach. Integrity. I don't think you can coach on integrity. If it's not there, you're not going to be able to make it be there. Ownership of tasks that kind of ties back into the initiative part of it. But I believe that's not really coachable. Emotional intelligence. Now, can you train someone to start to read the room and better understand the energy of the clients that you're working with? Yes, a little. But you've either got it or you don't to the level that is going to be really impactful. And then the final thing is attention to detail. You have people that are big picture and you have people that can really focus on the minute details. And in the industry that we're in, attention to detail is so, so important. So skipping over things, forgetting things like not noticing the tiny details, those are really yellow to red flags for me.

00:19:15 - Gina Johnston
And I think a lot of these going back to our 30, 60, 90 day meetings and check ins have this integrity, initiative, ownership, emotional intelligence, attention to detail. And note, are these people doing any of these, where are they lacking, where are they excelling in? And if it is to your attention to detail point, maybe it is you just didn't give them the checklist or we didn't cover something. But I think after you've corrected anything that may have come from an onboarding stance, if they're still missing the mark and they're still forgetting things, then yeah, it's just not their strong suit and whether they might be a great person. And I think that's where a lot of this personal and emotional can come in is it's hard to let somebody go and it you want to fight for them because you really want to make it work because there's such a fun personality or they bring life, but they just are not great at this one role that huge in what you've hired them for. So does that mean you need to boot them completely? Maybe you find a different job for them and a different role for them. But you know, that's a conversation for another day. But yeah, I think that's where your 30, 60, 90 day conversations come in. If they're showing that growth, taking that feedback, genuinely caring and wanting to improve, they're easy to coach. But if you're having those same conversations at the 30, the 60 to the 90 day meetings and there's no real significant change, might be kind of.

00:20:41 - Megan Gillikin
And let me speak to my people pleasers in this moment because just because someone is nice or someone is just a joy to be around doesn't mean that they are the right fit skill set wise for your team. So you have to make sure that you are checking your emotions and your desire to make people happy and those people pleasing tendencies or that fear of hurting someone's feelings that you don't let that get in the way of the data and the facts of how they're doing their job. This is something that I bring up a self identified recovering people pleaser because I've absolutely had people on our team that I've really enjoyed and cared about as humans and just great people. But they weren't the right fit for the business at that time and it was a misaligned hire or it was a point in the road where it was time to make a choice to let them go. But my people pleasing side really struggled with that. And that is where I would also caution business owners to analyze the relationship that they're having with people on their team. There's a difference between being friendly and being friends with people on your team. And Gina, I think because we have really grown up together. You were there all of the times that I became a mom. I remember telling you within a month of you coming on board that I was pregnant and that I was gonna need for you to step in and I was there. My daughter was a flower girl in your wedding and I came to see you in the hospital both of the times when you became a mom. I think our relationship is One of those that it is definitely beyond friendly and I consider you a family member, but you are the only person that I've ever had that relationship with and I've had many other people on my team over the years.

00:22:44 - Gina Johnston
Yeah, I think, I mean, you bring up a great point. And we did, I think we have a unique relationship and there may be, you know, people out there listening that has someone on their team like this too. We did grow, I mean, essentially we grew up and we learned how to run the business together and learn how to make it successful and we built another business together. It does connect us in a unique way. But I, I still think through those years we've still tried to keep and fine tune those boundaries that we have with each other because event days can get hostile sometimes. And when you're hungry and you've been on your feet for 16 hours or you're pregnant on the day of, you know, never know what's going to happen. So I think we've learned and we figured out ways to truly to keep our friendship level professional on event days and in front of clients and in the working, quote unquote, working office environment and then keeping our personal life, you know, outside of that. So I mean, even just first, a quick example when we communicate, we used to communicate via text message all the time. Whether it was personal, it was a little scary. So we had to put, you know, for both of us and I think we both agreed like it was not working. So we both agreed we were going to keep all work related items to our Voxer or our Slack or whatever channel you're using. And then anything coming from a text message. I know Megan's sending me a funny meme or sending me, you know, an Instagram reel or whatever it is, or just asking if she can babysit my daughter. So I think we've done a pretty good job and I think that's important to know that yes, you may have people on your team that you are super close with that have helped you and they do feel like family members. But it still is important to really redefine those boundaries with each other.

00:24:24 - Megan Gillikin
Yeah, that's a really, I love that you gave depth to that answer. But let's shift gears here because what I want to cover next is some more actionable takeaways to consider from what we've touched on thus far. So we've touched on the power of the 30, 60, 90 day check ins. We've talked about making sure that you have a written recap you can use AI for this if you have an AI note taker after that, 30, 60, 90, if you're feeling like this person is a strong member of your team, you can decide the cadence of what your meetings look like from there. Whether it's monthly, whether it's every other month, whether it's a quarterly review. But again, make sure that you're keeping track of the things that you want to celebrate with them and the areas of improvement as well. Gina, what else do we want to add to this?

00:25:11 - Gina Johnston
Yeah, I love the 3060, 90, the quarterly. I think a lot of us forget to check in with our team members. I think another way that we've implemented checking in with our team, especially if they are leads or even assistants, is a event debrief. So we have a questionnaire that we like when we were doing weddings that we liked to send anybody that was working an event and it just was a good check in of how they felt they did. It was a good time to really have them sit back and think about their role in the event. So how did the event go overall? How did they feel like they managed everything? Was there anything that they felt like they weren't great at or maybe a system was flawed just so something where they can give some feedback. And it really as leader, as a boss, I can take a look at that and say, wow, these are reoccurring vendors that are having problems or these are reoccurring notes for a system that we have in place. So we like to give those event debriefs just to one, keep track of our events and what's happening with them. And it's, they're good to reference back in those quarterly meetings.

00:26:19 - Megan Gillikin
Yeah. And you know, when it comes to the debrief, something else that we did was the idea of having that mid year or end of year recap where we're looking holistically like how's it going, what's working, what's not working. And to your point about the debriefs, if you have long time trusted team members and you are now bringing on a new team member and maybe you are not closely in contact with them, I know this was the case, Gina, for you and I, where as the business grew, you were the one that was leading the team, you were doing so much of the training, you were on site on event days more than I was. So making sure that you are touching base with those team members and getting their pulse on this new hire because they're going to have likely a better view, a close up view of how things are going than you are. So keep that in mind as well.

00:27:16 - Gina Johnston
Absolutely. And I think it's just a great way to get any feedback from them where they feel that they need more training. And I think it's just a good pulse on the business in general.

00:27:24 - Megan Gillikin
Yeah. And one final example of this is in our planning business, we had long term partnerships and trusted relationships with many vendor partners. So when we brought on a new team member, we had a training protocol for them and we really focused that internally first before we released them into the wild to take on events. But once they were out and leading their own events, you better believe we were reaching out to those trusted partners and those venues and saying, hey, we want to do a temperature check. How is this person doing? Is there any feedback that you would like to share with us and that helped us know, like, do we have someone that we see continuing to grow and evolve with our business or do we need to consider whether this relationship is going to work out long term?

00:28:15 - Gina Johnston
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean that's with a new team member or just your team members, long standing or not. I think that's part of our event offboarding is reaching out to all the vendors, thanking them and asking how could we make your life even better the next time for an event? How was our team? Did we provide you everything you needed? So it's a great way to just wrap up your event in general too. For anybody on the team and for.

00:28:39 - Megan Gillikin
My high achievers with a little side of anxiety and I'm raising my hand as I say this, let me just encourage you to make sure that you do allow your team members to make mistakes. You allow them to fail. Obviously you have to pay attention to the reputation of your business and the way that you take care of your clients. But make sure that you are giving space for them to fail when it's not going to harm the business. That way you aren't always jumping in and rescuing and over functioning because they're not going to continue to grow and evolve if you are constantly the fixer in all the scenarios.

00:29:21 - Gina Johnston
So true. So I know we want to keep this to a short episode because we got busy people in the world. We've touched on coachable versus not coachable. But sometimes the answer isn't always clear and you find yourself in what I call the gray zone. So what does that even look like? So this could mean a team member who is doing that, bare minimum, they're just checking the boxes and that's it. They're waiting to be told what to do. And there's no anticipation or ownership despite training. So there's no initiative there. So in those cases, if you are finding team members kind of checking those boxes, then bring it up in the forefront of any of your meetings. So your 30, 60, 90, if it's in the beginning stages of you bringing them on the team, or in those quarterly or monthly or however you're doing them, but in those meeting check ins, bring that up.

00:30:07 - Megan Gillikin
Bring it up. And let me just keep it really real here. I just want to say that in 15 years of leading people, if you're navigating these gray moments where initiative is not there or they're doing the bare minimum of the job, I don't think it's going to show up in the 30 days that you give them to completely overhaul the initiative and work ethic that they're bringing to the business. It goes back to looking at what's coachable and what's not coachable. I think at least giving them the benefit of the doubt and saying, hey, I'm looking for more initiative. This is an area of focus for you. Let's touch base on this again in 30 days. Even if you don't see that seismic shift from them, it at least gives you the plan and the roadmap for next steps, which is likely going to be letting this person go. Keeping people on your team that are swimming in the gray is going to limit the growth of your business and how you show up and serve your clients. So if you find that you're in that place where it's time to let that person go, you're going to want to make sure that you have a termination agreement and a non disparagement clause and make sure that you're contacting a professional. If you don't currently have those things in place. Those are key.

00:31:27 - Gina Johnston
Yeah, absolutely.

00:31:29 - Megan Gillikin
All right. So at the end of the day, making this decision is going to be a personal one. There are intricacies to every hire that we can't dig into all of those here today. But it's about discernment. It's about knowing when to lean in, when to call someone forward, and when to let go so that you can both grow in different directions.

00:31:53 - Gina Johnston
Absolutely. And like I said at the beginning of this, it's okay to not get it perfect. We're human. We didn't at the beginning and sometimes we still don't. But I think learning to trust your gut, create those clear expectations, have those SOPs, they don't live in your head and just not carry at all it's going to make you a stronger leader, a stronger business owner and create a team that's going to, you know, take you in the right path and where you want to go.

00:32:17 - Megan Gillikin
Yeah, that's so key. And Gina, thank you so much for being my co host, being my COO, being my ride or die for the last 14 years. I love this conversation and I know that there are so many nuggets of goodness in it for you listening to this.

00:32:34 - Gina Johnston
Thanks for having me.

00:32:36 - Megan Gillikin
All right, friends, that's a wrap on episode 313. The truth is, building a team is one of the biggest growth moments in your business and in your leadership as well. It's going to stretch you, it's going to teach you, and sometimes it's going to frustrate the living daylights out of you. But when you do it with intention and clarity, it's going to give you back time, energy and momentum in growing your business. So whether you're in that season of hiring in coaching those team members or take a deep breath having to have those hard conversations, I so hope this episode gave you clarity and a few tools to carry forward. And to help you with that, Tina and I have a little gift for you. So we have an internal team post event feedback questionnaire. It's a simple but powerful tool that you can use after every event to check in with your team. It's going to help you uncover what worked, what felt sticky, where your systems might be falling short, and how to continue to improve your client experience. This is going to be great for you whether you're leading a team of 10 or it's just you and one assistant. This is what's going to help you spot those trends in your team growth, help you course correct early and foster that real growth not just for your team, but for you as a leader as well. We're going to include the link to that in the show notes of this episode. So make sure that you check out the show notes and grab that free gift from us. And if you love this episode, it would mean the world if you would hit follow, leave us quick review or send this episode to a friend who's navigating team building too. And until next time, make sure that you trust your gut, lead with clarity, and remember, you don't have to carry it all alone. This episode was brought to you by the Planner's Vault and is edited and produced by the team at Walk west and I'll see you next time on Weddings for Real.