Podcast Intro
===
[00:00:00] Welcome to the Liberating Teams podcast. I'm Holly Breeding team psychology practitioner and org effectiveness consultant. Every week around here, we dismantle the outdated hierarchical leadership systems that keeps leaders like you stuck in the weeds and break down how to build a self-managed team that thrives without you at the center.
Because when your team has the clarity systems and ownership, they need to lead themselves. You finally get to lead strategically. It's time to liberate the way you lead.
okay, y'all. This episode is so freaking good. The thing is, the audio on it, it's a little bit rough, so had a little bit of microphone troubles, but I know it's going to serve you so well.
So I know the audio's a little bit rough. You're gonna hear some bumps. You're gonna hear my kiddos singing in the background, but bear with me 'cause the content's so good. Okay, let's dive in.
I think in leadership it's so easy [00:01:00] to get caught up in the day to day. The latest fire drills, the latest high priority, the latest, urgent requests. From above that we just get on the hamster wheel of executing. Just chasing after the next thing, and the things that need attention in our team keep piling up.
It's like the, you need to get your oil checked on your car. It's like you, it's coming up and then next thing you know, we're past it, and then next thing you know, we're way past it. And then, some weird noises happening and then, this isn't quite working well, but you just need to keep going.
We don't have time to stop and get it checked. So we just keep driving to the next destination, to the next thing, to the next thing. Because we're just caught up in the busyness,
and a lot of that comes from that as individual contributors. In those lower levels of leadership, we are measured on our ability to execute, on our ability to do, to drive more work forward, to execute more deliverables, [00:02:00] to solve more problems. But the reality is as we get into these higher levels of senior leadership.
Just blindly executing is no longer the standard. What they're looking for at these levels is your ability to take a group of talent, of different skill sets and personalities and behaviors. Combine that with the resources, the tools, the systems, the budget you've been given, and be able to drive business impact.
Do you know how to take what they've given you and turn it into something meaningful for the business. So your team is your resume, how they're operating, the results they're delivering. So I want you to think about if I walked into your team today and opened up the hood, just like on a car.
What would it look like in there? Would it be well maintained? Would everyone [00:03:00] have a clear understanding of where we're trying to go? Would everyone have a clear understanding of their role in achieving that? Are processes an absolute disaster? Are people like, is there underlying friction, boiling under the surface of the team? Are you having to physically be in there holding everything together for your team to operate? If you are, if you so much as take a day off, like nobody would know what's going on or be able to drive work forward, what would I find?
And this isn't like a shame thing, y'all, if you went into my car right now, there are Cheez-Its all over the floor, like a spilled juice box. It is pure chaos because of life. We are in the middle of a renovation. We are not living in our house. Life is life. And the same thing happens throughout the year.
In the middle of the corporate chaos. Life is life in and. We skip over a few of those oil [00:04:00] checks when it comes to our team, and that happens. What I'm talking about is when we constantly neglect it, when we let it build up over time, and the next thing you know, we're expecting our team to deliver results with this clunky, beat up, broken down car because we're continuing to ignore.
Making the investment in improving our team op, improving how we operate, fixing the problems we know that continue to pop up again and again, and we think no one else is looking. We think no one else can see it. As long as we're hustling, as long as we're, pushing out the deliverables, solving the fire drills, it's all okay.
But I can tell you, having worked with hundreds of teams, it's obvious the difference between the teams who are driving themselves into the ground, wheels falling off, but just keep going, keep pushing, like it's fine.
Just keep driving. We're gonna make it happen. And the [00:05:00] teams who are continuously investing in themselves, continuously trying to optimize how they work, taking care of themselves and allowing themselves to push further . Faster through their investment in their team, in their resources. How you are taking care of your team matters.
It's your resume, and if you are solely getting results by physically being in it, holding your team together or by pushing your team. To deliver more and more without properly caring for and stewarding those resources you've been given. Then what is that saying to those higher up? We've given you this talent, we've given you this budget, we've given you this resources, and what have you done with it?
Did you run it into the ground? Did try your best for a few months and then decide that you [00:06:00] needed different talent, more talent, more budget, better tools in order for you to be able to do anything with it? Or did you take that talent and say, okay, how can we deliver the most impact with what we've been given?
And then continuously put in the work to optimize that, to say, okay, now how can we do it better? How can we do it faster? How can we do it easier, cheaper? How can we drive more impact and continuously optimize those resources again and again to the point where they're like, holy crap. The amount of impact you've been able to have on this business.
With that team, with that talent is insane. You have this touch to be able to walk into a team and drive potential out of them more than what even they thought was possible. That's what they're looking for is the leader who has mastery. Over their leadership to where [00:07:00] they know how to walk into any team and amplify the impact, not because they were blessed with the perfect talent or the right amount of headcount or the best budget, but because of their mastery of leadership, because they understand how to steward what they've been given and set up the strategy, the structure, and the systems to drive the most business impact.
And it really comes down to three things. It comes down to one strategy. Do you know where to focus those resources to drive that maximum business impact? The reality of today's corporate world is that the choices are endless, the distractions are endless. There is a million things at any one moment, constantly fighting for our team's attention.
And the leaders who understand where to focus and how to make trade-offs, how to say [00:08:00] no to everything else, to put blinders on and relentlessly focus their team in on achieving that one thing. That's the differentiator.
It is the same thing with managing finances. Are you good with managing money? Same thing. Are you good with managing the resources you've been given? If I invest in you and your leadership by giving you these resources, what am I going to get back in return? Am I going to get a bunch of burned out talent?
Who's ready to walk out the door. And what I have to show for it is we chased after 15 initiatives and fire drills, and we essentially just kept the hamster wheel running. Or am I investing resources in you? And what I got in return was massive business impact. And when business impact, I'm talking about on the bottom line.
Not what we think is most important to our function, what we think we should be doing. I'm talking about did we drive revenue [00:09:00] up? Did we drive cost down? And I don't care what function you are, everything you should be doing comes back to that. Now, for some of you guys, you have a more, direct line to that you are a frontline team or a team that directly touches that end user, that end consumer.
For others of you guys, you are, more of that second layer function where you're supporting those who are on that front line, the ones who are developing the product or the service. Some of y'all are in a secondary layer function, so you are not directly impacting it, but everything you should do ties back to it.
So you are the finance function, helping them steward their finances to drive revenue up and cost down. You are the HR function, helping them develop their talent to where they can better meet the needs of the customer. We're developing the engineers, the designers, so they're able to create more innovative solutions to keep up with the [00:10:00] competition.
Everything comes back to how you are driving business impact and your ability to understand the needs of the business and positioning your team no matter how far removed from revenue from cost. And actually being able to influence that to drive an impact on that. They are investing in you through the resources they've given you.
What return are you bringing into the business based off of their investment in you? The second thing that they're looking for on your resume is your ability to know how to set up the systems, the structure to get your team to actually deliver on that strategy. Without you having to be in it. Listen, guys, strategy is cheap in corporate culture these days.
It just is. Strategy has been boiled down to a PowerPoint parade of here's 1,000,012 [00:11:00] goals or OKRs that we want to hit. It's essentially a wishlist. And that wishlist tends to go out the door somewhere around the end of Q1. We either lose sight of it because of everything going on. It becomes completely irrelevant based off of the changes that are happening, or it just stays buried in a file folder somewhere and we just forget about it completely.
They want to know that when you say, here is the impact we are going to have on the business here, you actually know how to deliver on that through your team, not through you having to be in everything in the day to day, constantly in the weeds, in order for you to drive those results, but you know how to get results through a team.
Do you know how to align your team around that strategy you just said, do you know how to structure their roles and give them clarity around what everyone's role in achieving that strategy is? We're not relying on shitty, [00:12:00] outdated job descriptions and think that's enough for everyone to have the clarity they need to take ownership of their roles.
We give them, we actually design the roles for empowerment. We think empowerment is something that like. Oh, we just need to empower our team. It's like a yay, yay rah, like behavioral thing. But you actually have to equip your team to be empowered. We have to give them the clarity they need. Here is exactly the outcomes you own in driving the strategy forward.
We actually have to empower them to own those, not through. Motivational language, but by saying, here are the decision rights you have full authority of. Here's what I want you to run with. Here's where you need to loop me in. Here's the context you need. Good job. Here's the meetings you need to be on, the me, the email threads you need to be on, making sure they have the full story, the full picture, making sure that when they're in those meetings that they have full authority to speak on [00:13:00] behalf of this work instead of everyone turning to you.
But it's not just about ownership over the different buckets of work. It's also about ownership over our team's results. So it's not me as the leader who's responsible for the strategy. It's us as a team. We co-own this strategy. We co-own the delivery of these results, so it's putting the systems into place that make co-ownership possible.
You are not setting the strategy and priorities and dictating them down to the team. It's a process you do with the team and eventually you are not even leading it. Somebody on your team is, and you are being that consultant, that strategic advisor. So they're setting the priorities, they're owning them, they're coordinating the work, the handoffs between functions, what needs to get prioritized, what needs to get deprioritized, how we're actually executing on the work and making sure that it stays on track there.
There's a set [00:14:00] structure, a rhythm, a system for how we spot. Issues how we need to make improvements. None of that is on you as the leader. Something that you have to do that you have to
bring forward and get the team talking about. You've created set systems that run automatically. They just happen. Your team understands because you've outlined those systems and they just automatically run in your team. So your team owns those buckets, and then these systems are running, keeping day-to-day automations, or day-to-day operations automated.
And so you are leading up above at that strategic level. You are spotting when things are going off track. You're spotting opportunities to per push, further, faster, farther. You are influencing, be on behalf of your team, getting them what they need to execute on that strategy. The business knows that when you set a [00:15:00] strategy, it's as good as done because it's not like.
Held together with hope and a prayer, and you are going to be distracted in every little strategy meeting because you're, messaging your team on the side trying to fight the latest fire drill. They know that when you set a strategy, you're going back to your team. You are aligning on who's responsible for what outcomes, and you're good to go because you've already done the work to set up the systems to structure.
Your team needs to deliver results. Through your team without being dependent on you holding it all together. And that's what enables this third thing, and that is your ability to scale your impact and what your team is capable of.
Do you know how to take the investment that they have invested in you and scale that to drive bigger, better, faster, easier, cheaper impact for the business? Do you have the business acumen [00:16:00] to understand what is coming down the pipeline, the forethought into what is happening in your industry? And I'm talking about your company-wide industry, not your function industry, and figure out how to best position your team to meet those business needs.
Are setting a strategy at the beginning of the year and then like slowly working towards meeting that, throughout the 12 months or are you every single quarter being like, okay what can we do to drive the most business impact? And you're running a sprint 12 weeks driving most business impact that we can.
Boom. Okay, what did we learn? What went well? What didn't go well? Okay, what are we gonna do this next quarter? How are we gonna drive the most business impact based off of what we learned? 12 weeks, boom. Let's go. Like when everyone else is playing the slow roll game of oh, we have 12 months. Let's just slowly work towards our goals and at the end of the year we're gonna talk about what we did.
It's no, I'm over here every 12 weeks pumping out the latest, thing that's driving revenue [00:17:00] forward or driving cost down. Okay, ask me every single quarter and I can tell you the impact my team's having on the business. And we are constantly trying, like our biggest competitor is ourselves.
How can we do it better? How can we do it faster? How can we do it easier? How can we do it cheaper? That is your resume. It's if they are singing you every single quarter pumping out results, like not, and I'm talking business impact results. I'm not talking about, pushing out a million new initiatives or a million new deliverables or chasing after a million fire drills.
I'm talking about this quarter. Here's the biggest problem our business is facing, and we can make an impact on it. In this way. We're hyper fixated on that solving specific business problems. That are critical to the business succeeding. Like I always like to give this example of like you're a learning and development team and based off of the events that happened in the world in 2020, we [00:18:00] lost a massive amount of our customer service workforce.
And now we're kind trying to come back and we have this huge talent issue over in customer service because, it takes forever to people get, for people to get up to speed in order to know our, all our policies to best serve the customer. And we lost most of our tenure talent. So we have a super junior workforce.
We don't have great management because they're all new. And you are over here look at this leading edge, high performing like leadership program that we just developed and we got all these leaders in there, and they're all from corporate and commercial functions. And look at how great we are.
Yes. Cool. Love that. That's awesome. But is that in the best service of the business right now? Or is it focusing on how can we get this customer service talent up to speed better, faster? How can we lose sight? We lose sight of what the [00:19:00] business needs and how we can drive the most impact in the business.
And we get focused on our function and what's best for our function and what's happening in our functional industry, and how can we be the best or meet the benchmarks in our function. Is a high performing management program a great idea? Yeah, I love that. It, but it all comes down to business impact. How are we solving the problems that are a priority to the business right now?
If all of our customers leave us because we can't provide good customer SER service, then that high performing management program no longer matters. That's the difference between a strategic leader and. A tactical leader, an operational leader, how are you stewarding the resources you've been given to drive business impact?
That is what they're looking at. And when you do that, of course they want to give you more. Of course, they want to say, I'm gonna make bigger investments in you, bolder
[00:20:00] Thank you for listening to the Liberating Teams podcast. If this episode hit home for you, don't forget to share it with another leader. Or if you've got 10 seconds, drop a five star review and it would mean the world to me so we can liberate more teams together. And if you try something for today's episode, come tell me how it went.
DM me on Instagram over at Liberating Teams, and I'd love to chat more about it. Now. Let's go change the world of work. One liberated team at a time.
investments in you. I want you to take on this department, this, bigger cross-functional initiative. I want you in higher level rules.
I want you in bigger problems because I saw what you could do with the investment that I made in you. I gave you those resources, I gave you that talent. I gave you that budget, and you provided massive business impact. You showed me that you knew how to be a steward of this resources, so of course I'm going to do more.
Your team is your resume. What is it telling [00:21:00] them? And if you are not happy with the story that it's ,telling . You need to be inside liberated leader. Those three things that we just covered, that's exactly what we do inside that program.
So you are stepping in day one, you're filling out that onboarding form. I'm getting to know everything about your team, what is going on, where you're trying to go. I'm spotting your biggest gaps where you need to be focusing and we get to work. We have a custom plan of exactly where you need to focus, and we start with your strategy.
Figuring out, okay, how can we position your team to be that source of business impact? I don't care if you are a function that is so far removed from revenue. And you can't see any way of how to connect your team to driving business impact. I promise you I can. We're going to figure that out and we are going to position your strategy, your team around being invaluable to driving [00:22:00] the business forward.
And we're gonna get your team clear on what they need to be prioritizing, where they need to be focusing to get there. So there's none of this like trying to sell your team, like constantly doing the road shows and like look at all the initiatives we've done. Like no. The connection between your team and business impact is clear.
There's no question about the impact you're having on the business. It's obvious. And then the next thing we do is we're focusing on that self-managed team. How can we deliver on that strategy without you having to be in the day to day That's setting up the structure, the systems for your team to have everything they need to be fully empowered to own, not just the work, but how the team operates.
Day to day, how we're planning, prioritizing, improving, collaborating. We are setting up the structure for them to have ownership of it. So you can step up into that strategic [00:23:00] leadership position, and that's where the third part comes in. We're positioning you as a strategic authority. I'm teaching you how to develop that business acumen, how to become that person in the room, who's known for connecting dots, solving problems, spotting what other people are missing.
I'm teaching you how to take that business impact or take that investment that has been given to you, those resources, that talent, and to scale the impact, how we can do it better, faster, easier. So you become that person in the business where they're like. We want to make bigger investments in you. We want to have you leading at higher levels to be in the rooms that matter, because we see what you can do when we give you resources, when we give you a problem, when we ask your perspective on something, you are not a tactical leader.
You are a strategic leader, and [00:24:00] that's what they want more of at those senior leadership levels. If that is what you want. If that is where you are trying to go, I'm gonna drop the information for Liberated Leader below, or head over to Instagram, shoot me a dm. Let's have a conversation if it's the right fit for you.
Okay, y'all, let's go do the work.
Thank you for listening to the Liberating Teams podcast. If this episode hit home for you, don't forget to share it with another leader. Or if you've got 10 seconds, drop a five star review and it would mean the world to me so we can liberate more teams together. And if you try something for today's episode, come tell me how it went.
DM me on Instagram over at Liberating Teams, and I'd love to chat more about it. Now. Let's go change the world of work. One liberated team at a time.
