Ep 37 - It's All About Leadership, CEO, Not Just Systems and Processes

Think systems and processes are the only keys to scaling your business? Think again. In this episode, I'm gonna debunk the myth that structure alone guarantees success. Join me as I unveil the often overlooked heroes of growth within your business leadership and communication. It's time to redefine your approach and discover how mutual purpose, dialogue, and shared goals can really elevate your team's performance. Don't just build systems, build leaders. Tune in and unlock the true formula for scaling your business with impact. Let's do this. Are you that driven entrepreneur who believes that working harder holds the key to your dreams? Are you drowning in the day to day tasks wishing you had more time to strategize and cast the vision for your business growth? Hi.

I'm Donna Dube, your guide on this entrepreneurial journey. I've walked in your worn out shoes, burning the midnight oil, convinced that sheer hard work was the secret to success. Just one more email, one more task until I found myself on a one way trap to burnout. But here's the twist in the scale. I discovered that success isn't just about working harder, it's about working smarter. It's about being intentional with our time. It's about steering our ship with focus because no team, system, or automation can outperform a lack of direction. In this podcast, I'm sharing with you all the strategies for business growth that it took me years to learn.

If you're ready to step out of the daily overwhelm so you can amplify your profits, then I'm ready to teach you. I believe the only limit to your business growth is the one you set for yourself. Go grab a notebook, warm up that cup of tea, and let's do this. Welcome back business leaders. Today, I'm sharing why systems are merely a starting point and certainly not the finish line when it comes to growing our business, because a crucial factor that is often overlooked is leadership. Leadership is how you create a scalable business where people hold one another accountable. The engine that makes leadership work is communication. So today we're going to explore 3 communication challenges that leaders must excel at when navigating to create a business, you know, that doesn't have this constant top down management.

Instead, it creates bottom up accountability. And I'm gonna reveal the one communication skill that can help you get there faster. You know, one misconception that I see a lot that I think deserves a lot more attention, and this is the misconception that having detailed systems in our business is enough for flawless team execution. Right? All I need is the perfect system and profit. The SOP is all written out. Team knows exactly what to do and things will run perfectly. But the truth is systems and processes are a starting point. All the systems and processes in your businesses won't lead to a scalable business without this one factor, leadership.

And yes, this is coming from the operations girl, the girl who believes that systems and processes are vital to your business growth. And while I do believe that having structure and having a team who's accountable and knows what they need to do is so so important, All of that is not enough. We need leadership. Effective teams and high performance are more than just policies, processes, structure, and systems. I'm not saying you don't need these, of course you do, but all of it doesn't run without leadership. When you're building your business, your team is the resource that allows you to scale, and leadership is how your team thrives. So despite what some gurus out there might have you believe growth and scale and a service based business isn't about implementing more processes or new processes. There's more to it than that.

It requires getting people to hold each other accountable to those processes and systems, and and that requires leadership. Alright, so let's take a step back and actually look at the term leadership, and what does it really mean when we say leadership. I'm sure some of you have some ideas that are coming to mind, but for me it's a sum of several things, but the words that come to mind when I'm thinking about leadership are communication, decision making, vision and strategy, problem solving, delegation, conflict resolution, empowerment, adaptability, cultural awareness, emotional intelligence. Okay, the list could go on, but for me those are some common words that come to my mind when I'm thinking and talking about leadership. And I know if you look at all of that, it feels like a lot. But communication is really at the heart of leadership because to do all of the above that we just mentioned operations, problem solving, decision making, conflict resolution, You must be able to clearly and effectively listen, dialogue, and connect with others so you can support your team's success You know, we always hear this statement good leaders are good communicators, but what defines a good communicator? Well, I believe there are 3 consistent communication challenges that I want to touch on with you today, and here's the thing, managing these three challenges comes down to doing one thing really well, and yes, I'm gonna give you that one thing, so stay with me. Working on that one thing with my clients has helped them become better communicators and leaders. So first, let's dive into what are the top three communication challenges visionary leaders and CEO come up against on a consistent basis.

Number 1, it's the ability to transform challenges into powerful dialogue instead of jumping the gun and giving the fix. Has this ever happened to you? Have you ever been in a situation when your team came to you with a challenge and your instinct was to jump in and fix the problem instead of having dialogue with that team member and allowing them to come to the solution 2nd communication challenge is the ability to make it safe to talk about almost anything. But you may be asking yourself, but why? This is a business. This is not just a friendship. Because you can't sweep things under the rug. Eventually, when you keep sweeping under the rug, under the rug, the pile comes a tripping hazard. So the ability to make it safe to talk about almost anything is a must. And 3rd, it's about being more persuasive instead of order giving.

Again, order giving is a top down management accountability model, which many of us don't believe in and don't want to be portraying, but it's a trap we fall into. So it's about being more persuasive rather than order giving. And if you're listening and you're wondering like practically how or when are these communication challenges? When are they gonna come up in my business? All the time when something fails, when there's a need to move forward together as a group, when there's a need to give feedback to a team member who isn't meeting their commitments, All of these can feel like really high state conversations. Right? They get the the hair at the back of our neck to stand up a little bit. They make most of us feel uncomfortable. But as a leader, when you're prepared to manage these conversations effectively, you will have a team that is more accountable to processes and more innovative at problem solving, and that is music to your ears. Right? That is 100% important because a scalable business doesn't require constant top down management or top down accountability. A scalable business needs bottom up accountability, And that's why when I work with my clients, we always discuss how we're communicating with their team.

Because your ability to transform challenges into what I call powerful dialogue, your ability to make a safe place to talk about anything, and your ability to be more persuasive instead of order giving helps you build a team that is accountable and empowered without you as business leader being the bottleneck. So what's the one strategic skill that will support you in being a better leader in these communication scenarios? The strategy or skill that makes the most significant impact is your ability to create shared meaning and to find mutual purpose. Now, if those terms are brand new for you, stay with me, we're gonna go over them and I'm gonna give you plenty of examples. When 2 or more people, you know, have a conversation and the conversation has to do about a challenge, their opinions differ, right? This is almost always the scale. Otherwise it wouldn't be considered a challenging operations, would it? And this usually means I think one thing and you believe another, or I see it from this perspective and you CEO it from something I disagree In these scenarios, effective leaders need to look for mutual purpose. That doesn't mean you need to agree with everything. No, it doesn't mean you unquestionably accept anything. It means that even if at first glance your ideas, your thoughts, or your opinions appear controversial, they appear wrong or they appear at odds with what your belief is.

You understand the power of mutual purpose. So to be clear, this isn't about manipulating the other person. This is about dialogue. So mutual purpose means that your team member actually believes you are working toward a common outcome. So when they enter into this conversation, they actually believe that you care about their goals, their interests, and their values. It ultimately means finding shared benefits that both of you want to achieve, And notice here I said the emphasis is on both of you. The conversation is doomed in reality if your team member believes that your purpose is to tell them they did something wrong. But if you believe you really care about making things better for both of you, you can build a team that eliminates repeat mistakes and can handle these difficult challenges independently.

All too often as leaders we try to skip over the mutual purpose part and go directly into fixing mode. I'm sure this has happened to you, but here's plan just happened last week that I think will really resonate with you. Your dialogue sounds something like this. You might say, I noticed you have this concept in your plan. It's going to be a waste of time. We need to change it. So that's one example of how we're going into fix mode. Now, the opposite of that is if we're going to be looking for mutual purpose.

We might go to the team member and say, I've got an idea about what we can add or remove to save us both time on this project. It's going to be a bit of a sensitive conversation, but I think it'll really help a great deal if we can talk about it You notice there the mutual purpose is to save both of us time. Alright, here's another example. As leader, you might go to your team member and say, we need to revamp the marketing strategy. It's clearly not working. Instead of that, let's look for mutual purpose, saying something like this I've been reviewing our marketing strategy, and I have some thoughts on adjustments that might boost our effectiveness. I'm aiming for a solution that benefits us all. Can we discuss it together? You notice in that second amplify, I'm aiming for a solution that benefits us all.

I might boost our effectiveness. Can we talk about it? You're letting the other team member know this is where I'm at. I wanna talk about a solution that benefits both of us, and giving them a heads up that this is what you wanna talk about. So you see in each of these examples, the leader initiates the conversation with a shared goal or benefit in mind. This opens the door for collaborative problem solving and really encourages your team members to actively participate in finding solutions instead of getting their backup that you're complaining or saying something isn't done right. And when we approach dialogue this way, it's clear what success looks like for both of you, and there's an opportunity to self direct the solution. And self directed solutions are the best and most powerful because when someone feels that they've come up with a solution themselves, they take greater ownership of the outcome instead of being told what to do. Mutual purpose doesn't take long to establish.

You could see in those examples, just reflecting and changing the way we approached our team member makes all the difference, and you can start by doing this right now. Simply ask yourself these three questions before you enter into the next challenging conversation you need to have with a team member. These three questions have been developed by a team of communication experts in a book called crucial conversations and really these three questions is relevant to both personal and professional relationships. So before you're going to enter a challenging conversation ask yourself these three questions. What do I really want for myself? What do I really want for this person? And what do I really want for the relationship? And when you investigate these three questions before the conversation, you can set yourself up for success in finding mutual purpose and then in exploring in your dialogue with your team member what mutual purpose is present. Mutual purpose leads to mutual respect, and both are necessary if you want to build a scalable business that doesn't require top down accountability but instead encourages bottom up accountability where team members feel heard, trusted, and most importantly, empowered. Okay, to wrap it up, we looked at a misconception in business growth. The belief that systems and processes alone can ensure flawless execution, And I spent some time emphasizing that while systems and processes are a good starting point and definitely something I believe we need, The real catalyst for scaling a business is effective leadership.

Because leadership can transcend productivity. It can transcend performance metrics, and it's so often missed. We focus a lot of time on our processes, our structures, and our systems. Yes, those elements are necessary, but systems without leadership is like a compass without a needle. You have the tool, but it provides no direction or guidance on where to go. Scaling a business is more than just systems and processes. It's about fostering a culture of accountability and that is anchored in leadership. Alrighty friends, I hope you found this episode helpful as you review and reflect on your leadership, and I'd love to know where you're going to find mutual purpose in your next difficult conversation.

Until next time, keep shining bright. Thank you for joining me on this episode of CEO Amplify. I appreciate you being part of our thriving community of ambitious business owners. If you enjoy today's episode, I kindly ask you to share this podcast with a friend and take a hot minute to rate and leave a review. It would mean the world to me. Your feedback helps me reach more people and continue providing valuable content. Thanks so much for your support. Keep shining, and we'll catch you on the next episode.