# Workplace Surgery: What do you call the role when you step back from your business?

- **Episode:** [236](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/236.md) (2025-09-30)
- **Type:** workplace-surgery
- **Tags:** business-owner, role-transition, career-change
- **Time:** 45:59–52:39 (start 2759s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/236?t=2759](https://truthliesandwork.com/236?t=2759)

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[45:59] Al Elliott: Okay, Le, I've got a final question for today, which is from a business owner. It says, I want to hand over the day-to-day running of my business, but what kind of role am I actually hiring for? This is really, really good. Love this. My husband and I run a small business with a brilliant team of 3. They're self-sufficient in their own work, but they still rely on me for day-to-day things like decision-making, et cetera, et cetera. I'm looking to step back from the day-to-day so I can focus more on growing the business to eventually have it running smoothly without needing me and my husband involved full-time. The issue is I'm ready to hire someone to take on a lot of this, but I have no idea what to call the role. I've seen everything from office manager to business manager to PA to director. I don't wanna pitch it the wrong way. Has anyone else brought in someone to take over an operational management in a small business? How did you define the role and what helped you attract the right kind of person? This sounds like a beefy subject for you to get into, Leigh
[46:53] Leanne Elliott: It does. I'm gonna brush over the, what do I call the role? Because at this point, that's not, it's not the question you need to answer
[47:00] Al Elliott: Mm-hmm
[47:00] Leanne Elliott: It's the later questions you ask. So how do you define the role and what helped you attract the right kind of person? How do you define the role? Spend time defining the role. And how do we do that, Al?
[47:08] Al Elliott: Job analysis
[47:10] Leanne Elliott: Job analysis
[47:11] Al Elliott: You almost caught me out there
[47:13] Leanne Elliott: No, I knew, I was confident. I knew, I knew you'd know. Um, it's such an important thing, particularly for your first hire, to think about what exactly do I want this job to do? It might be a very unusual job in a small business where you're bringing in, what, your, your 4th team member? It could be very varied. It could be that there isn't a typical job out there that would do this. Um, so the thing I would say is, is spend some time, you and your husband, and do 2 exercises for me. One, just write down general tasks that you want this person to do, very transactional things in your day you'd love for them to take away, and get that all down on paper and then theme it. So whether it's around people, clients, admin, finance, whatever it is, so you've got a rough kind of responsibilities list of what this person needs to do. That's then gonna give you an idea of kind of the level of, um, I guess seniority this person is, complexity in the tasks that they're gonna do. And then I want you to take each one of those categories and go, right, say it's managing people, supervising people. I want you to then do a task called repertory grid
[48:17] Al Elliott: Called what?
[48:18] Leanne Elliott: Repertory grid
[48:19] Al Elliott: Okay
[48:20] Leanne Elliott: Or rep grid, where you basically say, this is, this is a psychology thing now
[48:25] Al Elliott: Right
[48:25] Leanne Elliott: You basically say, right, people management. Let's think about one person we know of who we think is a phenomenal manager. Let's keep that person in mind. Then we're gonna think about somebody who is an awful manager, worst we've ever experienced. And then we think about somebody in the middle that's like, eh, they were okay, they were average. I then wanna say to you, what— let's take 2 of those people. Let's take the exceptional manager and the awful manager. The exceptional manager, what was it that they did?
[48:55] Al Elliott: Yeah
[48:55] Leanne Elliott: that made them exceptional and effective as a manager? And things will start to come up like, oh, they could communicate really well. Okay, cool. Let's talk about, dig into that. How did they communicate? In what way did they communicate? What made it so great? Was it they were empathetic? Was it they were direct? Was it that they were adaptable in their communication? Talk about it to death in terms of what that communication looked like and why it was effective. Then go to the person that was awful and go, what did this person do in terms of communication that was so ineffective, or indeed might have been effective?
[49:25] Al Elliott: Yeah
[49:26] Leanne Elliott: effective, but what do they do differently? So, then you can kind of see, well, our view of a great manager is somebody who is empathetic and transparent in their communication. Our idea of a terrible manager is somebody who is overly direct and unempathetic in their communication. Well, I now know that in my business, from my perspective, and what I need the job to do, for one, And the type of person I wanna do it, I'm looking for somebody who communicates openly and is empathetic, and I'm not looking for somebody who's the opposite of that. That's kind of your first assessment criteria for your job that you're gonna advertise. So then you go through each one like, okay, finance, what made this person particularly productive at managing invoicing and blah, blah, blah. And you go through that until you've basically got a list of what your ideal will look like. And you're gonna get that more nuance when you bring in the average person
[50:22] Al Elliott: Yeah
[50:23] Leanne Elliott: So, you're going to say this person was average at people management. So, what didn't they do that the amazing person did? Oh, they were great, but they just weren't very hands-on. They weren't very available. They weren't very approachable, whatever it is, to get really nuanced. Once you've then got this list of what we'd call competencies, you can then create a recruitment process that's going to assess these competencies and help you find the right person. And that is the real kind of rough bones of a job analysis in terms of figuring out what the job is and the type of person you want to do it. And then you design a recruitment strategy that's gonna, or process that's gonna select the perfect person for that job, whether that be through interview or work tests or EQ or whatever it is
[51:04] Al Elliott: That makes a lot of sense. So basically, it's rather than writing the job description, putting it up on a website, and then seeing what happens when people answer it, you're essentially imagining what the perfect candidate would be. Writing an interview for that perfect candidate, hoping they'd score 10 outta 10 on everything. And then, then that you've got this idea. So, if you've got someone who's scored 95%, you're like, well, they're close enough. That's good. But you're actually properly measuring them. Is that right?
[51:32] Leanne Elliott: Exactly. So, say you included a role play in the recruitment process to do, to manage a difficult conversation because you need somebody who communicates with empathy and you have one candidate who just didn't quite Do it hit those behavioural indicators in terms of empathy that you were hoping for? So in, in terms of, um, being open, being approachable, being calm, talking clearly, holding silence for people to respond, all those behavioural indicators that you'd say this looks like empathetic communication. But that candidate scores 10 out of 10 on every other competency. There's going to be plenty of leaders that will go, Oh, we can train him in that. We can improve that. He's so good at everything else. But when you go back to your job analysis, you're like, no, this is the core thing of the job. This is the thing that we said that we needed. And the behaviours this candidate is showing, the behaviours that we said is what an awful, the worst case scenario would show, then it's a non-negotiable that that candidate is not suitable for that role. And that's really hard to do when somebody is so capable in so many other areas, particularly more commercial areas
[52:39] Al Elliott: Yeah
[52:39] Leanne Elliott: But the reality is you've spent the time obsessing over what this job needs to do and the type of person that will do it well, that you have to follow the data. And the data is telling you that that person is not right for that job