One Specific Leadership Style To Drive Your Team to Optimal Success

In this episode, Brian Montes discusses the importance of leadership in business and shares his insights on a specific leadership technique that can optimize team performance. He emphasizes the need for a healthy culture and solid leadership to build a sustainable and profitable business. 

Brian highlights the significance of both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in driving team success and shares his approach to understanding individuals and helping them achieve their personal and professional goals. He also emphasizes the importance of leading by example, hiring self-motivated leaders, and developing a leadership style that aligns with one's personality.

Episode Key Lessons:

• Companies live and die by the quality of their leadership.
• Building a healthy culture is essential for a sustainable and profitable business.
• Motivation is a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic factors.
• Understanding individuals and helping them achieve their goals is key to effective leadership.
• Leading by example and being transparent contribute to a positive company culture.
• Hiring self-motivated leaders is crucial for long-term success.
• Develop a leadership style that aligns with your goals, objectives, and personality.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

Welcome to the Entrepreneur to Employer podcast.

Speaker 1: 0:10

I'm your host, brian Montes, founder of Scalocity Works, and the Entrepreneur to Employer coaching and membership community. So congratulations is in order. If you've built a successful freelance business that has grown to the point where you need to hire, you have achieved a huge milestone. If you're already past the point of making your first hire and your team is now growing well, congratulations is in order to you as well. So, regardless of where you are with scaling your team and your business, whether you're at employee number one or employee number 100, this podcast focuses on everything related to people operations. We'll cover best practices, strategies and solutions to help you build a sustainable and scalable business that is fueled by great people and a great culture. So if you're enjoying listening to this Entrepreneur to Employer podcast, please subscribe, give us a like and give us a review. Your feedback will help us grow this podcast and we'll be able to positively impact more employers to help them build better work environments environments. Welcome back to another episode of the Ontario to Employer podcast. I am your host, brian Montes, founder of Scalocity Works. So the question of leadership comes up regularly, because the bottom line is this is that companies live and die by the quality of their leadership. And if you're a business owner, you're a founder, you're running a business unit, it is important for you to be constantly developing yourself as a leader, and there's lots of different ways to go about doing that, and that's. We're not going to talk about the different ways that you can develop yourself as a leader on this particular episode, but what I do want to get into is I want to talk about one specific leadership technique that can really help you optimize team performance, because, I mean, there's a lot of different leadership techniques out there and you have to find what works for you. No doubt about it. But I'm going to give you my insight and the one leadership technique that has worked for me over the years and if you're able to use it or adjust it, adapt to it to make it work for you, great. So this one particular leadership, one particular leadership technique, has worked better for me than others.

Speaker 1: 2:14

So you know, as a business owner, you may just be focused on profit and loss and, unfortunately, if that's all you're focused on, then it's going to be very hard for you to grow a sustainable, profitable business right your revenues be very hard for you to grow a sustainable, profitable business right. Your revenues, your profit, your losses, your you know your healthy financial situation in your business. That's a byproduct. That's a byproduct of building a healthy culture. It's a byproduct of solid leadership. It's a byproduct of running optimizing your business and running smart. So you know, just as important as marketing the company and knowing your numbers that ultimately drive your margins right.

Speaker 1: 2:47

A key component to that is making sure that you can help to motivate your team. Now, yes, team members do need to have some intrinsic motivation. Right, there does need to be that um, they need to independently want to have it do a good job. They have to have that work ethic, that drive. But you take that and you couple it with a business owner or a leader's ability to externally motivate, well, you're going to have a recipe for success. And why is this so important?

Speaker 1: 3:15

Well, a McKinsey survey found that employee disengagement and attrition cost to midsize businesses cost between $228 million and $335 million annually. Now you're probably saying, well, those are big businesses, right, I'm only $10 million a year, $5 million a year. Well, employee disengagement happens at all levels. This McKinsey survey just happens to be for enterprise level companies. So, even on a smaller scale, your company is losing money and your employees are inhibiting your business growth because there's not that environmental or external motivation for them. Right, you can have a great team member with a strong work ethic, strong drive, intrinsic drive to succeed, but if you put them in a terrible environment, they are not going to be successful. So you have to have both to have that recipe.

Speaker 1: 4:03

So leadership and motivation do go hand in hand and, as a leader, your job is to push your people forward to achieve the company's goals. Now, how you do that, it's going to depend on some various factors. So, having run my own company and having been in leadership and other other other companies, I've never really considered myself to be an inspiring leader. Right, I don't jump up on stage and give these Ted talks that, you know, get emotions running high and, and you know, um, with a lot of a lot of flail and pomp and circumstance. There's a lot of inspirational leaders out there that do a great job.

Speaker 1: 4:38

In my opinion, while that's you know, their leadership style, does that, you know? Does I don't want to phrase this does that type of leadership actually sustain motivation? And it might, you know. But with that being said, there's other ways that you can motivate and lead your team. So because personally for me, you know, I've never been this Tony Robbins type figure standing on a stage giving a long speech and firing up the crowd. It's just. It's just not me, and that's okay.

Speaker 1: 5:10

Not all leaders have to aspire to that, because we all have our different strengths and we all have our different weaknesses. So a different approach to the leadership is valued. So I'm going to give you some key differentiators on how you can maintain team engagement while also driving your profit margins. So first, the secret to leadership through motivation. A lot of business owners spend a lot of time navigating leadership styles to try and find what works for them and at the end of the day, you have to take action leadership styles and adapt them to yourself, right? You can't just jump into somebody else's leadership style and steal it for your own, verbatim right, because we are all different. We're all individuals. So you do need to figure out what leadership styles you like, what works for you, and then adapt them to who you are.

Speaker 1: 5:59

Now, unfortunately, some leaders become harsh bosses, some become dictating rulers, and that doesn't work. In fact, I just had lunch with a colleague this afternoon and he was you know he he worked in medical devices, medical device companies for a number of years, worked for some very large organizations, and one of the things he noticed with leaders is some leaders have a tendency, as they work their way up the ranks, to forget where they came from. And so, you know, when they get in this leadership role, all of a sudden they turn into a big jerk and they start treating the people you know quote below them poorly and really just forgetting where they came from and forgetting that you know they're human too. So you know, becoming a harsh boss and just dictatorial type approach it just doesn't work, especially this day and age. Other leaders become too close to their employees and they end up losing the respect. The respect for them gets lost along the way. And this especially is true when you are an employee and you get promoted into a leadership role and you have to lead the same team that you were once a peer of. So that's always a challenge. And then other leaders pretend to look the other way and they don't want to see problems, and that doesn't work either. So all of these leadership styles are only going to create problems for you. You're not going to motivate people with these leadership styles.

Speaker 1: 7:14

So, through my experience in business, I have found one particular leadership technique that works better than others. Using this approach has led me in the best direction overall, even though I don't find myself to be a Tony Robbins type leader. So if I had to summarize my approach to leadership, it's this I seek to understand who someone is and use that knowledge to move them. So, instead of a bold speech, I help people move towards what they desire most in life. What are their personal and professional goals? It's subtle, but I have news for you it is profound. By recognizing and helping individuals achieve their aspirations within the team, you, as the leader, have the ability to create an environment where personnel and professional growth go hand in hand. So, in a way, I'm just there to remind them of their goals so they can hold themselves accountable.

Speaker 1: 8:03

Now, the other component that goes with this is, as you are in that leadership role, you can help contribute to them achieving their personal goals. So if one of their personal goals is to travel more, you know, maybe you can help design a flex schedule that allows them X amount of time off so they can travel. Or, you know, give them a 410 schedule so they have three-day weekends all the time so they can take short trips. If their goal is to obtain certain certifications, you as the leader can help set that up. You know, maybe there's tuition, reimbursement or other tools you can provide to help them achieve that certification which helps your business. If their goal is home ownership, well, as you work with them, you can work and help develop them so they can earn more money, you know, increase their comp and help them, over time, be able to increase their earnings so that ultimately they can buy that house. So there's lots of ways for you to, you know, not only understand what's driving them, but help them achieve that. So it is subtle, but it is really profound at the end of the day. So we are there just to remind them of their goals and help move them along.

Speaker 1: 9:15

Now, the other component to this is that leading by example matters when it comes to your company culture. So you know, of course this culture of accountability starts at the top. Transparency has always been a cornerstone of my leadership style. I try to be as transparent as possible with the team. Now, granted, there are some things you can't share, shouldn't share, but for the most part, most things within the business you're able to share and be transparent about. So you know, I try to be honest, I try to be upfront, and if an employee, if a team member, is not meeting a standard, I will call them on it and have that conversation. You have to do that. You have to give that feedback timely, and I don't go at it with the intention of being harsh. I don't go at it with the intention of trying to make them feel bad. It truly comes from the place of I want them to succeed, and so it's my job as a leader to point this stuff out so that they are aware of it, because they may not even be aware of it. Right, and based on the conversations I've had, my team knows that I genuinely care about them and I have their best interest at heart, and that allows us to all row in the same direction and work to achieve the same goals for the company, because my commitment to openness extends to all aspects of our business, even when we're going through challenging times, which, of course, do happen.

Speaker 1: 10:32

So another aspect of my leadership technique is using this to drive the team to the next level. It's important that you're always working with your team to elevate their game and push them to the next level. Because motivation it's not a one-time push, and I guess that's sort of my point on the Tony Robbins Type style. Right, it's like an injection of testosterone Everybody's revved up and then it wears off, right? It's like going to a conference and getting all excited and you come out of that conference Just charged up and ready to go. Then you go home and it all kind of fades away, right. So? So, being able to motivate people, it's a marathon, not a sprint, and you have to be doing it in a way that is sustainable, because it is not a one-time push, it's an ongoing driving engine that's going to propel your team constantly.

Speaker 1: 11:23

So when the time comes for that engine to rev up, leaders need to be able to find what it takes to push their team forward. And it's important that you know there's two aspects to this. It's pushing the entire team forward at the same time, and then it's also the aspect of pushing individuals forward individually. Right, so there's two components to it pushing the entire team forward and pushing individuals forward. So to be an effective leader, you have to ensure that everyone's cup is full, and what I mean by that is that they have the resources, the guidance they need and the motivation that they need to do their best work. You have got to be the one that is showing them the way to success, not shoving them towards it, and when a team member knows that their leader is invested in their success and their wellbeing, their motivation and their performance is going to rise.

Speaker 1: 12:14

So the next thing that you need to think about is hire the best leaders from the start. The most effective way to lead a team to success is to hire people who are already leaders themselves, right? These individuals who resonate with your visions and your values. So, as a business, every person you hire is an investment, not only in your company, but in the team itself, because it costs you money to hire and if you're not pushing your company forward with that hire, then that hire is costing you and it's not adding value to the organization. So prioritize your hiring by hungry, humble and smart people, right? Resumes only tell you a quarter of what you need to know.

Speaker 1: 12:54

You need to get in, have these conversations with the candidates that you're hiring for leadership roles and really look to see how hungry are they, how humble, how smart, how resourceful are they? Are they resilient? Because these self-motivated individuals are going to require less external inspiration because of their own goals and ambitions. Right, you cannot take somebody that is not self-motivated and motivate them for a long time, sustainably. You'll be able to get them excited for the short term, but you are going to struggle and use a lot of energy and burn through a lot of time trying to motivate them for the long term. So you've got to hire self-motivated individuals, because leadership still occasionally, you know recalibration is going to happen through that leadership journey. It's expected. And when you have a team member that mirrors your ethics, leading for them becomes less about rah-rah motivation and more about guiding self-driven individuals toward a shared vision.

Speaker 1: 13:49

Effective leadership it doesn't have to be the speech-making drama that we see in the movies or the TV, right? Because, again, that's not permanent, it wears off. Right, there are many other ways for you to motivate and inspire your people. You don't need to be an quote inspirational leader to still be effective. Find your confidence and succeed, and develop a leadership style that suits your goals, suits your objectives and, most importantly, suits your personality. Because once you find a leadership style that suits your personality, then you own it and you're being an authentic leader and it's not going to be as difficult because it's coming naturally to you, because you have found your voice.

Speaker 1: 14:29

So I hope this helps you figure out how to develop a leadership technique that's going to help you optimize your team performance, because that's really what it's all about. If you want to grow a company that is sustainable and profitable, leadership is one of the most important aspects of doing that. If you want to build a business that you are going to successfully grow and hopefully exit someday with a sale. I hope you've enjoyed this episode of the Entrepreneur to Employer podcast. If you did, I would appreciate. If you'd like subscribe, give us a five-star review and if you know somebody that would benefit from listening to this episode, please grab a link to the show and text it over them and say, hey, I recommend you listen to this episode. It's about leadership and finding your style. All right, until next week. Have a great week.