I used to emotionally bond with my employees, now I don’t even ask about their weekend.

For nearly a decade I couldn’t figure out how to build a team so I could step out of the day to day operations. Looking back I think the biggest tactic that I tried repeatedly was trying to bond with my first few employees. In my business there is a ton of time when it’s just you and one other person for hours and hours every night. Eventually they start sharing things about their lives and I would do the same. A lot of them respected me because I was a bit older or they wanted a business so they would open up and ask me for advice. I thought this was the move. I thought develop close friendships these people would become my inner circle as we grew the business. I thought that they would see my dream and how hard I work and it would inspire them to invest long term. Eventually they would emotionally manipulate me. Maybe not showing up on time or skipping critical tasks. They always developed a role of being my helper and not responsible for the job outcome. After enough time, they would completely flake out. I think the respected me so much and got so close that when they started slacking, it really effected their self esteem. They couldn’t handle dropping the ball and being called out repeatedly by someone too close, it was like my feedback was too heavy because it was tied to all of the other issues they were self conscious about. Like they felt like a failure to their soul and letting me down proves it. At some point, after not being able to handle the turnover and emotional swings of losing people I spent so much time in, I decided to not get to know my employees at all. I was strictly business. I became hardened and did not want to get to know them or them to get to know me, we are just here to work and go home. So I built the job in a way they could work solo and I trained them in a way that I could trust them. I let them know from day one, these jobs are your responsibility, you’re not helping me, you’re going to do them start to finish so you need tk take an interest in the tools and processes. I gave them very clear instructions and made them feel like they could succeed by completing tasks correctly. I trained them slowly over time and didn’t get frustrated when they made simple mistakes. I also didn’t do their work for them to bail them out. Eventually this core shift enabled me to hire entry level janitors off the street. People who initially took the job because they were passing time until a better job came along. These people slowly developed and I made leaders out of them. My team grew to over 35 people, and I hadn’t met most of them. I didn’t even talk to most people during their entire employment at my company. My team hired, trained, and terminated people. Even if those people worked her for years, I never personally interacted with them. It might sound cold and distant but it’s not. I just allow them to do their job without any emotional weight from me. When they do well I promote and reward and I get to see these people develop over time and actually have a much bigger impact on their lives over a longer period. It’s from a distance but I know it’s making an impact because the first guy I raised up to a manager passed away a few months ago and his family has been calling me frequently and telling me how much the job meant to him and how proud they were to see him turn his life around in his final years.