How to Get Your Team's Buy In

Can you get your team’s buy-in?

As the owner of a small business, you’re constantly making changes, trying new things, new equipment, etc. When rolling out changes like that, it can be difficult to get your team’s buy-in.

Making changes, and managing changes are hard. But completely necessary to grow your business.

How do you get employees to care as much as you do, or see the bigger picture as to why you are making this change?

How do you get your team’s buy-in? Their discretional effort?

If you’ve ever been an employee, I bet you have some opinions on what not to do 😉

Or maybe it’s just been too many years since you were an employee, and you’re looking for a refresher.

I myself have been an employee, working for an excellent boss, for 15+ years.

I was lucky enough to work for a guy who cared about his employees, and today I feel like a lot of the changes that happened over the years were managed in a great way. I’ll point to the number of 10+ year employees that work there today as “proof” that it works.

Ingredients to getting your team’s buy-in

• Share the bigger picture, the “why”
• Ask them what they think
• Provide proper training
• Listen to their ideas and suggestions

Sharing the bigger picture

First, when you are considering making a change, also stop to consider how you will roll this out to get your team’s buy-in. For some changes, you’re not “asking”, you’re “telling” them what the change will be. Regardless, pause for a moment and think about how you can share the bigger picture and the “why” behind this change.

Let’s look at an example such as rolling out a new change on how the employees will track their time for instance.

Bad approach

A bad approach would be to simply show up on Monday, announce that you’re now tracking time differently, stick the new app under their nose, and tell them to figure it out.

That won’t work.

It feels like unnecessary, additional work to them.

You’ll get resistance along the lines of: What was wrong with the old way? Why can’t they just text you their hours every Friday? Or use the paper time sheets at the shop? How do I even do this new process?

And, they’re fair questions. As the owner, do you expect them to just figure it out on their own? Did you look to see what their workflow would look like?

Unfortunately, the scenario I’m painting out here isn’t from my imagination. It’s a true story about the owner of a landscape business, that was trying to launch a new time-tracking process for his team. He just sent the link to the app to his guys the night before a snowstorm and told his guys to use it. 4 a.m. the next morning wasn’t pretty. Suffice it to say it failed. He definitely didn’t get his team’s buy-in!

Good approach

A good approach would be to start out by announcing the change, but also sharing the bigger picture, and why you’re making the change. Find a place of common interest.

“Hey we’re rolling out a new way of tracking our time, and I know that this could feel disruptive, and you may wonder why. So, let me explain:

Walk up to the whiteboard. Draw a big dollar sign.

We all want to grow and make more money, right?” (establishing common interest)

Who’s going to disagree with that?

“Okay, for us to make more money, the company needs to make money.

To do that we need to know our numbers and be profitable, so we can make decisions and price our jobs based on facts, not guessing.

To know our numbers, we need to track our production, know where our man-hours are going, and how much material we’re using so that we can compare estimated vs. actual, and self-correct our pricing.

Are you still following?”

The team should be right with you, and understanding at this point.

“For us to track this, we’ll need to use this new app to clock in and out of, track our materials, and leave notes. Does that make sense?”

The team should be saying yes.

“Now, what issues do you foresee that could trip us up? How can we make sure this goes smoothly, and no one’s life becomes difficult?”

To get your team’s buy-in, ask them what they think

Listen to their feedback. Repeat back to them what they said. Poll the room for how you could solve that issue. Work together to land on a solution or plan that everyone supports.

When your team feels heard, resistance melts. No resistance is definitely a way to get your team’s buy-in.

An incredible book I read on this “feeling heard” idea was Excellence Wins by Horst Schulze, the founder of Ritz Carlton Hotels. That idea resonated with me then and still sticks with me today.

Provide proper training

Train them and teach them on the new process. Get the new process into writing, even if it’s just a message in your group chat or something up on your whiteboard in the shop, so that it’s clear, and people can refer back to it.

Ask the team what their questions are, and address each of them in your written memo or plan.

Work to avoid confusion in every way possible.

Act on their feedback and suggestions

Your goal is to flush out any potential issues that your team may foresee, that you haven’t considered.

Once you’ve done that, and all objections and potential issues are out on the table, you have the opportunity to address your team’s buy-in.

You may change your plan, or you may clarify and improve your plan. In the end, the goal is to get the team to “opt-in”, or “buy in” to your concept or change.

Once they’re bought in, they feel ownership.

They feel like they’ve been heard, and their concerns addressed.

Gene Martin, our star sales associate/customer-problem-solver at SynkedUP, likes to repeat this quote of “A man convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still”.

I’m not saying you’ll never have resistance, or that this works for your team’s buy-in 100% successfully every time. Your original idea or plan may morph into something better. Or you may put your foot down and require a new process from your team, for what you believe to be good reasons.

But if you follow the “good approach” way, your team will respect you far more as the leader.

Plus, in this example that I used on time tracking, the employees will actually end up falling in love with it. We all have the basic human desire to know when we’re losing or winning. And tracking time in this way will allow them to know how they’re doing on their job in real-time.

If you want to see and learn more about this app that not only tracks your time, but also helps your whole company stay on track, hit up my amazing team. They’re experts at mapping challenges and problems to solutions. 

Cheers!