How to Lead During Stressful Seasons (Without Losing Your Team)

End-of-year chaos isn’t just exhausting; it exposes every crack in your business.

In this solo Maven Monday, Caleb steps into the host chair to talk about the one thing most leaders overlook when the pressure rises: how to actually lead your team through it without losing their hearts, focus, or sanity.

If the holidays, deadlines, PTO gaps, and Q4 expectations have your organization feeling stretched, distracted, or even a little frayed at the edges… this episode will help you steady the ship.

Inside, Caleb shares how to:
 • keep your team anchored when stress peaks
 • protect the vision when everything feels urgent
 • spot disengagement before it becomes turnover
 • stay real with your people without dumping weight on them

This isn’t theory. It’s the exact way we lead through our own heaviest season — and why our culture gets stronger instead of strained.

If you’re carrying a lot right now, this episode will carry some of it with you.

#MavenMonday #MavenMarketingPodcast #Leadership #BusinessLeadership #CompanyCulture #TeamEngagement #EmployeeEngagement #VisionDriven #SmallBusinessGrowth #EndOfYearPlanning

Our Website: https://frankandmaven.com/
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Host: Caleb Agee
Executive Producer: Carter Breaux
Audio/Video Producer: Nate the Camera Guy

Do you have a marketing problem you'd like us to help solve? Send it to MavenMonday@FrankandMaven.com!

Get a copy of our Best-Selling Book, The Maven Marketer Here: https://a.co/d/1clpm8a

Chapters

• 0:06 Year-End Stress And Stakes
• 2:57 Keep Vision Front And Center
• 6:16 Connect Hard Work To Future Wins
• 10:07 Make People Feel Heard
• 14:30 Walkaround Management And Trust
• 19:16 Monthly Check-Ins That Matter

Transcript

Caleb Agee: 0:06

Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast. Today is Maven Monday. I'm your host, Caleb, insert middle name here, AG. And uh today I'm doing a solo pod without Brandon or any other co-host. So this is the place where we eliminate waste in advertising, grow your business, and help you achieve the big dream. I'm gonna get right into it today. Uh, as you know, it's the end of the year. The holidays are throwing off, you know, they threw off the last week of November. They're gonna throw off the last week of December. You've got people taking out their last bits of PTO or time off. They're stretching out their vacation days. Um, you've got goals, you know, you wanted the hit for the end of this year. Q4 is coming up, you know, to an end. Stress is high. I know in our agency during this season, we do a lot of annual planning. So the prep for every single meeting is about twice or three times as long. Every single meeting we have with our clients is probably twice or three times as long. And we also have all the other regular work we have to produce as well. And so this creates just a swirl of mental fatigue and potentially operational, organizational stress and strain. And what we know is on any foundation, ask a good foundation guy, when you start putting weight on something, you'll reveal the flaws, the cracks will start to show up when you put a lot of weight on something. And so um, you may be inside of this stressful season, maybe it's not, um, but if you're inside of the stressful season, we're gonna kind of talk about how we lead through these stressful seasons um and really keep our team uh on board, engaged, keep their minds and their hearts in the game, and keep your heart in the game, keep your keep your mind in the game. So um here's what we're gonna do. First, we're gonna keep the vision in front of them. If you've been uh listening to this podcast in for any amount of time, you know we are always focused on vision, values, and vows. And um, that's just really our way of saying uh how you talk about, how you say what you do and where you're going with what you do. And um what we need to make sure inside of this stressful time is that we focus on this vision and we keep saying it often. We said it, we say it, we say it often, and we connect today's hard work to tomorrow's victory. Uh for us, having a really good annual planning season, which is harder for our team, it is more work, um, creates a great first quarter and really a great year for all of our clients. When we get proper understanding, we've done the research, we've done the hard work, we set forth a great plan, our clients win, and so do we. And so we have to can constantly connect that um to that. And so um this I'm gonna pronounce his name perfectly, I'm sure, because it's French. Uh, Antoine du Saint X au Purie. So if you're if you speak French and I just you know butchered that, I did my best. But he said, if you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood. Teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. So, what we're doing here is we want people to be inspired, not at the work that they have to put their hands on, not to go chop down trees to make timber to make a ship. We want them to want to be at sea. We want them to want to go where we're all going. And um uh Antoine, he uh was a French poet and actually pilot in the early 1900s. I thought this was a beautiful representation of what we're doing as leaders as we try to set the vision, as we try to hold it in front of our faces. We want to teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. And for you, you that has to be a mission that goes deeper than money, that goes deeper than the tactical, yes, you make these things or you do this service. It has to go deeper than that to how you change the world around you. And then you have to hold that up constantly uh for your team so that they remember. And and actually I would argue that you need to hold it up for yourself as well, uh, because it's really easy for you to get entrenched in the work uh during a stressful season. If, you know, if you're a great leader, you're probably getting right there in the front lines with them and you're working hard, you're doing the things, and you can get distracted too. You can just kind of grind it out. You have to be the one who's pulling away from that grindstone. Get your nose away from it so that you can say, where are we actually going? What are we actually taking this to? So um, couple couple thoughts here. People don't burn out from hard work, they burn out from meaningless work. So when stress peaks, when these seasons come, vision is the first casualty. It's the first thing to go unless you, the leader, protect it. And so we have to make it a habit. We have to do that on the regular. So practically, that looks like opening uh maybe every team meeting with a sentence about your vision, your mission for the world. Why do you do what you do? And uh then you also need to celebrate. We talk about uh showing gratitude and celebration. You want to share those small wins to show the progress and connect today's grind, today's hard work to what actually is coming. What's the next thing? Where does this all go? Um, if you're getting tired of saying it often, that probably means they're just now picking it up. And so uh you want to make sure that you're doing that on the regular. So that is, you know, keep the vision, keep the mission in front of them. All right. Number two, this one I think is probably one of the more practical pieces of this is make sure your people feel heard. So we just talked about it. You leader, you probably're probably running a you know, a hundred miles a minute, and you are hard to be seen. You're in meetings, you're cranking things out, you've got clients on the phone, you're running around. You need to make sure your people feel heard. And this is a this is a problem that can lead to um disengagement. So if people aren't heard, they become disconnected. Disconnection leads to disengagement, and disengagement leads to turnover. And we do not want that. You've got hopefully an awesome team, and you don't want to lose them. You don't, you've you've spent the time to train them, to make them a part of who you are, and you want to make sure that they um are enduring the hard stuff with you and they feel seen while they're doing it. So um one way I do this, I'm gonna share just a couple of ways I practically do this, is the old lead by walking around. Um, Tom Peters and Robert Waterman Jr. Um, in their book In Search of Excellence, they talked about at HP Hewlett Packer. Um, they the managers would walk the floor and engage their employees in casual conversations. And this is something I do, I do it every morning at least, and then probably two or three times throughout the day. Uh Brandon does it as well when he comes in, and we just float. I there we have a few different offices. Now, this changes if you're remote. You have to be even more intentional about this. If you have people who um come and then you have installers, sales teams, whatever, and then they go, you have to be more intentional about this. But practically inside of an office, for me, that that's just walking and say, Hey, how's everybody doing today? Good. Okay. And sometimes that turns into a casual conversation, could be uh a slightly personal conversation, maybe like, hey, yeah, we had a tough night last night, uh, the baby wouldn't sleep, or you know, people tell you what's going on in their lives. Um, and sometimes it's an opportunity for them to be like, hey, by the way, I was just looking at this email. I want to run something by you real quick. So you give them the opportunity to, you know, bring something to your attention. And um, those, those kinds of moments, those casual conversations, they create trust. And when your team trusts you, you get to hear issues early, small issues or small little cracks in the thing before they become big problems, big issues that explode in your face, and you're playing firemen for um you know weeks at a time to try to undo these things. And so that also leads to your employees really feeling seen and accessible accessible um to you as a leader. Uh Andy Stanley, I love this quote, says leaders who don't listen will eventually be surrounded by people who have nothing to say. I'm gonna drop that bomb one more time. Leaders who don't listen will eventually be surrounded by people who have nothing to say. Listen to your team. Now, another way you can do that to make sure that they feel heard is uh I do check-ins. I do them monthly. If your team member has to wait till next year, till their annual review to find out how you feel about them, you are not leading them well. I'll just say that. That is my frankest statement I can possibly make. Uh, you're probably not leading them well. They need to know early and often when they need growth, when they need to be challenged, and you need to be creating a space where they can speak to you freely. And so now, if your organization, you know, as your organization grows, if you have more than maybe 10 or 12 people uh as your direct reports or directly under you, um, this becomes kind of a layered thing that you would need to implement where you've got managers and team leaders who are having these check-ins. But we need to make sure there's a feedback loop that is consistent and that people can be heard, they can hear what's going on. So um I always structure it really in three main ways. One, I let them talk first. So uh typically people come, they sit in my office. We have a 30-minute block. It's not a ton of time. Sometimes it goes over. I do leave it open to go over, but I have a 30-minute block once a month with every single team member. They come, they sit down, and uh usually I hop up, close my door so they can feel comfortable talking, you know, freely, and I'll say, How's Nate the camera guy? And usually I just let them say whatever pops in their mind. Um, it could be could be very specific about a you know a struggle that's been on their mind that day, could be a bigger thing that they're going that's going on, could be great, could be great news. I'm doing awesome. Who knows? But I just let them talk. And um then I start asking them very pointed questions that I I probably have a handful of five or six questions that I ask almost every time, or some mix of those questions, depending on how the conversation evolves. Um one I always ask is how are you growing? And what this does is it forces your team, even in a stressful season, to acknowledge growth. I'm growing through this. It's like, hey, you know, this hard thing, oftentimes that's where you develop the most as a human in general. You have those hard seasons, they prepare you and make you better for the next season. And so I ask them, how are you growing? And if they're struggling to come up with something, uh, I, as a leader, actually take that on myself and say, um, one of our values here at Frank and Maven is if we're not growing you, we're using you. And so we need to make sure that you're growing in some way. There, there are always ways to become better and to not stagnate. And so we're not looking to um just sit still to uh be the same as we were last month or last year. We're trying to grow. We're trying to get better. And so they usually think for a little bit, they recount, here's what, here's how I'm growing. Another question I ask is uh what is one thing you're doing right now that you're you know you're great at? And this is really kind of a win. It's like, where do you where do you see yourself? What are you killing? You know, you're killing it at this this area of your business, of your, you know, your work. Um, and then I'll ask kind of the inverse of that. What's one thing you know you're having to fight to do? You know, it's a little bit of an uphill battle. And this gives me a pretty good sense of where they're at, like what and their self-awareness too, because if I know what they're struggling with and what they're doing well at, uh, it gives me a pretty good um radar, a little bit of a picture of what they see from their perspective, their self-awareness of their work, and whether or not it's made clear to them where they are doing awesome and where they might be struggling, where they need to have room for improvement. Everybody can do better. Uh hopefully everybody's doing great at something. Um and then I always, usually coming out of those two questions, I always challenge them. I give them something that we're, you know, a challenge that we're gonna talk about next month. You're gonna grow in this way. Um, it could be uh a little bit abstract. Uh, I need you to um share your opinion in the next meeting you're in. Or I need you to speak up more. It could be really practical. Uh I want you to learn uh in our world, maybe I don't know, I want you to learn this ad platform. I want you to learn more about this media, and we'll follow up on that next time. And then I write all of this down. So that's really like how we have a really strong check-in, and your team gets to say whatever's on their mind and they feel heard. And then at the end of this or along the way, if there are pieces where they're like, hey, I'm really struggling, I I don't, I feel like my plate is so full right now, you can one on in a one-on-one format share the direction, the vision, just like we talked about at the beginning, where you can share that vision with them and even more practically, how that gets better for them in the future. I'm going to assume you're not going to just say, suck it up. This is going to be how it is, and it will always be like this, because you're a good leader and you want what's good for your people. Um, there's kind of a balance to this, right? We want, we want that tension of growth and that that urgency to push forward and to do better. Um, but we also want to hear people. We want to, we want them to feel like we're aware of what's going on with them. And so you get to share, like, hey, yeah, I know, I know it's really hard right now. Um, you know, we've actually been talking about uh hiring a little bit of help. Or uh I know that that's this is actually specific to this season. So I just want to remind you, I don't know if you remember, January of last year was actually kind of a relief button for us where we got to we got to sit back and enjoy the fact that we we knocked all this out in December. It I don't know what that is, but you you can show them and point them to here's thanks for working hard, here's where we're going with this, and here's maybe some practical things we're gonna do with the vision. So you uh what are we doing? We are um we're keeping the vision in front of them, and then we're making sure our team feels heard. And then finally, um when the season is hard, leader, this is point number three, don't hide the hard. Transparency builds trust. And if you you obviously have to have this leadership mindset, which is yes, I know we're down here at the bottom of the hill, and look, we're going up there, and you can point to it, and you know that you're gonna have to push and pull and and you guys are gonna fight all the way to the top. Um but if you pretend like it's not hard or you fake optimism, you're gonna lose some credibility. Uh if you just say, it's fine, guys, don't worry about it, it's it's gonna be fine, you're gonna lose some credibility. And um instead, you can say, Hey, this season's heavy, but here's how it's producing strength for us. Um you can say, hey, I know it's hard, uh, it's been hard for me too. You can be vulnerable, you can be transparent, you can say exactly what's going on. Um Craig Rochelle says, people will tolerate your success, but they'll connect with your struggle. And uh Fred Rogers said, in times of stress, the best thing we can do to for each other is to listen with our ears and our hearts. Um so you can acknowledge the weight of the moment without collapsing underneath it. And um, I'll be honest, uh there inside of this stressful season, uh, I even had a couple of things I dropped the ball on uh just in the last week or two. And for me, it was genuinely apologizing to my team. Hey, um you are taking uh the brunt of my failure uh on your backs, and I'm sorry for that, and I'm gonna do better. And just that kind of transparency, it really does build trust, it really changes the dynamic. Your team will see like you're human, you're fighting hard, you're working hard, but uh you two make errors, and um you're not pretending like this is all just rainbows and butterflies. So in times of stress, in times of strain, in these seasons that you have, and I do hope they're seasons, if if it's a uh a normal thing, you probably need to look at your organizational uh structure, bandwidth, and the way you're going about this. But when we have these seasons, we can acknowledge these as what they are and we can lead our team really well through them. So here's how we're gonna do that. We're gonna keep the vision. We're gonna set it, say it clearly, we're gonna say it often. We're gonna connect today's pain, today's stress to tomorrow's success. And um assume that they don't remember and say it again. And then tomorrow you'll say it again. Um second, we're gonna make sure our people feel heard. We're gonna be walking around, we're gonna talk to them, we're gonna have casual conversations, and then we're gonna have intentional one-on-ones. We're gonna make sure that at every level of our company, somebody gets to be heard. They get to be seen, they get to share what's on their mind so that you can spot uh problems and you can grow your people and you can lead them through this strain. And then finally, we're not gonna try to hide the hard. The last thing we're gonna do is make sure that we acknowledge the weight. We're gonna be transparent, we're gonna model the mission, and we're gonna fight uh through it with them. So thank you so much for listening today. If you need any any help with your marketing, you can um email us at Maven Monday at Frank and Maven.com if you have a specific question. Uh a lot of times, if they're specific enough for this podcast, we'll answer them on this podcast. Uh, if you would like to join the mastermind, you can go to Maven Method Training.com and join our monthly mastermind. We meet twice a month. It's a team of it's our team joining in with a bunch of marketers and business leaders who are really trying to do what you're doing. And they uh join, we we hop on two calls a month and we talk through any practical or Uh abstract marketing questions, sales questions, business questions that these people are going through. And you really get to learn one, by getting your own questions answered, but also by hearing the answers to the questions otherwise. So if you enjoyed this, please hit subscribe. Please uh follow us on all of our socials. And if you can, give us a thumbs up on YouTube or a five-star in your podcast app. Um that really helps us uh because we're we're really trying to help more business owners, more marketers uh make their business to grow uh with confidence. And uh we'll be here every Monday answering your real life marketing questions because marketers who can't teach you why are just a fancy lie. See you next time.