Remarkable Minds
Remarkable Minds is a show for people who want to level up their professional growth. Hosted by leaders at Daniel Stark Law, each episode dives into the habits, mindsets, and insights that have led us to remarkable results. Whether you're a business owner, leader, or just someone who refuses to settle for "just okay," Remarkable Minds will challenge you to think bigger, perform better, and stand out in the professional world.
Remarkable Minds
Leading vs Managing
Text us your questions, comments, or what what topics you'd like to see next!
Are you a leader, or just a manager? Do you even know the difference?
Our leaders share vulnerable personal stories about their leadership journeys – from Brittany's realization that her perfectionism and tone were creating barriers with her team, to Amy's commitment to being "hard on problems, not people." These authentic revelations demonstrate how self-awareness transforms leadership effectiveness.
Leadership isn't for everyone – it requires emotional intelligence, communication skills, and genuine care for others' growth. However, these capabilities can be developed through deliberate practice and feedback. The most successful organizations invest heavily in leadership development because they recognize the direct connection between leadership quality and organizational results.
Join us for this transformative conversation that will challenge your thinking about what it truly means to lead rather than simply manage.
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Leading is not easy. It takes effort and it takes work, and it's not just you know, so you can get in there and tell people what to do. That's not what leading is about.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. We say all guts, no glory, there's a lot of. It requires a lot of guts.
Speaker 2:Get ready, get ready get ready, drop the confetti. Welcome to Remarkable Minds hosted by Daniel Stark Leaders. Here we unbox insights for professional growth. My name is Claudia Yanez. I do marketing and sales here at Daniel Stark, and today joining us is Amy, our Chief Financial Officer, and then Brittany, one of our Associate Directors of Operations. So welcome back ladies. How are y'all Good? Thank you Nice. So today we have a really fun topic Stop Managing, start Leading and probably immediate things come to mind. Let's just get some knee-jerk thoughts of like what comes to mind when you hear stop managing, start leading.
Speaker 3:I think the first thing I think about is trust. Stop micromanaging and start trusting your team.
Speaker 2:OK, what about you? We're going to get into that real quick.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's the first thing I thought about. It came to building a team. You know, if you build the right team and you give them the autonomy and freedom they need, you can do a lot of things.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. The first initial thing that comes to mind is probably, probably does not create trust or safety is if I'm having to manage you, then I got the wrong person. Yeah, that's the other thing that probably um, roll tongue in cheek probably uh, pretty strong. But so let's talk about now. Let's get into what managing versus leading is. What do you want to manage versus what you don't want to manage?
Speaker 1:So for me and it also depends on how much work experience the team member has, so if I have someone brand new out of school, they're going to need more guidance or structure because they've never done it before. But in general, I want to let people tell them what their job is and let them get their job done, so set expectations for their outcomes and what we're looking for, and then they can figure out the process of how you get from A to Z without me giving them each step of the way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, fun fact, here at Daniel Stark we actually no one in leadership is called a manager. Like, we really take that word out of the name because we don't want that. There's this, what is it? This perceived notion and just comes with a lot of negative stigma the word manager, or how about the?
Speaker 1:fact, we don't call anybody an employee. Oh yeah, we definitely don't call, that's right. We don't call staff, we don't say employees, we are all team members.
Speaker 2:Team members and then we call team leads leaders. Yep, Absolutely Okay. What were some of your thoughts that you were going to yeah, going back to trust.
Speaker 3:I feel like if you have to manage a team member, it could be either things Either you have an inability to let go of control, because sometimes it's the manager's issue and not necessarily the team members, to trust your team and let go, and there's something about yourself that you don't trust. You did a good enough job, but this person can just go and do it. You just need to let it go. And then, on the other side, there's something that in this team member that you don't trust to actually be proactive and manage their time well yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And then I'll circle back because you like head dive into the trust and I want to get there and I'm going to come back to this early notion of like in, when you're in a leadership role or in some sort of manager role, the things that you're giving your team and you want to manage, the way you are going to hold accountable, but the way that you do all of that, like you want to actually lead your team members through that process and, like you said, there's an inability sometimes to lead well, depending on, maybe, some of the strengths and areas of constraints that that person may have or the person on your team.
Speaker 2:That requires a lot of trust when you're building that out. And the other concept that I want to make sure that we touch upon is Daniel's pink autonomy, mastery and purpose, and when you have that, you have high levels of job satisfaction. So let's go back to trust building. What are some of the things immediately that come into mind from a team member's perspective and a team lead perspective, where you can kind of help bridge that gap and build that trust there?
Speaker 3:Expectations for sure. Going back to what Amy was talking about with outcomes and expectations, If you tell people like these are the three things that you need to get done and if you are hitting those goals, everything else should just follow. And if they're able to do that, then they're able to have the trust with me to continue to do their job without me having to deep dive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that trust looks like autonomy. In that point it's like I don't need to know. You know the specifics of what you're doing or when you're going to do them, as long as you're meeting your deadlines. Well, that's what I find is if we set regular communication.
Speaker 1:So whether it's our weekly level 10, or, for instance, some of our teams when we're planning larger events, we have is a loop, so it's like a to-do list. But if you're keeping those communication lines open and you can see the progress and they're reporting back and you've made it clear, if you run into a problem, come get me Otherwise. If you run into a problem, come get me. Otherwise I'm going to assume everything's going well and as long as those communications are happening, then you feel like everything's good, there's trust there, they feel good about the project and you feel good about the outcome.
Speaker 3:There's something you said, amy, that I want to touch on about if they need help to come to you. That's another thing I think of when I think of trust building, because I also put a lot of trust that if, because we nobody's perfect, you're going to fall short, and when you do, I expect you to speak up. I expect you to come tell me like, and not suffer in silence, and then I find a dumpster fire later. There is a lot of trust building with you coming and telling me, hey, I can't get to everything, or hey, I made a mistake.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, especially if you can't get to some of those expectations. And, like you said early on, there's a lot more hand-holding that's taking place. You're walking them through the process, showing them how to do it and at some point there is, you clearly communicate to them. We all you know as people who oversee their own teams. We tell them like okay, training wheels are coming off or hey, we're, you're on your own now, like I'm available. You just tell them how they can access you and, again, what the finished product needs to look like, what those outcomes are, and then you just let them do their thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you're always gonna some. You're always gonna fail at something as a team member or a young person, and I think the way the leader responds to that can severely impact someone's entire career path. Cause if you have someone who gives you grace and understanding and we'll go back and like, hey, you know, let's figure out where did this go wrong or what happened or what could we have done different, versus an anger or something like that or shame or blame you've set them up for um to come to you next time without any fear of of you know, being in trouble if you will.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it's that we. You know a manager like what did you do? How did?
Speaker 1:you fail at this.
Speaker 3:And the leader is the hey, what did? What did we fail to look at? What did we not consider? What expectations did we not make clear, so that we can learn from this?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah, that that makes me think of a. It's a common quote in saying is that you're hard on problems, not on people, and I think that's one of the big things I always like. When people see my passion or I feel really strongly about a particular topic, it's easy to you, could easily want to maybe internalize that.
Speaker 2:Like, oh, she's upset with me, or she's frustrated with me, and so I try to be extra careful, like I'm upset at the process. I'm upset at the process, I'm upset about the problem that we created. How can we get better at this? I feel passionate about this and I need you. I want you by my side. I want to figure out how can we do this together to solve the problem.
Speaker 1:I have a quick personal story that it sealed how I would be a leader from then on. I was working at a public accounting firm and I had done some work. I was very new, really didn't have a clue what I was doing, and the my supervisor manager had reviewed some of my work and when she put it back on my desk in red Sharpie in about 50 point font, she said are you stupid? Literally just wrote that yeah On the on the top cover sheet and that was like a document. That yeah, on the top cover sheet. And that was like a document that was going to stay with the tax file. And I remember thinking, oh my gosh, wow, I will never, I will never do that. Yeah, that must be, that is.
Speaker 2:I'm processing that as I hear you say that, because that makes me so angry to hear that there are actually managers or that are put in these positions where they're meant to lead their teams. And what did that person lead you to do other than, eventually, you found your way over to danielle?
Speaker 2:sorry I did, but it also impacted how I viewed her from that day forward I was terrified to make a mistake because public humiliation was the way that she handled it and that's leading with shame and blame right there, and that's something that we try to absolutely sway away from, because leaders want to encourage you, they want to empower you and inspire you to hone in on your strengths and to grow your areas of constraint to get to the outcome that you want to get to you not not yeah by yeah, constraining you further and, you know, creating a narrative or feeding a, an inner narrative that you may already have, sure, um and so wow, so kind of going in. Let's talk about our leaders and how they hone into those strengths and maybe find areas of constraints that they need to work on. What are some of those preliminary things or assessments that we're doing on the leadership side to see that those first initial flags kind of come into view?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so one of the first things that we've done is we have leaders retake our success survey, which we've talked about before in our hiring process. We have leaders retake our success survey, which we've talked about before in our hiring process, and it's easy to see like where people struggle, even with autonomy or with, like, self-criticality and confidence level, and a big thing I see amongst leaders is imposter syndrome.
Speaker 2:That's normally eight out of ten of them.
Speaker 3:We're going to work through imposter syndrome and show them that they've earned a seat at the table and that they're committed to continuous improvement. For me, what my journey looked like was really struggling with my tone and my directness. I think I came off as a manager my first few years as a leader, not realizing it, and a lot of that was because of my tone and coming off in a way that was I didn't want to be embarrassed. I wanted to make sure that our team was sharp and that they were seen as sharp, and that image is what I was protecting more than my team members, and it took a lot of like accountability on their part and just some open conversations for me to realize that and make the shift into a leader and caring more about the person.
Speaker 2:I imagine that took some time. Oh yeah, like what were some of the like for yourself, like the work that you had to do as a leader to get to that place, and what have you seen that reward you in?
Speaker 3:So it took about probably a solid two years for me to get where I wanted to be. First, it was about me taking a look at myself and figuring out where this was coming from. You know why was this so important to me, to have this perfect image? You know and I'm a recovering perfectionist and so.
Speaker 3:I was able to own that part and work through it, and then the other side of it was I wasn't being vulnerable with my team, um, and that was something that was causing a rift between us.
Speaker 3:You know, I never really gave them the opportunity to take care of me as well, and that's what they were wanting.
Speaker 3:Like we're talking about a bunch of caretakers, you know, people who have servant's heart, and I wasn't allowing them. I was keeping them at a distance, and so whenever I unlocked that part for me which took a lot of personal work that I had to do I saw a change immediately with how they responded to me More of a person they wanted to follow not that they had to follow and I feel like I gained even more respect from them. I mean, they respected me because of my numbers, but this was the first time I felt respected because of who I was as a person, and so that was a game changer and being able to be open and honest with them. It made us closer and a stronger team. Even when things you know, emotions are high, or when people you know we have to separate different paths because they're going somewhere else, we still were able to keep that connection because it didn't stem from numbers and KPIs, it stemmed from, you know, a true heart connection.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so mine too. I let my team members see I fail sometimes too, and so I'm never perfect, although I try to be. I don't know if I'm as far down my recovery of being a perfectionist as you are, or if that will ever go away, but letting them see I'm also human, and then sometimes bringing them into the solution like, hey look, we're going gonna miss this deadline, or I just did and you know, let's all gather together and let's figure out how to get this done.
Speaker 2:absolutely. I think one of my favorite things and and maybe a little bit too much is my flexibility, is I am very emotionally flexible, just kind of roll with the punches, and I know that sometimes can come across as not structured or but for me where I see it be very helpful is when things don't go your way, let's just figure it out as we go. It's just kind of that resilient mentality that I hope to foster in my team and that when things because I also have perfectionists on the team so when things don't go their way, things that they really want to manage.
Speaker 2:because you see that when things, because I also have perfectionists on the team, so when things don't go their way, things that they really want to manage, because you see that you see when you have perfectionists on the team, and how they're going to then lead or manage your team members is you're going to wear down your team if you want things done a very particular way, because you think that there's no other better outcome than the vision that you have in your head that's right and that is that is going to feel very exhausted for your team members and you're going to see that it's hard on you oh, absolutely.
Speaker 1:You can't let some of that go. You're going to burn out immediately, absolutely you.
Speaker 2:You're going. You're going to spend too much time in the nitty-gritty rather than maybe a high level view or maybe taking some opportunity of other areas that you can grow or go learn in by being able to like. Let some of that go Now. I do agree that we do need to delegate. Yeah, one of our favorite, you know, eos process is delegate and elevate. You can't do one without the other. Explain what that means to you, brittany.
Speaker 3:So for me it's making sure that I'm putting something where it really belongs and that when that tool was brought to us, that it was so much of it that I was not giving other people the opportunity to learn in themselves. And so delegate is where I started, because that was what I had more of the control over and I was able to delegate to my team leads and it's been really fun I mean, that's been a year now of watching them take on these tasks and learn more and they feel challenged in their role and then Elevate. That one I struggled with because I always want to do everything and I'm like I can just do it but I don't realistically have the time for it. And so the first one I ever did and I gave to somebody else to take, I watched them like a hawk from the side.
Speaker 3:I'm like please like to handle it with love and care like, did you do that right, like, although I felt like like somebody who like wrote a song and somebody else is singing it, it's like, oh, that was supposed to be like a different note, but okay, see what you did there. Um, and it was rewarding, though, like after it was done, we it happened in Austin and so we were driving back and I was like that was so much fun to get to see my idea like from the sidelines and not just be fully in it. And since then I've really enjoyed that process of getting to kind of not be the one to kick the bird out of the nest and just watch it fly.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and I've had a conversation even with other team leads about delegating, of when it does go wrong and we delegate, but then we didn't elevate our team members like you, didn't delegate. Like you said, put it where it actually goes, or where it could be long.
Speaker 2:So part of that discernment is making sure that who you're giving that to you has the tools and the training like to actually to actually perform whatever it is the task or the project is, and that's kind of like your guardrail so that they don't fall off the cliff there. You want to make sure that you're elevating them with the proper tools, training, encouragement, et cetera to do that. And so when we are not elevating our people, you're not actually bringing them and you're just delegating downward, you're going to create a problem that you're're probably later gonna have to go and fix. And a lot of times when businesses are growing really fast or you're, you're there's a, there's a problem maybe in our, in our systems, where we are having this trickle down effect, where we're getting a lot of projects, you know, on our plate. So that means we need to delegate and we're pushing things through and delegating.
Speaker 2:When we're doing it too fast, without thought and attention, we yeah, we create those problems. And so can you think of those times I know that I have at least four or five that I can easily think of where we're going too fast, we got to slow down and it was a systematic problem, like as a organization as a whole, because we love growing, we're evolving, we're going at a high speed and sometimes we go okay, we need to slow down. I want us to grow, we all want to grow, we all want to evolve. Let's put the process and the system in place to catch and make sure that we also have our team members in place, so that we're not doing it at at their detriment or at the detriment of the firm and the organization or, even worse, our clients well, I think we're getting a lot better at that, right there we took some time this year to even reflect and be like man pump the brakes.
Speaker 1:You know we have to have a process.
Speaker 2:Make sure we're communicating because sometimes we come out like a steamroller and be like this is happening tomorrow that's right's right and I love how you said that like working like, and we, of course, we already have our process, but getting really clear and simple on what those core process, but I still want to push my team.
Speaker 1:So I figure out where their boundaries are and still push them a little bit, cause I think sometimes I have more confidence in my team than they have in themselves. And so that's fun to watch is them develop their own confidence and understand what they are good at. That you see that they haven't figured out yet.
Speaker 2:Oh, I truly do believe that. You know you are your own worst critic. Yeah, except for Brittany, probably, is not, but for most of us 99% we are the person that see the worst in us, and so to have to be with a leader who's inspiring you and that's really empowers you is great. And, like Daniel Pink's book, you give someone something to master. And don't forget the why. Don't forget the why we're doing it. I think that's a you know through our working geniuses like you and.
Speaker 2:I are galvanizers, getting people rallied behind the why, and this is what we're doing like giving them purpose. And now you give them an extra challenge. You're giving them something else to master. You give them the parameters kind of what to work with them, but you give them the autonomy to do it. I've been on the recipient of exactly that, and that's one of the reasons why I've been here for so long is because I love that. I love something that I'm chasing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, I did call myself a prophet earlier today.
Speaker 2:He's like I don't even know what to do with you.
Speaker 3:I know I'm going to need context on that later for sure, but I will say because, you know, there are people who are natural leaders, right, and there are people who really love following, and I love both. I genuinely love being a follower. I love following my leader. I love like learning what like their strengths are, my strengths are and how we can work together. And it's so funny.
Speaker 3:You know, something I tell my team leads a lot is people want to be led. They genuinely want to be led, and when you're able to tap into that, it's a whole new realm. And you know, going back to a little bit of my journey, one of the things I had to figure out was how people wanted me to lead versus how I was leading and I was more authoritarian that they would have liked. And the compromise we found is more like a coach Like think of a football coach, you know and so I coach people to take my style and then we're able just to have open and honest communication and that's been really fun to see because I didn't necessarily have to change myself. I just had to give back that why? And show my heart behind the intent.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. That goes a long way. When you're able to do that and I'm also in the very similar I want to be led. I love being a part of a team. That's just great Love working and playing off of everybody's strengths and weaknesses.
Speaker 2:I don't want to have to into how you're going to lead and it will just rear its ugly head. So unless you're willing to work on yourself and fix those things, you would never be a good leader, and that taught me early enough the things that I really do love is being part of a community and I love being a collaborative leader Like that's where I work best.
Speaker 2:I love being a collaborative leader. Like that's where I work best. I love facilitating and working with the team, getting everyone's insights and input and helping us get towards a solution, rather than to be the one to make all the calls or make like this is what we're doing, like I don't. I don't like that one, because I don't always believe that I do know all the answers. I most rather be in a room filled with intelligent people, people that are talented and creative Everybody has earned their spot at the team and then get everyone's input.
Speaker 1:Well, and it's fun too, as I don't want to say I'm old, but I'm older than a lot of the groups that we're in and it's fun to see the perspective of someone who maybe is a generation or two younger. They look at it with a completely different set of eyes, and that's cool. So you just never know what's going to be thrown out there, and it may be something that you never even considered.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Let's go rewind to 2020. Covid and we were challenged with what the landscape and what the workforce was going to look like on the day-to-day basis, and I want to know how us, as leaders, with our team members, made the decision that was really best for the organization and how it's really changed the way we lead today. What can y'all recall from that time?
Speaker 1:Oh man. So I was in the healthcare industry at the time.
Speaker 2:I was working at a hospital.
Speaker 1:So it was very real for us and basically they're like okay, guys, you're going home, everybody's going remote tomorrow. So it was a matter of throwing together a structure. So we went from a hundred in office to 100% remote in one day and so watching the team come together like, okay, well, you know, we changed our file structure, we changed our location, we changed everything and it worked out just fine. But it was because we had built the team relationship prior to that and then really they had the right to set their like kind of what their day-to-day looked like. It was completely different than it looked like when we were in the office.
Speaker 2:Oh wow, that was actually a very smooth transition from horror stories that I have heard.
Speaker 1:We were ready. We had a good team. That's great.
Speaker 2:That's key. When you have a great team, especially great leaders too, that can help facilitate that process. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I think it was really scary for us. There were so many unknowns, and it wasn't so much the remote work even though a lot of them hadn't done it including myself I hadn't worked remotely it was you couldn't leave your house. This was everything all in one, and the people who lived in apartments didn't have balconies or backyards. They really struggled and that was something that we felt the camaraderie of everybody.
Speaker 3:We had just switched over to a cloud based system and Microsoft Teams Shout out to Microsoft Teams because I don't know if we would have been able to do it without that of having these like happy hours and making sure we were staying in touch and all of our apartment people had like their own group chat to like talk through it and to talk about like what they could do and different things that worked for them, and that was so much like there was so much fun in that as well. Because of the coming together and the chaos especially going back to managing versus leading I lost a lot of visibility. You know, I wasn't there to see them and to see how they were doing. I can't tell you know what they're doing at their homes and I just had to put a lot of trust in them and show them that, hey, I don't really know what I'm doing either.
Speaker 3:Like, I tried this schedule. It didn't really work for me. I tried to take a break at this time and we were all just kind of creating these threads and our quarterly plannings had to look different and they ended up being like videos that people were commenting on in real time and having like live commentary. That made it fun for them and so it was scary, but we were able to make it through.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Like you said it was. It was it was. It was scary because it forced you to give that autonomy. You lost the visibility you really needed to trust and if you were a leader, in a leadership role here in particular, or maybe like in another organization, it would have highlighted for sure the deficits of your team if it was something that you were unable to like, let go and fully, just kind of embrace.
Speaker 2:One of the things that I do remember is that it changed. It was already a buzz around this time like the culture, the culture in this generation, but it definitely created a higher demand for flexibility and a higher demand for being able to be hybrid or be fully remote. And for businesses, they for the ones that did really well you really lost the argument that you're not productive at home if, if your team did do well, that's, and so you have to honor that. You have to, and there's as a business, there's there are cost savings from being able to do that. And but for the team member and even for myself, uh, maybe not always when I had my kids at home, but it that hour commute like that I get back. It's probably an hour and a half to two hours, depending. I'm just I have a much more enriching life because of the time that I got back from from being flexible and so we.
Speaker 2:It did really change the landscape for Daniel Stark and how we were going to operate as leaders and the flexibility like how we were really going to hone in into the autonomy portion of it, the flexibility, the being able to be remote how that was going to look like at DS and still be able to provide our clients with white glove service and really, you know, keep our clients from getting screwed by big insurance. So that was. I'm excited to for the next thing hopefully not as awful as the pandemic was, but I'm waiting for that next thing that's going to happen, that's going to force us to do something different that we normally wouldn't have thought of.
Speaker 2:Like force change yeah absolutely, Because I mean even today you still see a lot of the cancel culture with management and I think some of that kind of came from the pandemic.
Speaker 1:But I think it still goes back to trust, because if your team trusts you and respects you and you trust and respect them, they aren't going to go home and not do their job because they know it's going to let you down. So there's that. You know mutual respect back there, that whether you're here or at home or wherever you are doing your, job you're going to do it right, because we trust each other. We depend on each other Absolutely.
Speaker 3:I think it was the first time, like, as an environment, people felt like they weren't listened to because, like you said, they've proven that they can work from home and that they're successful and if their numbers are okay, why are we pulling this back? Like, why are so many companies saying everybody back in office tomorrow, and so it? I feel like it just made them feel really unheard and unseen, and so, as a leader, being able to be like hey, I want to know what works for you, what doesn't work for you, and then we can meet somewhere in the middle, because I don't think we ever promise like, oh, you'll get everything you ask for. Like that's not realistic. And it's also not realistic as a leader, that everything is going to go my way and so there's some real benefit to compromise and keeping a culture that knows that compromise is on the table that compromises on the table.
Speaker 2:When you have the system in the process for expectations and accountability, like that's what you need to be able to give, that to be able to give if your team members is wanting flex or want the autonomy, put your trust in the system as well.
Speaker 2:And if you don't have that, if you don't have a system in place like for us, we have remote huddles, we have monthly check-ins, we do have dashboards, we do have reports that we look at, we know if the work is being done and we know how, if, how culture is and even in a virtual setting we can measure some of that. So if you have the right system in place that works for your organization, it's so much easier to be able to give your team members what they're needing. Because you have that in place works for your organization. It's so much easier to be able to give your team members what they're needing because you have that in place. It's really hard to not it's really hard to not to be able to give your team members that and for longevity, and you want people tenured, you want people here. It's like, why not?
Speaker 1:Like we know and it looks different too, so it may look different for ops than it does accounting. Cause yeah we have to print checks and we have to do so. There's some things. So you know, we have to have be flexible between the team members. Somebody needs to be here to get a check run done or whatever. So as long as you're working together, so it just looks different from department to department, leader to leader. But you're right, why not?
Speaker 2:If you've got it and it works for my team, I always love asking what is, what does autonomy look like for you? What is? Because it may not be that they care about the flex hours. Maybe they're a nine to five and that's how they like it.
Speaker 2:I like the nine to five, I'm structured, it's helpful for me, and so asking them like what does autonomy look like for you? How? And then, depending in the role that they're, how can I help that team member in a way that makes sense for, like, the entire department, not just a team member. It needs to make sense for the organization. How can we work towards that and giving them a challenge what's the next thing you want to grow in?
Speaker 1:Well, and one of the things that I have found is in the culture we're in. Being a working mom is hard, not not that being a working dad's not.
Speaker 2:But just a working parent, a working parent in general.
Speaker 1:So one of my team members the the biggest thing that she told me recently she's like I've been allowed to take my lunch really late in the day and pick my kids up from school. And that means the difference to her. So that's the difference between happiness and you know. If you're getting your done and you're she's setting her schedule and she also gets happiness out of it, then it feels like we're all winning.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's a big one for me. I I normally do not like meetings to happen before 9am and that is because also as doing drop off in the morning in a college town is really stressful. Because also as doing drop off in the morning in a college town is really stressful and I've even from you know I'm a millennial and I've never had my my, my team leader, my supervisor ever tell me this. But I can imagine in the workforce that there are people will just get up early and go do do that early Cause I have tried that.
Speaker 2:But those extra 30, 45 minutes of sleep for my kids means that I'm waking up like on the happy side of bed, versus it's just you don't know what you unleashed in my house and it's I don't want to come to work that way. It's like I want to have a good morning with my kids. I value that for my children. I value being able to be unhurried in the morning and drop them off and just get my work, my work day start. I come in at 845, get my day situated and I'm ready to go by 9 am. Like I place value in that and there's a lot of that with our team members that they also place value in these different things, and so I think it's really great as a leader that you know what those are and that you're not trying to solve a problem that isn't really a problem, that you're actually solving the right, the right things for your team.
Speaker 2:Sure, yeah, is there anything in the checkpoints that you can recall, uh, that you really like? Even in the, there's a question that we ask in our surveys that goes out on a monthly basis, that's, you know, on a scale of one to ten. Um, what's the question? How? How would you rate your?
Speaker 2:leader, or yeah, how invested is your leader in your success yes, yes, and for the most part I've seen the ratings.
Speaker 1:They've all come up very really high coming up I have not seen one lower than an eight out of ten um, and most of those people feel like their leader's taking time to get to know them.
Speaker 1:Their leader has found out what's important to them, and then they figured out how to intertwine that into the day to day. As I tell my team, most of us spend more time with each other than we do with our own families, and it's figuring out how to love what you do, get the job done, still be high performing. You know, kind of have your cake and eat it too, and our team feels like their leaders are pouring into them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what are some of the other insights that you've noticed and maybe in the feedback that you've gotten from your team?
Speaker 3:So one of the things I like to see because we asked two questions, you know the first one is how likely are you to refer a friend to Daniel Stark? And the second is about the leader. And so when they give feedback in the first category, it's completely separate from the leader category and it's nice to see that they have an issue with the systems and processes, not with leadership and the culture, where before we had that question, it felt like we had a culture issue, like when that number was low. I'm like man, what's going on? Do we need to look into it? Oh, I'm like man, what's going on? Do we need to look into it? And being able to differentiate it, it's like, oh no, they just think they have more ideas, they have more efficiency gains, which is what we talk about with them at quarterly plannings of how to gain some of those.
Speaker 2:So a few of the things that I've noticed from the checkpoints that I've read is belonging to a community feeling like their team member, their team lead, actually believes in them. Like you said, it has taken the time to empower them, to grow them. I think the other thing that I've noticed is, again, the autonomy.
Speaker 1:Well, and we do exit interviews as well, and typically people are moving on for a change in their life, or maybe they've graduated school and it's time for them to move on somewhere else, or whatever it may be. But the exit interviews are also so positive because they feel like they're a member of a team. They feel like they have their voices heard and I think a lot of the happiness is just feeling heard.
Speaker 2:We may not implement what you say, or it might not even be practical for the firm, but to have the opportunity to say it that's a lot, absolutely so, from saying it, and even to the ones that there were effort, we made effort to try to get it resolved, even if that does not, doesn't happen. So let's talk about when we don't have the right leader installed. What are some of the signs that we normally see when you know that okay, this is a leadership problem.
Speaker 3:I think the first sign that I see is how they communicate. There's not a lot of warmth there, and I mean again going back, even using myself as an example of when I was more of a manager than a leader just coming through as if this is just part of my job. I don't want to do this. This is just part of my job. I'm checking, talking to you, just checking something off of a checklist, and then I'm going to move on. That's what you really start to see.
Speaker 3:That's the first step, and you may even give that a pass, like maybe they're having a bad day, maybe that all their meetings are like that I don't not in all their meetings, maybe that's not what it is. But then you start to see the effects of that. You know where their team members have more of low energy, or you know some bad attitude. Maybe they're carrying a chip on their shoulder and you can sense that it's really quick to see the difference in it. And that's when you step in and say, hey, is there something going on? I want to talk through this because I could be telling myself a story, but it feels like anytime this person talks to you, you want to roll your eyes what's happening, let's work through it and I've been able to have those conversations and be in bridged for that leader and a person, but I think for me that that's the first thing I see is where the communication style is.
Speaker 2:And kind of going right before that. You know, our process and I think it's a great process is when we're going to put someone in leadership. There is a separate top five roles for that that may include. That includes LMA, lead manager accountability and you have to GWC it. So you have to get it, want it capacity and answer those questions, and the people that are maybe responsible for that role go through that exercise with them. So there's already a threshold. It's not just based off of mastery and sometimes it's not even based off of institutional knowledge or mastery at all.
Speaker 2:You know, because we hire leaders that are completely outside of the organization. But if you are hiring from within, you know we go through and of course there's culture. So they got to follow our social contract. They got to exemplify all of our core values over extended period of time. So that's in place by the time they're in leadership. And then you actually give them their team and you're kind of monitoring that, you're seeing how they're doing, and then kind of rolls right into kind of what you're saying. Maybe you start seeing this. I know that in the past for me I have seen a I don't feel like I'm getting the full story. There's definitely a hunch of like what's going on? Like there's the team members not cohesive, we're not aligned on the vision, we're not aligned on the goals.
Speaker 2:There's something coming in and that's a little bit hard coming in when you know this is not my direct team members right, this is my team lead and these are their, his directs, and so I'm coming in, not boots on the ground, but I can see.
Speaker 2:So I have a high responsibility to really see if there's cohesiveness, and I can normally tell by the way those team members are engaged when they're in the room. If they're pushing back on what that leader has to say, then I can tell okay, there's really good, healthy, fighting unite good habits here I can tell, okay, there's really good, healthy fighting, unite, good habits here.
Speaker 2:I could see that. I can see by the way that team lead may speak about their team. If it's positive, or even if it's too overly positive, then it makes me feel like, okay, is there accountability here? Or if it's negative and it's passive, and you know, it makes me think, okay, like, do we have a heart issue that we need to diagnose? What are some of the other things that you've noticed, amy?
Speaker 1:No, that's the same thing I like to watch, especially a personal interaction like how are they in the room together?
Speaker 2:How do they?
Speaker 1:interact? How do they communicate? Is there some healthy pushback? And then the other thing is is that leader taking time Because leading is not easy, it takes effort and it takes work and are they truly bought into building this team up and putting personal effort into this? It's not just a title and it's not just so you can get in there and tell people what to do. That's not what leading is about, and I kind of watch for that and make sure that they're looking to build these people up and help them, not just tell them what to do. That's not what leading is about, and I kind of watch for that and make sure that they're looking to build these, these people up and help them. Um, not just tell them what to do.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. We say all guts, no glory. There's a lot of it requires a lot of guts. Let me ask you do you think that anybody has what it takes to be a leader?
Speaker 1:No, tell me why, I do not.
Speaker 1:I think, just because of what I just said, you know everything. To be a leader, I feel like you have to have compassion for people, you have to have empathy for people. In addition to your skillset to get your job done, you have to want to build that person up and set them up to succeed. And not everybody has that. Some people just want to come in, do their job, go home, it's extra, it's on top of what you're doing and it's in your heart, and if it's not there, your team will never succeed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so what about when you do have the heart? You have the heart you have. You want to take care of your team. What are some of the skills?
Speaker 3:needed to be a good leader. That's a good one. That's a good one.
Speaker 3:I think being willing to admit fault is probably the first one I had to learn is making sure that I could have some self-awareness, and I really deep dived into that pool of self-awareness of making sure I was picking up on things that I wasn't seeing before. But I guess, even before that there was an accountability, because the only reason I knew those things was because my team members told me was picking up on things that I wasn't seeing before. But I guess, even before that, there was an accountability, because the only reason I knew those things was because my team members told me and so, having just that open style, the open dialogue with the accountability, knowing that you would take it like them trusting you to be able to actually go and do the work, I think whatever that is is where it has to start. Like them having are you proving to your team? You know, like, earn your spot on the team. That means earning your spot with your team members as well. Like pick me as your leader.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm and kind of what along the same thing, because I do agree that not everybody can be a great leader and I think a lot of people can do their best to be a good leader and to even start managing a team. But kind of what you said self-awareness, emotional intelligence is key in all areas of those emotional intelligence, your self-regard, your self-confidence, your ability to self-regulate and help others regulate as well, and there's just there's so much that comes with emotional intelligence within itself. But then your ability to communicate is, if you cannot communicate with your team on expectations, on accountability, on in a way that it's inspiring or motivating as well, you're going to struggle. Yeah, you're going to struggle in those areas.
Speaker 1:I think a good leader realizes that each member of your team communicates a little differently.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. You have to adapt that communication to what works best for them.
Speaker 1:So it's my job as a leader to figure out how to communicate with you. But I will tell you, some people are natural born leaders. So when you find one of those and you can, you know, teach them how to use their powers for good. That's fun, Because I may know a young person that can lead, but he'd lead a whole group right off a cliff and they'd follow him.
Speaker 2:Discernment yeah, that's another big one.
Speaker 3:Some discernment and some maturity there, but then learning how to communicate in each person's style, discernment and some maturity there, but then learning how to communicate in each person's style.
Speaker 3:I think energy management's another big one too, because a good leader, they have to know when they're being burnt out they have to know when to take a break and take a step back, because any good leader also has a really unhealthy side and if you don't take care of that unhealthy side, it can be really ugly. And I also think that's like somebody can want it but they're not acting in it because they're not in a healthy state of mind, absolutely.
Speaker 1:That is why I love this, because the leaders hold each other leaders accountable. So, yes, it would not be unusual for Brittany to call you and be like dude, you need a day off. Yes, go fix yourself.
Speaker 2:That's right and not just doing that like needing to know to do that for yourself.
Speaker 2:But when you're doing that to your team and being able to see that in your team as well as to be very highly perceptive is also another one.
Speaker 2:And I mean, once you're in that role and depending at the level of leadership you're at, then you have to grow in some other areas, just high level strategic thinking, operation, operationally. There's a lot more core competencies that you have to grow in to be a great leader for the business, not just a great leader for the people, and growing those at the same time or is normally very hard yeah, it's so hard to do that most of the time you're you're a leader of the people and you tend to you can motivate your team and get them towards the shared vision and goals and help them through that process and while you're developing the business acumen of communication skills and, again, emotional intelligence, discernment and strategy. But I learned that early on, once I got to a different tier of leadership and that was a hard lesson for me that when it came to communication and growing my business acumen, was that my strategy is only as good as my ability to communicate it and if I cannot communicate my strategy.
Speaker 2:it's dead on, that's just that's it, and and so learning those skills and learning your audience and what they want to hear, and the problem you're solving just comes from a different area of personal and professional development and kind of you know the tools that I use for myself, your job as a leader is to take a big vision and make the whole team understand why.
Speaker 1:That's even important, and there's a large gap there. There's a lot of conversations that are had over here that are not had with the team, and so being able to translate that into something that shows them what their part in the mission?
Speaker 2:is that is so key?
Speaker 3:It is Managers, don't develop.
Speaker 2:That's right. I'm just going to drop it there. We know that great leadership is what's going to take us to the next level, and investing in this is such high priority for any organization there is. In all of our times that we've invested in leadership, in all of our times that we've invested in leadership, and we know that there is a correlation causation between great leaders and great results for the company, and we know that that is one of the main key variables in achieving our 10-year target.
Speaker 1:So that's really exciting, but it's good for the people too, absolutely. In addition to being good for the company, it's so good for the team in general. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Give your people autonomy, mastery and purpose. That's all the insights that we're going to unbox today, and if you have any suggestions on this topic or have any topics you would like for us to cover, please send those to podcast at danielstarklawcom. Until next time, stay remarkable.