everything rises and falls on leadership - a steep learning curve

Things that kept me up at night - A Business Owners blog.  

 Owning a beauty business comes with its own unique leadership challenges.

A predominantly female dominated industry, women becoming mothers and navigating the challenges of motherhood, small spaces and intimate working relationships to name only a few.  Not only that, I feel we are often attracted to this industry because of our love of People and Service which can present its own challenges, especially recently.  I feel honoured and privileged to be able to lead my team as I’m sure many of you do.  I have never been someone that thought that I wanted to own a Business because I wanted to be the boss or my own boss, I always knew that I would be answering to a lot of people (my team). 

I always thought I had a natural ability to lead, that I was able to influence and that I was nailing my business in this area.  On reflection I am a huge people pleaser with an intense fear of letting people down, upsetting the apple cart and I’m just going to say it – getting a personal grievance. 

So, in fact I had very little skills in leadership and a very flimsy vision and plan around the kind of leader I wanted to be and the rituals that would support that kind of leadership.  I also didn’t really understand how closely linked Personal Development and Leadership Success was.  My team were only ever going to grow as much as I was willing to grow. 

In the beginning for me leadership was spending a fortune on coffee for my team, hosting intermittent dinners and being flexible and lenient in my approach to things that mattered such as results in my business, complaints from Clients and poor Behaviour that was not aligned to our business vision, values or goals.  I see now, this was not leadership and it was also not a sustainable approach. 

In the early days of my relationship with my Coach he said to me and I will never forget “everything rises and falls on leadership”.  I remember this day because I was in a tiz over a team members lack of performance and bad attitude.  I was annoyed, frustrated and getting nowhere, I was also tired and over it.  I can see now however that I had let this go on too long, I hadn’t had the conversation that needed to be had.  I hadn’t taken responsibility for my part in it and I was afraid of the actions I would have to take based on the accountability that simple phrase bestowed on me.    

Leadership has been a process for me, as all good change in business is.  In this process I learned a lot (unfortunately often through suffering the consequences of my lack of knowledge).  My biggest wins and growth in leadership really clearly speak to the afformentioned unique challenges.

Here’s what I did

1.     Building detailed team profiles enabled me to really understand my team, what drives them, what inspires them and how to talk to them in a way that draws them closer to me, the buisnesss and harnesses their magic for them and for our clients.  Team profiles include such information as love languages, motivation rankings, income goals, and self doubt traps which have been built over a period of time. These allow me to connect with my team regularly without too much thought, to manage them in times of change, avoiding the predicament of non compliance and to build a culture of trust which has propelled us in tough times, such as the last couple of years.  The team profiles have given me tremendous freedom from fear and overthinking. 

2.     The implementation of rituals in the business that ensured that the whole team was rowing in the same direction at all times, if ever anyone is left behind or falling short, these processes picked them up quickly, rather than allowing them to drown.  Rituals and systems create a differentiation between the team members and me as their leader, they create the boundaries.  I’ve found that people love structure and clarity, they also love clear direction.  Even the ones who push against it initially come to thrive in an environment that is predictable, non-chaotic and transparent.  Our meetings allow me to keep my finger on the pulse even though I no longer work in my business and have a leadership team who facilitate them

3.     Systems for implementation of rituals

Morning meetings instead of diving into client time has been one of the bolder decisions I have made.  To take a paid 30 minutes out of each therapists morning to meet, connect, share, plan and celebrate was one of the best decisions I made.  Its purpose is to grow the business and as a system it has worked flawlessly.  Another system we have is the leadership loop.  If therapists aren’t in the morning meeting they are picked up in the leadership loop. A commitment to connect with each team member each day, see where they’re at, what their plan is, how they are going to add value to their client today has made all of the difference in business

My Coach has a word for this - It is called the Business Critical Alignment Model (Environment – Structure – Implementation – People) and yes in this order is necessary and ideal. So, like I did, creating rituals and systems that actually work comes from the personal development of the leader. You cannot take someone where you have not being yourself. Leadership is an inner journey of growth and if you want your team to grow you must grow first.  Grow within yourself, as a leader and a business owner and watch everyone grow.

THIS is inside out business growth