- Speaker #0
Tell me if this has happened to you. As your business grows, the people that used to be the old reliables start dropping the ball, start missing deadlines, start stop delivering in a way that you're used to. Oftentimes our business can outgrow the ability of the people who helped us start the thing. So how do we do it? How do we redefine those roles? How do we keep them in the forward? hopefully, and continue to grow and scale our business. We're going to talk about that today. Welcome to episode 44 of the Key Hire Small Business Podcast, where we cover issues that help owners scale their small business. I'm Corey Harlock, creator of Key Hire Solutions, and I'll be your host. Today, our guest is Chris Leonard, and Chris is the owner and principal coach and consultant at No Impediments, where they build high-performance teams to build complex To solve complex problems, they work with small business, medium-sized business, through large business in a variety of different ways. So it'll be great to get Chris's insight into this challenge that I know everyone has faced. If you're not facing it today, you're going to be facing it or you have faced it. A couple of things about Chris. He's a dad of two little guys at two and five years old, fun ages. He likes to write and record garage and 90s rock music. That's near and dear to my heart as well. We might both be born around the same time. We'll have to explore. And he says he has the holy trinity of dad hobbies. He likes history. He likes barbecue. And he likes whiskey. Not bad hobbies to have, I guess. Let's bring Matt on. Or Matt, let's bring Chris on. Awesome. How are you doing?
- Speaker #1
Good.
- Speaker #0
Can you hear me?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, I got you. Sorry. I'm talking over you.
- Speaker #0
You're good. So 90s rock, who's your band out of the 90s? Oh,
- Speaker #1
gosh. If I could pick anyone to sound like either on guitar or on vocals, it would have to be Oasis. I love the Gallagher brothers. I love the way they sound. But, man, there's so many bands I can't get out of my head. I was a big pop punk kid growing up. So also my life was changed by the time I saw Rancid on SNL in 1995. But also. All the way down to the poppy stuff like Green Day and Blink-182. I can't get that stuff out of my head, man.
- Speaker #0
My son's hockey coach is a huge pop punk guy. In fact, him and his wife just went up to Toronto to see, I think, Blink-182. They're kind of doing a reunion farewell tour or something, right?
- Speaker #1
That'd be fun. Yeah, it's funny. I think the music that you listen to when you're a teenager gets into your DNA in a certain way. And especially if you're a musician, you have to try really hard to make things that... don't sound like what you were listening to as a teenager, because it's just, it's in your blood. And it's the thing that you've most emotionally ingested. And it just, it becomes a part of who you are for life.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. It becomes the soundtrack to your life, right? You hear those slungs and all your memories and good stuff like that. My problem was I was like a big Russian Iron Maiden fan when I was a kid and I play guitar, but I, if I were to write, I would never write anything that sounds like that. Cause those guys are just such good players. Right. And I'm not, but.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, when your influences are that virtuosic, you kind of come into an inflection point where unless you're going to get that good, you have to simplify what you're trying to do,
- Speaker #0
you know? For sure, and my brother went that way. My brother's an amazing guitar player. He can play like every, whatever, he used to be able to play 2112 cover to cover every note and all that good stuff, right? He's a pretty excellent player. I'm not.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. Anyway. My musical abilities are a mile wide and an inch deep. I can do a lot of things decently and not a lot of things terribly well.
- Speaker #0
See, I'm on the inch wide, inch deep scale.
- Speaker #1
So that's fine too, man.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, yeah. It's just for fun. But people aren't here to listen to us talk about music. But today we're talking about personality versus role-based leadership, which I remember when we talked how that kind of triggered my interest and looking at the scope of a growing business and how roles change and i've said it probably a hundred times on this podcast in most instances the right way to start a small business is you have an idea you gather up some cash you hire your neighbor you hire your cousin you hire your cousin's neighbor and you all pitch in and do whatever you have to do to get it moving and if you do it well and you have a business people are interested in The worst part about being a business owner is when you come to the realization that the business, the demands of the business may be outgrowing the abilities and capabilities of the people who helped you build it. That's a horrible place to be as a business owner. And so that's why I thought this topic would be so interesting because it'll give people maybe some cues to say, I'm going through that. And also some advice on how to deal with it, because I think it's about the shittiest thing a business owner can go through is when they realize their friend or their neighbor or their relative got them there, but they're not the people to get. You got me here, but you might not be able to get me there.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. And I mean, I also run into it with intergenerational businesses dealing with success. Yeah,
- Speaker #0
that's a great one, too.
- Speaker #1
A lot of times the father may have one set of skills and the son may have a totally great but very different set of skills. And so if it's that CEO role, then the CEO role is going to wear some different hats in the next generation than they did in the previous generation. But I want to back up and give you a conceptual framework for how I think about this. Sure. A startup or an early stage small business really is optimized for flexibility. If the business has got to change its whole theory of who its customer is, what its mission is, and what its growth engine is going to be, maybe several times in the first couple of years as they figure out how to make it grow, well, you've got to optimize for flexibility and you've got to have people who are willing to just change their whole outlook on what they're here to do a lot and to be part of that conversation with the customers as they figure out what's going to grow. But once you've figured that out and it's a matter of just doubling down, tripling down on that same thing and throwing more fuel onto that fire, you start optimizing for scale. And that's when the size of the business starts to outgrow the people's skills and personalities that started it. And that's when you've got to start to back up and see how many hats a single person is wearing and start to take a few of those off and put them on some other heads and imagine what those other heads might look like. What size do they need to be? What color hair do they need? How much hair do they have? That sort of thing.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, that's a great point. So, well, let's define. We talked about personality versus role-based leadership, or we talked about that a bit in the intro. So put some parameters or definitions around what we mean when we talk about personality and type leadership and role-based leadership.
- Speaker #1
Well, you know, since we started the conversation with music, that actually might be a great analog for talking about personality.
- Speaker #0
I'm always happy to talk music, man. Yeah,
- Speaker #1
because, I mean, take... take Van Halen. I can't talk about this without talking about Van Halen. Being the lead singer of Van Halen, they tried to make it a role-based position. They tried to make it like the role is the singer for Van Halen. The problem is the customer didn't agree with that. So the customer-
- Speaker #0
Oh, you're talking about Gary, what's his name from Extreme when they brought him in before Hagar. Yeah.
- Speaker #1
David Lee Roth, first of all, and then Sammy Hagar. So it's not just an interchangeable role. It's a personality-based,
- Speaker #0
right,
- Speaker #1
in that case. Many of our businesses start that same way where we cannot imagine the business without, say, you know, a Steve Jobs type figure, Steve Wozniak type figure. What is Microsoft without Bill Gates? That is personality driven leadership. And it gets you so far at the top, but eventually either succession planning or scale force you to think about a role as more than just an outgrowth of the personality of the person who happens to be in that role. Because you've got to divide the role as the business gets bigger or you've got to develop that role as the personality. reaches its limits or just wants to go on to something different. So what is a role-based leader? Well, a role-based leader is we have a job that needs to be done. We have a metric that needs to move a certain way. We have an outcome that needs to be consistently generated as a result of somebody being in this chair. So what is the role going to be like that creates that? What do you call that role? What are the duties? What are the things that have to go into it? And what are the things that you look for for the person who fills that? It's a very different thing than just saying, well, well, sales, that's, that's just, that's what Deborah does. Like, I don't know, you asked Deborah about all that stuff because we've always given that to Deborah. She's the only one who knows where that stuff is. Yeah. Very different way of thinking about your business.
- Speaker #0
It reminds me of kind of good to great in the sense where he broke down and he said the, the leaders that had humility and didn't want to be the center of attention and were focused on the success of their leaders. had more sustainability than like the Lee Iacocas who came out and were publishing books on how to lead a business but then when they left the business struggled because that that person who was holding it all together and made themselves the linchpin to success um once they left they had a space where they didn't really know how to deal with it yes and i don't think that personality driven leadership is ultimately sustainable
- Speaker #1
No organization that has changed the world on an intergenerational level succeeds on the strength of a single charismatic personality at the top. You know, the great sociologist Max Weber actually studied this. Whether you're talking about faith groups or labor unions or corporations, oftentimes it takes a charismatic magnetic leadership personality to get the thing started. Right.
- Speaker #0
Right. Yeah. Agreed.
- Speaker #1
Has anyone ever started a new religion without a really charismatic personality? I'd like to see you try. Right. If you're going to make something sustain itself across generations, across different cultures, then you have to have repeatability. And that's where the second leadership of any organization, the second generation tends to be a little bit more bureaucratic, a little bit more professionalized, and a little bit less charismatic. That's the difference between a Steve Jobs and a Tim Cook. That second generation often has a little bit less of that thing that makes you not be able to take your eyes off them, but they're better ultimately at building a high-performing team around them. that can outlive their personality, their tenure, and their abilities. And so while the Apple of Steve Jobs may have been a more magnetic force in terms of generating shareholder value or just keeping moving the culture and putting a lot of product in a lot of people's hands, the Apple of Tim Cook has gone even further than the Apple of Steve Jobs did.
- Speaker #0
Interesting. Now, let me ask you this question. Is it possible for the same person to transition from a personality-based leader to a role-based leader in your experience?
- Speaker #1
It's not terribly common and it can't happen alone. A person has to have a certain degree of humility to get there.
- Speaker #0
Okay, good. That's exactly the word I was thinking of when I asked that question, because it takes a lot to be that introspective to go back and go, okay, I gave it everything I had, but now I'm surrounded by really smart, good people. I'm just going to step back and let them do what they do and try to support them.
- Speaker #1
them yeah i actually i have a favorite anecdote that i use in one of my talks about that uh which is john lassiter um you know i can't talk about leadership without talking about toy story and so when john laster was involved in making the first toy story movie he had this thing that they called hover mode where he would go stand behind people's desks and watch them work and he would start out making innocent little fun suggestions maybe even making a joke and then he would get totally in the weeds and start micromanaging the heck out of their work And eventually he started strangling the life out of this movie. And eventually one of the other co-founders of Pixar had to pull him aside and say, dude, you're driving everybody nuts. Like, you've got to step back. We have hired the best people here. You've got to start trusting them. And when he finally did, he got the team together and said, look, I'm sorry. I've made a mess of this. I know you guys have got this. I'm going to take a few weeks off and just get out of the office and let you guys work your magic. I'm going to come back and watch the movie once you guys feel like you've got it more dialed in. Show me what you can do. And he did. And when he came back, the movie was in much better shape than he had imagined. And in many scenes, especially the pivotal ones in that first Toy Story movie, they were able to actually add a lot of emotional depth and nuance to the work that wasn't in the script, that wasn't in the original inspirational plans that had been given to the animators and the producers. Because they were given free reign to let their creativity go where it went, the decision point moved closer to where the information was. And that enabled people to. It empowered people to bring their best ideas, their best personality traits to the floor. And it bound them together as a team and made Pixar into the high performing it is today. John Lasseter is a great example of somebody who had that humility to step back.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. And I've been fortunate. I do have a couple of clients that I've been working with a long time and I've seen that evolution, you know, where they they are. They're everywhere. And then you surround them with a team, much like you would do in your business, right? To solve that complex problem of how to make their business better. And it takes a minute. It's not going to happen overnight. It's a learned behavior. But it's really cool when you do see them kind of step back and say, man, I have some really great people here. And I'm just going to check in on them and see what I can do to help them be successful. As long as they're, you know, the old. One of the only things I remember from college, it's a bit of a fuzzy period for me, but I had one prof who explained to us the cat box method, right? You have a cat box. As long as a cat poops in the box, it's fine. But if you poop inside the box, you got a problem, right? So you got to draw the box and what's acceptable and what's not. So as long as people stay inside the box, you're good to go. Cool. So thanks for those definitions. I think that's really helpful. So let's kind of move into You said you have a bit of a framework, which I'm interested to hear more about. But what are the mistakes or maybe even the signals, the flashing lights that are coming in the distance that a business owner can look for? Maybe a charismatic business owner who's got a business and they're in a bit of a rocket ship to the moon. But in the distance, there are these blinking red lights or amber lights that they're fast approaching. What should they be looking out for? Or, you know, if you want to transition into what are, you know, what are the mistakes they can make, whatever you're most comfortable with. But I think it'd be interesting to hear what your thoughts are on that.
- Speaker #1
Especially if you're talking to a small business owner, I'd say the first sign to look out for is the divergence between personal and professional goals. Your business is succeeding. Everything's going well. It's growing by leaps and bounds. And the more your business succeeds, the more you hate your life. If that is you, then your business is outgrowing your personality and possibly even the personalities of your leadership team. Because it's taking. you as this connective glue to hold it all together as it's all getting further and further apart and stretching in different directions, that's a sign that your leadership team just is not mature enough and might need some augmentation with a person or two who are able to be that connective tissue for you. There's different types of leaders in the world. Some people are very operational. Some people are very visionary. Some people are very executional. And depending on which one of those you really want to be where your passion is, you may have to hand off those other parts to other types of leaders in your organization. I don't care if you call that operational person, the COO or the head of product or whatever. The titles are fungible. But understanding who's in charge of what and being having the humility to give it away and recognizing when trying to be all those things is starting to make you not like your business, not want to keep doing it and not have the life you want. Well. that's important. And I think one of the other signs that you're not having the life you want is the greatest form of wealth, I think, is time. The greatest form of wealth is time that you can spend the way that you want to, whether that's with your family, on your hobbies, on traveling, whatever. And if a successful business is not leading you to the point where you have time you can spend the way you want to, then your business is not really succeeding in serving you the way you need it to be. and you're actually just your own worst boss.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, I think that's a great point. The question I had as you were talking through that is, and just for a point of clarification, generally when you're bringing in these role-based leaders to take the work that doesn't energize you or your founding leaders, whatever we want to call them, off their plate, are you bringing them in above or below? Are you hiring those? experts who can kind of wrangle the cats? Or are you bringing in support to those leaders that are struggling? Attention business owners, are you tired of wasting valuable time hiring for associate level positions only to have them not work out or show up? Let me introduce you to CareerSpring. CareerSpring connects first generation and low-income college students with employers like you for those crucial early career roles. Many of these graduates had to balance a full-time job and a full-time course load to achieve their college dreams. They understand the value of hard work and overcoming obstacles. And here's the best part. CareerSpring is free for employers. Yes, you heard that right. As a non-profit organization, CareerSpring offers their services at no cost to you, making it easy to find and hire these incredible future leaders. They work with students all across the United States, from trade programs to Ivy League schools and everything in between. If you're ready to make a real difference and connect first generation potential with future opportunities, click the link in the show notes below and learn how you can transform your business and support these exceptional students.
- Speaker #1
You know, it's a great question. And I think the answer of it is within the way you framed the question, because you mentioned joy and what. gives you energy. And I think that's the piece of introspection that any leader at this inflection point has got to consider. If you make a big whiteboard diagram of what brings you joy in your job as a business owner or business leader and what drains you, in there somewhere is the answer to what you need to give away. Because your business shouldn't just give you time that you can spend the way you want to. It should also give you joy. It should. The thing that brought you to doing this as your business, as opposed to doing anything else you could have started a business around, in there is the seeds of joy and belonging. If you want to keep doing this, you should keep the parts that really fuel you. Some people are very creative, for instance. And if you're really creative, and the thing that you love about your business the most is finding unique, fun ways of creating things that connect with your customers to make them, to keep them emotionally involved with your business. Well, you should not be the chief operating officer of your business. You should maybe be the chief marketing officer of your business or something like that. Or, for instance, if... Changing the world in some major way or changing your industry in some ambitious moonshot kind of way is what gets you up in the morning to do your business. Well, then maybe a CEO type role is perfect for you. But honestly, if the craft of your business, what it delivers for your customers and getting better and better and more excellent at that is what you love. You may be more of like a head of product or chief operating officer for your business and getting somebody else to take over a CEO so you can concentrate on the thing you love about it. that might be the best thing that ever happened to you. And that doesn't necessarily mean you're giving away total control of your business. It means that you're keeping control of what you love the most about it and giving away all the parts of it that drain you and distract you from what you love.
- Speaker #0
And often the things you love most about it are the essential unique parts of the business because they're unique to the owner.
- Speaker #1
Yes, it's a way of keeping your fingerprints and your personality at the heart of it.
- Speaker #0
You can't farm that out, right? That's the vision.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. And as you scale it, you have got to stay personally involved with it as you build the team around that thing. I mean, if you take marketing as an example, if social media marketing and your social presence is a big part of the personality and brand of your business. Well, I mean, it's going to outgrow you sooner or later, but staying personally involved in it and staying personally involved in the team that's executing on it is how you make sure that that personality and vision stay at the heart of what it's doing, even as other parts of the business keep intensifying and getting better.
- Speaker #0
So I. think I what I if I read between the lines I think what I took from that correct me if I'm wrong is oftentimes in these businesses when we're bringing in experience and talent to to improve our business and the roles that are struggling we're often it would the right thing to do is often to bring in experience to help lift up and mentor that that person, that friend, that neighbor, that cousin that might be struggling versus giving them support on the bottom, because oftentimes, they might not even know what they need and that's not really help, that might even feel like more work now. Is that kind of the essence of what you were saying?
- Speaker #1
Well, I'll take a cue from the improv world and say yes and. Okay, good. Yes and, oftentimes, especially in a small business. what you're running into is just not enough hours in the day. You actually haven't figured out what gives you joy and what doesn't. You're still figuring out what works and you need to stay flexible on all fronts. And if that's you and you just need to give away administrative minutia, well, it's time for like, it's time for VAs or it's time for entry-level talent to enter your organization and just take over admin. And for many business owners, that's it. But so like, guys, I see you, you're out there and I know that's what you need. And you probably need some help just building basic SOPs and systems to be able to give away. menial work. But in a lot of cases, in the case of businesses about to enter the mid-sized field, you're like 50 employees or so where it's getting to the point where you can't have a really good working relationship with everybody involved. Well, that's where it's time to bring in really good experienced leadership to take over whole other vertical segments of your business.
- Speaker #0
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- Speaker #1
Yeah. I run into this all the time. And I think there's a few things you got to consider there. When you look at that person who's starting to underperform in the new business that you're at now. I think you got to look back at why you hired them. When you first got started, what made you excited to have this person in the building? What was the secret sauce they were bringing to bear that made you excited about them? Now compare that to what they're doing today. How much has their job grown today beyond that core thing that was their main skill set? Look, maybe they've added some things to their core skill set. Maybe they've become a rock star at a second thing while they've been in the building and that you want to keep giving that to them. But there's probably a lot of things that they've taken on. that aren't bringing them joy, aren't bringing them energy, and are nowhere close to their core competency. Those are great things to build into some other role that you designed to give away from them to somebody else. And it could be that, I mean, it may be ego challenging in some cases, the way that you title and define and design these roles, because it could be that the person who was a great chief technical officer in your startup of five people may end up needing to be your solution architect. in a business of 100 people.
- Speaker #0
Right.
- Speaker #1
And you need some other CTO because your core problem now is we've got seven development teams going and we need somebody who can just keep them staffed, keep the lights on, keep people fed and organized and do all the reviews and make sure we're growing high performing teams around here as opposed to somebody who has the genius technological solution to every problem. It's a different role as the business evolves and you got to learn to think about it differently and recognize what's bringing that person joy and what's not in their core competency.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, that's a great point. And the one thing I would add, and I'm sure you've experienced it, is often part of the role we're asking them to do has nothing to do with the department that they're running as well. You know, it's like the old sales and marketing. You have someone who's really good at sales and has a creative way to sell. You think, well, you should run our social too. But then you take this all-star employee who you were. very high on, you've given them two jobs that are polar opposites. And you say, well, our social is not doing great. And their sales haven't been as good as they used to. And now you're disappointed in them. Because you've asked them, you divided their attention and asked them to continue to get their performance and where they were really successful with 50 or 60% of their time and given them a job that is completely different to run the other 40 or 50% of their time. And you're not happy with either. And I think that's a tendency a lot of small business owners have, because when you're small, you can do that and it often works out. But as you get bigger and the demands get more focused, each area of the business needs more attention. It's usually a recipe for failure. And I actually think it happens even more than people realize in bigger businesses. You know, I'm personally good friends with somebody who's a hospital system CEO in rural Kentucky. And when he took over this one system, what he noticed is that the guy who was in charge of their behavioral health initiative, which was a huge strategic initiative for them, growing behavioral health centers in rural Kentucky were in many cases in underserved markets. Well, the person they put in charge of that. had been sort of an operational VP, rockstar level guy who was great at being an operator in a hospital system because he was a former physician and knew the business inside out. But when you took that person who was passionate about delivering things like primary care and emergency care and knew the physician side of it inside and out, you put him over behavioral health, which was something he didn't understand, had no experience in, and often happened completely in a different building in a different part of town than the building he was used to in his entire career. Well, He was a total fish out of water there. He had no passion for it. He didn't understand it. He didn't understand the people in it and it drained him. This happens in big businesses all the time. And it's because the impulse is somebody is a rock star and seems like they're totally adaptable at lots of different things and they'll succeed at whatever you put them in. And you don't ask them what their passion is. And you don't let them loose on the thing that they love.
- Speaker #1
And there are... I mean, there's so few and far between. I wouldn't bet on it that some people are just that adaptive, right? They love the challenge. The challenge is what they love and it doesn't matter. But it doesn't matter what you give them. They're going to do it. But those people are so rare. It's like hiring the person with no experience and throwing them into a job and they rock it. You're like, oh my God, they're the best, right? But those people are one in a hundred. But the mistake a business owner will make is, well, that's our new hiring strategy. Let's just hire really high energy young people because they can just do whatever we ask them to do. And we don't care about the experience or where they come from or the capacity they're bringing. And so, you know, we always say we deal in probabilities. And we want to maximize the probability of success. And trying to find those one in 100 people is not doing that. You're really stretching the odds.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, look, even Michael Jordan wasn't a rock star at baseball, right? Yeah,
- Speaker #1
fair enough.
- Speaker #0
Even a stratospheric level talent can't do everything at the same level of performance. Eddie Van Halen, after David Lee Roth left, I'm just going to keep developing the same example because why not? Eddie Van Halen didn't become the lead singer of Van Halen after David Lee Roth left because he was a guitar player. He knew his core competency and it wasn't that thing. And they needed to get somebody who was amazing at it. that thing. You may call it Van Hagar, but Sammy Hagar would definitely have that competency. And so, I mean, when you replace anybody in a business or design a role for somebody in your business, you've got to keep their core competency and their passion. And whatever it is you're giving away, it needs to be somebody who loves doing that and bring some skill set to bear on that thing. Because just the passion to change and find something new isn't enough alone. Now, that'll get you to... T minus or plus 20 degrees from what you're great at, it'll definitely help you there. But T minus or T plus 90 degrees, probably not.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, agreed. So this is maybe a good time to switch over into the advice part of the podcast. So we've kind of identified some flags, what to look for as a business is growing and you have these people that you're hired because they fit what you're trying to do. We're calling it personality-based leadership. There are these charismatic, hardworking people that can motivate the people around them, whatever that is. And we're trying to say, okay, now you're getting big enough where you need to start building out and defining these roles and the roles within the roles. So Mr. Personality or Mrs. Personality, you're really good at this. Now we need to hire people to do B, C, D, right? So maybe give us your top two, three, five pieces of advice on how to start that process. I'm a business owner and I'm thinking this all sounds really familiar to me. I think I need to start transitioning and bringing in some experience and capacity into my business. What are the things they can start doing to make that transition successful?
- Speaker #0
Sure. I think the first thing you should do is sit down and have an org design workshop, whether that's you and your brain trust, you and your coach, you and your wife even. Sit down with a whiteboard and put down all the outcomes that need to happen in your business on a big org chart. And start to design orgs around those outcomes or start to design roles and boxes around those outcomes. Put every outcome in a little box by itself. Forget about who's doing them right now and who they are owned by right now. Just write down what the outcomes are. We need social media followers who turn into leads in our CRM. And we need leads in our CRM who turn into paying customers. Or we need successful projects that get all the way to an absolutely great referral testimonial video. Right. Like list those outcomes and then figure out what are the roles that generate those outcomes and then start to take the people you've got and map them on to the different roles they're already performing. OK. And if you need help dividing up those roles into some coherent categories, think in the traditional categories of operations, finance and marketing. Just start with those three and see how much deeper you need to go. Maybe within operations, you've got technology and product or etc. So start to think about those things in some broad categories. And once you start to see what people or what people in your organization are doing multiple roles that are across different orgs, you start to see who's pulled in too many directions. And then you can start to ask for each one of those people who's wearing multiple hats, which one is closest to their passion and their core competency. And then you'll start to see where the opportunities are for change, particularly yourself.
- Speaker #1
Cool. Now, let me ask you this. Once you've done that and you say. you know, my neighbor who's been with me for five years is in the wrong seat and we're going to trim his duties in half. We're going to move him. And then I'm going to bring someone in with more experience to do the majority of the role he's in right now. How do you approach that?
- Speaker #0
Yeah, it's a good conversation to have. First of all, I think you should have enough of a relationship with this person if you've been building the business with them for this long. that you should actually know their take on what the org needs to survive in the future. They may have already thought about this and have some ideas that you should consider. So if this is someone who's been with you since the beginning, it may be that they need to be part of your brain trust. The plan that's most likely to succeed may be the one that those people help you design in the first place. Now, if you think that person has gotten too short-sighted, too distracted with life or otherwise, then it may be that you just need to have a conversation with them where you say, I think that your role has outgrown what you love to do and what you're great at. And so I want to help you give away the things that you don't like for the things that you do love. And so how can I help design some roles that are going to compliment and starting with that kind of conversation, even as you start to develop a plan, maybe that doesn't involve their input or that does is the first step, having a good communication going. Does that answer your question?
- Speaker #1
It does. And I think the first, the most important thing you said in there is it's a good conversation to have. And that's, you know, oftentimes business owners get so busy and so in their head, they think everyone understands. They think they've communicated what they've been thinking about for a long time. And that communication, that conversation gets started in the middle or at the end versus at the beginning. And that makes it a little harder. I love the idea of saying to these. you know bringing your brain trust in the room and kind of saying all of our roles are going to change so just let's not argue don't be offended about it my role is going to change your role is going to change your role is going to change the idea here is to put us all in the the best the best place for us in the business and then we'll get we'll find support for each of us within the business that might be a way more approachable way to say it than sitting with your spouse and saying, we did a new org chart. And by the way, I changed your job, right? That might be a harder, a harder piece of information to absorb for that person who's been there with you from the beginning. And I'm glad you talked about that because communication and conversations are the most important element for those key stakeholders, those legacy people in your business.
- Speaker #0
Yeah.
- Speaker #1
And like I said, a lot of business owners who they've been mulling an idea over for three months, they haven't communicated it. But in their mind, they have had the conversation so many times they begin to think, oh, people know it's coming. They know what I'm going to talk about. They shouldn't even do that to them, right? And then they're shocked when people are taken aback when they drop something on them. And all it was was it could have been a conversation a couple of weeks ago saying, look at it. I'm mulling something over my head. I just want to pass it, bounce it off you and see what your thoughts are.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. Too often business owners think they have to have all the answers.
- Speaker #1
Correct.
- Speaker #0
or even leaders, people are very afraid of looking vulnerable and showing their hand and showing that they haven't figured it all out yet. And so they put this pressure on themselves to have a perfect plan before they communicate anything to anybody. And then everyone's frustrated that they didn't get any input on the plan. And it's not as likely to work when they didn't get any input because they're not bought out. They don't have any skin in the game and they weren't consulted. And so they feel a little bit miffed. You can completely flip the script on that dynamic. by consulting people and having the conversation with them to say, I see that this thing's getting bigger and we're all going to have to reconsider what it is each of us does here and who else we need to bring in to complement our skill sets as this gets bigger and bigger and too big for all of us. So what are your thoughts? What do you see going on? What kind of team do you think you'd like to be part of or build for the future? Because once somebody's bought in on that and they have Their input, their DNA is in this plan that you're moving forward with. It's bigger than everybody else. Everyone feels like they're on the hook to make it work. And everyone's best ideas have been brought to bear. You're not going to lose out on your best friend's idea that honestly you may not have thought of because he's been reading different books and listening to different podcasts than you have. Your collective intelligence is bigger than your intelligence alone. The pressure is off when you think of it in that dynamic because you don't have to have all the answers.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, that's a great point. Everyone is more invested in it. And I think when you said everyone's best ideas have been implemented, right? They all feel like they had a hand in crafting it. And the reality is, I think you have to not be careful, but it can happen. You're going to get everyone's best idea, but someone's best idea might not be a good idea for this plan. Yeah. And so I think a lot of times people... go from, okay, I'm the leader of the company. My job is to weed out the good and the bad. And to kind of make the team cohesive and happy, they take everyone's idea, including the ideas people are like, and you're like, well, we got to take it. We don't want them to be upset. Right. But oftentimes people, the motivation isn't in having their idea be executed on. It's having you listen intently to their idea and say, I hear it. I get it. I understand it. Here's why I don't think it's going to work, but let's table it. And maybe down the road that that will be able to work it within the system.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. The wrong idea is usually just the right idea at the wrong time.
- Speaker #1
That's great. We look at really intelligent,
- Speaker #0
motivated people who are all bought in on the vision. So it could be that the wrong idea for this year is exactly what you're going to need in a year. And that it's good to keep those ideas written down so you don't you don't lose them. and bring them back to the fore next year and consider, look, maybe we were wrong and we really should have done this a year ago. So great. Let's get it done now. Let's not lose any more time. But you're right in that people want to be heard and recognized for their input. And as long as those good ideas are rubbing up against each other, you probably have a good chance of the best willing out. Two tips to make that work. Cool. One is don't be afraid of the conflict. It's going to take time. Hearing each other out takes a long time. It takes a lot longer than a dictator telling everybody exactly how it's going to be and that you better shape up or ship out. So be prepared for it to take a little while and have the patience to sit through the discomfort of that conversation sometimes because it's not always fun, but it's productive. And then two, this one's really important. You can't necessarily facilitate that conversation all by yourself. If you're the CEO or the owner of the business or some other principal in the business. Oftentimes, managing the conversation while also taking your role in the conversation is just too much to bear. So that's a good time to bring in your executive coach, your business coach, or a trained facilitator to be the person who guides that retreat, that conversation to the outcome without having their own skin in the game. That's a great time to get a third party involved so that you don't have to wear that extra hat. You'd be surprised how much less stressful it is when being responsible for arriving at some kind of outcome. Does it? also coincide with wanting your voice.
- Speaker #1
You know, that is a great spot to end it, man. That was great. Thanks for that. So people like what you had to say, Chris, and they want to reach out and learn more about no impediments. How can we reach you?
- Speaker #0
All right. There's two great ways to get ahold of me. One, if you just want to find out more about what I'm doing, noimpediments.com is a great high level of view of what I'm up to. The second level, if you want to hear me talk, see what I have to say, or watch what I'm talking about on different themes. each week. No impediments on Instagram and TikTok is the other way to get ahold of me. So check me out on Instagram and TikTok, no impediments. For as long as TikTok is still around, there's a reason I'm not pushing it as hard as Instagram. Instagram is probably here to stay though. So check me out on Instagram. It's the same feed in either place. And of course you can find me on LinkedIn. No impediments is on LinkedIn, but you can also find me at Chris Leonard. You can see the stuff on your screen right now.
- Speaker #1
Very cool, man. Thanks so much. I appreciate your time today. It was a great conversation. Gosh,
- Speaker #0
thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
- Speaker #1
My pleasure. We like smart people around here. So that's why I bring guests on because no one wants to listen to me talk.
- Speaker #0
Nobody is smart enough to do it by themselves. Look, if we could, I say this to people all the time, especially on teams. If any of us was capable of building a billion dollar corporation by ourselves, we would all work at corporations of one person. But we all need other people in order to succeed. And so that's why you want to build a higher performing team. That's a great reason to rub some good minds together.
- Speaker #1
Great point, man. Thanks so much. I appreciate it.
- Speaker #0
Thank you for having me. Have a great day.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, thanks. Man, that was an awesome conversation. Loved it. Lots of great information in there. Lots of good actionable information in there. But I think there's a common theme amongst a lot of the leadership topics we talk about. And that is, as your company grows, your leadership team's going to grow. going to change and grow as well. And the way you make those transitions is going to be really important, especially around your legacy employees as they're kind of struggling and you're repositioning them in the business and if you want to keep them. So always a valuable topic. And I think Chris made a lot of great, great points. I'd like to thank you guys for tuning in to the Key Hire Small Business Podcast. If you got value out of today's episode. We want to keep up to date on our new content. Make sure you leave a comment or let us know what you think of the episode and be sure to subscribe here on YouTube. If you prefer to listen to your podcast, you can find us on Apple, Spotify, whatever your favorite platform is. Just put in P Hire Small Business Podcast in the search bar. We look forward to having you be a subscriber on our audio podcast as well. I'd like to thank you for listening. I'm Corey Harlock. And until next time, stop grinding, start growing.
