The Caitlin Mitchell Show
After nearly a decade in business, it's time for me to share what I've learned about building a business focused on service leadership to help you on your journey as a business owner. My goal is for you to walk away from each episode with one thing - one sentence, one thought, one perspective shift, one new idea - that has an impact on you, your business, or your life.
The Caitlin Mitchell Show
5 Qualities Great Leaders Must Possess | Ep 9
This episode is a treasure trove of insights, rich with personal stories and actionable advice for anyone ready to take their leadership skills to the next level. From the ability to inspire and drive momentum to the importance of self-awareness, we'll explore how these traits are not confined to the corporate world but are essential across all successful teams.
Have you ever considered how your mood sets the tone for your entire team? We'll examine how being in tune with your team's needs and seeking honest feedback can transform team dynamics and performance. It's about creating a nurturing environment where your team members can truly thrive—because as a leader, your energy can make or break the collective spirit.
Moreover, we'll discuss setting strategic visions, where long-term goals scaffold the day-to-day hustle and the significance of maintaining a positive outlook amidst adversities. This episode is designed to sculpt you into the leader who not only envisions a big future for your company but also passionately drives it there. Join me in unpacking these leadership essentials that are sure to leave you feeling empowered.
Connect with me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/caitlindmitchell/
I am so excited to dive into today's episode with you guys. We are going to be talking about five traits that all great leaders possess. As I walk through this, if you don't have some of these traits within you already, that's totally fine. That's why I'm recording podcast episode for you about this, so that these are things that you can start to lean on and work on. These are just my opinions. You could totally have a different perspective, a different choice of what you believe are great qualities of great leaders, but I undoubtedly believe that these five things are really important to you being able to be successful in your role of being the CEO of your team and really being able to rally the troops around a common cause and get people excited about the vision and the things that you want to do with your business. Because if you can't do that as a leader, why are people working for you in the first place? People don't really want to work for leaders that aren't inspiring, that aren't motivating, that aren't able to show them what's possible. That's really where our job comes into play. Think about what your role is as CEO. It's really leading your team. It is really getting people to move toward that vision together. I like to think of it as, like you, are the momentum creator for the business. I always find there are times when the momentum will feel a little off within EB and it'll be like, okay, what's happening here? How is this a reflection of me and how can I bring the momentum back to the team? Because being a great leader is like being a great coach. We all know those incredible coaches that can get the teams to change and to operate differently. Deon Sanders I think we've talked about this on a past podcast episode and, if not, I've talked about it over on my Instagram. He came in and he changed that program around. I've seen it happen time and time again at a variety of different levels of sports. Being the CEO is no different of your team. Let's go ahead and dive into today's episode. Hopefully you have some notepad and append to take notes with, because I think you're really going to want to sit with some of the questions that I have for you as you reflect on yourself as leader and do you possess these qualities and where do you get to improve and where do you get to work on it? All right, you guys, let's go ahead and dive into our episode together.
Speaker 1:I actually want to start our episode with a story for you guys. A couple of months ago maybe six months at this point long story short I was on a call with a group who was looking for feedback and advice on the way in which they were building out a certain program of theirs. I just openly gave my feedback, was myself just really presented what I thought that they could improve upon and work on together. The CEO of that company later watched my recording with that part of his team. He mentioned to a friend of mine hey, can you reach out to Caitlin and ask her if she just wants to come in and be the CEO of that part of the business, because I would hire her and heartbeat.
Speaker 1:I don't say that to brag. I say that to provide an example of the fact that I truly believe that great qualities of great leaders transcend business. I believe we've talked about this on the podcast before. I just think it is so important for us to realize that, as leaders, our personal development is so critical to the success of the business. I want to walk you through some of those personal development areas that I've gone through in my own life as a leader that have really benefited the team that I think a lot of people miss out on. I think they miss the mark on a lot of these, because it is hard. We go from being an entrepreneur and you think about what embodies an entrepreneur someone who wants to do it on their own right, all of those rugged, individualistic type qualities that make it really hard to lead. Well, for me in my life, I think a lot of my leadership qualities have just come from being able to have been a leader in a variety of instances in my life.
Speaker 1:I was the captain of multiple sports teams. I was a teacher for many years. I was a coach for many years. I think I have a lot of these qualities just naturally embedded within the makeup of who I am, but that doesn't mean that you yourself cannot start to adopt and take on a lot of these qualities of your own accord. I think it's important for you to start there with the belief that, yeah, you can change and yeah, you can shift. I think it's important that you do shift if you want something bigger for your business and if you want something more for your team.
Speaker 1:If you're listening to this episode and you're sitting there thinking about the team that you have and, like man, am I really being an effective leader for this group of people? First of all, I think that's great because you have some self-awareness and the ability to reflect on that. Secondly, I think that this is a great opportunity for you to really think through some of the questions that I'm going to provide for you, write these down, reflect on them, journal on them and really think about which one of these qualities that I'm going to walk through today are qualities that you want to take and bring into your own life. But then also, where do you want to put your attention? You're going to listen to all five of these and be like, yeah, I want to do all of those, and that's great.
Speaker 1:I think the best place to start is probably with your weakest one. That's your weakest point, and how can you spend the next month really working on developing those aspects of who you are? Because I've said this before and I'll say it a million times as much as the business is not about us, it's about the vision. It's about the vision, it's about the values, it's about the team, it's about the impact, it is 100% about you, and I see so many great businesses fail or never come to the fullest of their fruition because of the lack of ability of the CEO to lead, and I say that to you not to make you feel bad, but to hopefully give you the kick in the pants that you need. That, hey, if you want your business to grow, you got to grow. Personal development is so critical for the success of your business, and that's going to tie into exactly what I'm going to start with.
Speaker 1:The number one quality that I believe all great leaders have is self-awareness. I believe is the number one quality that all great leaders need to have, because if you don't have this trait, how are you even going to be able to identify the deficits and other areas of your leadership? So knowing your strengths and weaknesses is also going to allow you to put the right people in the right seats and to put you in the right seat when leading your company. You think about of all of the things that you might be great at in your business. Well, where are your weakest links, especially as an entrepreneur? We did everything. We built the funnels, we did the design, we came up with the ideas, we built the product, we did customer service. We did all of those things. So what are you good at and what are you not good at, and how can you get rid of the things that you are not good at?
Speaker 1:Aside from leadership, I don't believe that we should hire out leadership in our companies. That's why I am against, personally. Just this is my belief. I'm probably going to piss some people off when I say this I'm against OBMs. I don't believe in integrators. I believe that you should really be the leader of your company and we should not put that stuff on somebody else to lead our company and for us to just sit in this role where we don't do anything. I think it really is beneficial to the company culture and to the future vision of what you're building at your business, for you, the leader, the founder, the person who is in charge. You came up with this idea to be that great leader and to really dive into that role of being able to successfully motivate and inspire your team together toward that common mission. So when you are able to notice and know your strengths and weaknesses, you're able to identify.
Speaker 1:Okay, I need to get this off of my plate first. I'm not a super organized person. Maybe that's the first thing that I need to figure out. Do I have an EA command who can help me in some sort of a project management role where they start to organize my life for me? I mean, that's me. I was an organized person until I hired organized people and then I was like I am not an organized person, but we don't realize that until we're able to be fully self aware of those deficits.
Speaker 1:Well then I also want you to think about, like what are your strengths? What are you really good at, aside from leading outside of that? You know, I think about what are my contributions to the team? Where do I come into play? And that has really changed for me in the years of the business. But when I first started out, like, one of my strengths was in customer support. I worked in customer support for years. I was a beverage cart girl at a golf course, so I was fully aware of the customer experience and I was able to lean on those strengths of mine to build a remarkable customer service experience with then, ultimately, the help of my team to fulfill on that vision. So I want you to sit down and think about, like what are you really good at? What are your contributions to the company? Where do you come into play in moving that vision forward. And then, what are you bad at, like? What are your some weaknesses that you've got to start to find people, aside from leadership, to help you do a better job at that. Is it design? Is it in writing at least for me in my business and writing curriculum? Is it in social media? Maybe it's something that you hate, that you don't want to do? Again, I'm going to say, aside from leadership. I really believe that that is something that, as a CEO the founder, the leader of your business you've really got to lean into. You really got to figure out how to be a great leader, and these are some of those starting blocks. One other thing that I love about self-awareness is that it allows you to see the areas of the company that needs you to improve upon in order to effectively lead. So I want you to think about it from this perspective.
Speaker 1:If the same frustrations in the business keep popping up over and over and over again, for you, that is a key to take note and reflect what is going on with how you're leading. Have you hired, or tried to hire, for the same position multiple times and failed? Well, where's the breakdown in that? What is the cause of that? How is it who you are showing up as a leader? How is your onboarding contributing to that? How is your initial hiring process contributing to that?
Speaker 1:If you haven't listened to episode number two about core values, that's a place that I'd go start when looking at this. What is going on with how you're leading the team? Are people leaving? Do you find that people only stay with you for a little bit and then they're done with you and they don't want to work for you anymore? Are you present to the needs of your team? Do you know what your team needs from you? So often I'll check in with my team and ask them how I can support them. What's going on? How can I take something off of your plate this week? I like to be in the trenches with my team sometimes so that they know I'm not just doing nothing and watching you guys all work. I'm here to be a part of what we're doing together. I'm not this figurehead that doesn't participate in the work that we're out to do together as a team. I want you to think about too, if you see these same frustrations keep popping up over and over again.
Speaker 1:The self-awareness comes into play of are you actively listening? Do you have self-awareness to be able to reflect on what people are saying to you? Are you listening but not actually hearing what they're giving you feedback on? Are you even asking for feedback from your team? So that you know?
Speaker 1:I was just having an interesting conversation with my husband today. He was telling me how he had his first performance review in all of his years at this company where he didn't get exceeds expectations. He got meets expectations and, long story short, it was for whatever reason and it made sense, but it got me thinking. I'm like, huh, I don't personally have performance reviews as a CEO of the team, but my performance review is really a reflection of how the team is doing, how the team is doing, how the company is doing, what the feedback is from the team, what I'm hearing them say to me. Those are indicators of my success in terms of my performance. So if the team isn't performing well, that might be an indication of my leadership performance and hopefully you guys kind of get where I'm going with that.
Speaker 1:I also want you to think about this too, in terms of self-awareness what kind of energy are you leading the team with? Are you leading the team with an energy of calm, that you are steady, that you are not frantic, that you have a good hold of what's going on, you have a good pulse of the vision for the future and what you guys are trying to accomplish together. Or are you constantly like, oh, I got to do this, oh, my gosh, I'm overwhelmed? People feed off of that. They feel that energy for you, and people want leaders who are strong, who are convincing, who can really stand firm in what they are doing together, because they're looking to you for how the company is going to do and what the company is going to accomplish. That's not coming from them. They're part of that. They're the team, but you're the one leading that vision. So what type of energy are you bringing to the table as the leader, and are you even aware of that type of energy that you're bringing to the team?
Speaker 1:I think sometimes about difficult conversations or difficult things that come up, how my response to that problem or to that thing is going to be an indicator of the way in which the team believes that they can respond to that thing too. So if a problem arises and I freak the heck out and I have all of this nervous energy around it and I don't know what to do and I get upset and I get flustered. What is the team going to think about their leader? Am I being a strong, steady leader? Sure, I might feel that way, but I'm going to go have that conversation with maybe my husband or a mentor that I have. I'm not going to bring that energy to the team.
Speaker 1:And so I think about my greatest contributions to the team in terms of self-awareness is my self-awareness of my energy. That's one of the biggest things that I do now as the CEO of my team and my leadership. My role is to lead at this point in time. My role is to inspire. My role is to motivate. My role is to remove problems and roadblocks and constraints so that the team can do their job successfully. And in all of that, one of my biggest indicators of success is my energy. Am I well rested? Am I excited to show up to work each day? They are going to feel that from you, and so are you even self-aware enough to be protective of that energy, to know that you've got to work on that area?
Speaker 1:Another question that I want you to consider yourself, or to ask yourself whether you're doing this when you're considering your self-awareness is are you just throwing money at a problem and hoping that it goes away? I think this ties into self-awareness, because so often we will do this and not realize that we're actually doing it until we've wasted tens of thousands of dollars and the problem is still there. So I think about this in terms of messaging, possibly. I think about this in terms of design of a website. I think about this in terms of structure of the organization of our SOPs and our processes and things like that. I think about this in terms of and that's where I have a problem with the whole OBM thing or the integrator thing and look, this is just my opinion. I think some instances integrators are great, but typically what happens is a CEO who cannot handle running the team is going to hire somebody like that, and I did this.
Speaker 1:So I am guilty of this too. Trust me, I've made an $86,000 mistake. That was fun, but when you spend a lot of money on a mistake, you learn the mistake really fast and you don't make that mistake again. Let me tell you that much. But I hired an integrator to come on and solve all my problems while the problems were still there, because the problem was me, and so I threw money at this problem of leading, of organization of all the things, of the business, of leading the business and organizing the business. I threw money at that problem and the problem did not go away. The problem got worse and I had to. You know, that person and us parted ways in a good way. It was all a good ending, but that was an expensive mistake. So the problem didn't go away because I didn't change. The problem only started to go away when I started to realize hell, the team needs me to lead, that's my job, that's what my CEO role is.
Speaker 1:So it's taken a lot of years, I will just say, and a lot of work for me to be able to create a team that runs effectively in my absence. That's the goal you think about. Two is, if you leave for a week, everything can still keep moving forward without you, but then, when you come in, you come back into the team and you re-rally the troops. So, for example, I was gone all last week. I was at a mastermind retreat. It was awesome and it was so great for me to be able to come back to the team with all of these ideas, with this renewed energy, this sense of purpose, this sense of drive. That's what I'm bringing back to the team. But in my absence, all of our social media still happened, all of our emails still happened, all of our product creation still happened, all of our customer support still happened. Everything still happened in the business in terms of the doing this of the business. But I think about when I come back after my absence what am I bringing back and contributing to the team? I am contributing to the push and the pull of the future vision of the business and where we're going together.
Speaker 1:One other thing that I want to mention with self-awareness that I think is hugely important, is that when we are fully self-aware and this is nearly impossible, it's what so many of us are going to spend our whole lives doing. If we're on this journey of spirituality and awakening but of removing ego, there is no space for you to have an ego. I really believe that there is power in being vulnerable, in being humble and also being strong and convicted as a leader in what you guys are doing together. So you think about the leaders that you admired in your life, think about the teachers that you loved, think about the bosses that you loved, think about. I even watch Below Deck and I observe how the captains run their ships and I think about what are great qualities that they have as a leader.
Speaker 1:Captain Sandy on Below Deck some of the things I love about the way that she leads and I think about who is she, or who are these people as leaders that I love so much. There's just this knowingness that they know what they're doing, that they've got it, so there's power in being vulnerable at the same time. That I think is hard to understand, where we can be honest with our teams of when we're going through a difficult time together and we'll get into this with another one of these leadership qualities. But that vulnerability, that humility, also partnered with strength, with conviction, with this devotion to where you guys are going together. And the other thing that I will say about this and I believe I've talked about this on a past episode, but I just think it's so poignant. Maybe if you didn't get it the first time, you'll get it again when I say this here but we are the person on the team when you think about what's your role. You're the person on the team who says I'm the guy. Give me the ball when push comes to shove, give me the ball, and at the same time you know that it's not about you, it's about your collective team as a whole. So holding that duality, I think is really important for great leaders. You're the man or the woman or the person and you're also not because it's not about you. Do you know what I'm saying? And maybe you don't get what I'm saying, and maybe you will one day, a year from now, and you'd be like, oh my God, it lands. But I think that that's really ultimately important.
Speaker 1:The other thing with self-awareness and this is the last point that I'll make about this one, but obviously you can tell that I love this one so much, I think it's so, so important is with self-awareness. I think a lot of what is powerful about this particular one is really knowing why you're here on this earth, what is your true higher calling, what is your true higher purpose and what I love about this aspect of self-awareness, of what is your greatest contribution to this world. Once you identify that and have the self-awareness to really lean into that, it becomes easy to lead because it's no longer about you. In fact, it has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with your purpose with the message that you are here on this earth to share with others. I talked about this in my grandmother's passing when I shared about my sobriety journey in terms of the fact that this body, who I am here, I'm just a vessel. I'm just here to fulfill on my life's purpose and for me in my life, that is to help others realize their greatest potential. That's why I'm here. That's why this podcast even exists. I can't remember if I've talked about this. I swear I forget. I'm just not going to say that anymore because I'm just going to repeat myself and every time I say it, maybe one time it'll land for you and it didn't on the others. But that's why this podcast came into existence.
Speaker 1:I had no desire to start a podcast. I don't have time. I have these limiting beliefs about being a content creator, whatever all these things. But that was selfish. I was making it about me and it's not about me, it's about you, it's about my purpose. I'm just the vessel and so when we live into that with our teams as leaders and we lead with true love for this greater calling, it makes being a great leader for them feel extremely natural and it helps to start to eliminate this resistance and ego to being a great leader, because I really believe every single one of us has great leadership deep down inside of us. But we've just got to be able to get there, just got to be able to figure out what's holding me back from being a great leader.
Speaker 1:What beliefs do I have about myself that I can't be a great leader? I think about this. I was on the treadmill today. Oh my God, I hate running so much, but I'm training for a mirf. That's happening in Memorial Day. So it's a mile run, 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 air squats and a mile run, all with a 20 pound weighted vest.
Speaker 1:I don't run and that's a belief that I have about myself, that I'm not a runner. And I'm on the treadmill and I'm telling myself, god, I'm not a runner, I'm a sprint athlete, I'm not a runner, I can't do long distance. But if I keep telling myself that, well, that's gonna be the reality that I have to it. So the more that I resist running, the worse it's gonna be for me, the more I'm gonna hate it. And I think that about leadership too for you. The more you resist this, the more you're gonna hate it.
Speaker 1:But just lean into those qualities that you maybe already have as I get into some of these other ones, that you can be a great leader, that it is within you, and the business demands that of you, it invites that of you. This is your next level of where you get to take the business, because it's no longer about you as the entrepreneur, it's about your business's vision and the impact that it has on other people's lives. So I just think that that is number one so frickin' important, because if you don't have that, you don't even have these other ones that I'm gonna go into here in just a moment. Okay, the other thing that I will say before we dive into these last, these other four, not these last four I've only done one, these other four is that as I go through these especially with self-awareness too is you think about like you are the highest level of example for your teams. So if you don't have self-awareness, if you don't have these other qualities, if you're not living out the core values of your team and your business and your company, you cannot expect other people to do that. They're not going to. You're the highest level, you are the ultimate example for them, and so if one of your things is discipline, which I'm gonna get to here in just a second, and you want your team to be disciplined, but you yourself are not. That's a wake-up call and that's where you get to dive into that self-awareness. Okay, so I'm gonna dive into the next four and I have some questions for you with these ones, too, that I want you guys to think about as well. So the next one that I think great leaders have is I think all great leaders possess some level of discipline, and I actually listened to a podcast episode with Catherine Zinchina.
Speaker 1:I bought her money manifestation program, and one of the things that she talked about was, instead of using this term discipline, of using the term devotion. Disciplines very like hard line, very masculine, intense, push, aggressive energy, whereas devotion to a cause can be very much the opposite of that. So I actually like kind of using both of those in my life. I found that I still like discipline, but I also like the concept of devotion, like I am devoted to these changes or I'm devoted to this mission or I'm devoted to this goal that I have. But for the sake of this point, I'm gonna talk about discipline, but I invite you to think about the term devotion to for you in your life, and if that is, too, you know, religious leaning for you and it brings up triggers for you, perhaps you can find a different word that's similar to devotion.
Speaker 1:So discipline, I think, comes up in a variety of different places. I'm gonna give you three different instances of this. Number one is discipline in your decision-making process. Oh my gosh, it's so easy to just be like, oh, but this one idea is gonna be the thing and it's not. And then we go on this hamster wheel of creation and this hamster wheel of distraction, and in fact, I think this is so important.
Speaker 1:I recorded an entire podcast episode last week about this, about the questioning process that I put my decisions through, because it is very important for you to be able to be disciplined in the types of decisions that you are making in your business, whether or not this is hiring decisions, whether or not this is product development decisions, whether or not this is changing the structure of your offers decisions, and so I sit with this one for a while. I sat with this one for a while recently, as we're restructuring a lot of things within the company right now, and these are some big, fundamental, foundational, business altering decisions that I had the opportunity to make. You notice even the language there that I didn't say that I was forced to make. I was given this beautiful opportunity to make these decisions and I was very disciplined in my decision-making process. It could have been really easy for me to make decisions out of fear around the restructuring of things. It could have been really easy for me to make decisions based off of where the business is now versus where I want the business to be in five years, 10 years, 15 years from now. So I sat with myself for a while and I really went through all of those questions that I shared with you guys in last week's podcast episode, because being disciplined in your decision-making process has a huge impact on your team and I think it's a great sign of a great leader. You look at some of the play calls that are made by great coaches versus some of the play calls that maybe are made by coaches who don't have as much of conviction or assuredness in what they're doing or confidence in their play calling, and you know what I'm talking about. If you watch the Super Bowl in the overtime with the Niners. Very few people are gonna get that reference, so I apologize for making a sports reference, but they made a terrible decision.
Speaker 1:And I think that this is just so important because decision-making really does impact your business. It really can have effects on your company, the decisions that you make. So are you being disciplined in your decision-making process? As the leader, you're the one leading the team. Your team is looking to you for those strong decisions. I also think about discipline in terms of leading by example. So if you say you're gonna do something, you better do it. Like I said, you are the highest level of your company's values and what you personally value. So if you aren't meeting deadlines or you aren't following through or you're not on time for meetings or you miss meetings every so often, like how can you expect your team to live up to those expectations if you yourself aren't doing it? And this isn't to call you out or to make you feel bad, but maybe it is a call out to you to have that self-awareness that I can't expect this of others if I'm not even exhibiting that myself. So think about how are you being disciplined in how you lead by example for your team?
Speaker 1:And then I think about discipline, too, in terms of showing up for your business, even when it feels hard, even when it's challenging you and especially when you don't want to. And that's where I tie in working out to being a great leader, and I recorded that in a past podcast episode that I would totally go listen to because this is the greatest ability to develop this disciplined muscle that I've ever experienced. So I go to the gym perfect example today. Today's workout was fricking brutal and I said to myself this is hard and I am still going to do it and I 100% can do it. And I say to myself all the time like, be willing to do what others aren't. So even when I don't want to do it, when I don't want to go to the gym, I don't want to wake up at 5.15 to get to the gym at six o'clock, even though I know I really do want to, but that alarm goes off and like it's dark outside, it's cozy in my bed, I don't want to move. I have discipline in showing up for myself in that capacity and we get to have discipline in showing up for our businesses to, even when it feels hard. Especially when it feels hard and that's just something I want you guys to walk away with is just because it's hard does not mean that you just aren't going to do it. That's the difference between those who do and those who don't, those who don't just stop. They give up when it's hard.
Speaker 1:And I had a conversation with my dad recently about something that I'm struggling with in the business, with just the new way that the business is going, and I've kind of had some fear, kind of had some resistance, if we're being honest, and I was talking to my dad on the phone and he point blank said to me he said, who told you it was going to be easy? Right, and that's a choice too. I could say, like, well, I could choose to say that this is going to be easy or I could let it be easy, all right, we could have a whole separate conversation about that, but I thought it was just really helpful for him to call out to me and said, like what were your expectations around this? Is it going to be easy to hold that level of belief in what you're doing? Maybe not. Maybe for some people, maybe for me, at this level it's not.
Speaker 1:And so I think about for you when your business feels hard. So what? Like? You've got to have the discipline to keep showing up day in and day out, because your team needs you. Your team is relying on you and like as much as our team are not children. It's like we're the parent of our team. They need us, just like our kids need us. If you're a parent, or if you've ever been a teacher, you've ever been a coach you can't just not go because it feels hard. There are people who are reliant on you, who look up to you. You're a great role model for the people who work for you. So, even when it does feel hard, even when it is challenging, even when you don't want to do it, you've got to stay disciplined in showing up for your business and for your people.
Speaker 1:And, like I said, the way that I practice this discipline muscle is through exercise. It translates from one area of life to another. I feel it is so vital to stick to our word and doing what we say we're going to do, and this is such a great example of doing. That is working out, is going to the gym or going on a run or meditation, or maybe you go to yoga or you have a specific morning routine that you just do. You just do it even when you don't want to, and I love this motto that actually came from the Rayframe app when I was going through that app on my sobriety journey is the motto that they had was never question the decision. Once you've made the choice to do X, y and Z, you've made that choice. Sure, you can, of course, change your opinion or your route that you're gonna go if it's like a big decision, but I just think about this in terms of like little things. If I've committed to going to the gym six days a week, or I've committed to not drinking alcohol, or I've committed to cutting out sugar for 21 days, that's it. I've made that commitment.
Speaker 1:And now I've transitioned into a way of operating in the world where I never question the decision. I love that so much, so much, in fact, that for our September retreat for my mastermind, that's what our sweatshirt said that I gave to everybody Never question the decision. So never question the decision to help you stay disciplined in the commitments that you want to make. But I think that's really important that we have a reason for why we're doing what we're doing, right. If you don't really, really actually want it, then you're not gonna make a commitment to doing that, you're not gonna stay disciplined and never questioning that decision. That's why I think we go back to that question of what do you really really actually want? And if it's none of this, then it's none of this and there's nothing wrong with that. But if it is this, you go all in, you go whole hog and you never question the decision. All right.
Speaker 1:Number two or three, rather the third thing that I think all great leaders possess is I think all great leaders are strategic, and I think about this in terms of a variety of different things. So I'm gonna go a couple of different places with this. We're gonna miss the mark. It's just, it's gonna happen. We're not perfect. We're never gonna make the perfect right decision. Maybe there is no right decision because every decision we make ultimately leads us on the path they're supposed to be on anyways. But I think about if we are okay with the fact that sometimes we're gonna miss the mark. But the sooner we are okay with that, the more quickly we are able to grow.
Speaker 1:So if I'm okay with making mistakes and stumbling my way toward what actually works and to what I'm actually maybe supposed to be doing in the business, the sooner I'm gonna move on and make the better choice. So I can sit there and think about being strategic as oh, but it's gotta be perfect. Or I can think about being strategic as being curious about what could happen instead of being fearful. So I'm being strategic and disciplined in my decision making, but I'm coming from a place of curiosity and it's okay if I make the mistake, not from a place of fear. Or I can't make this choice. I can't make this decision because I'm worried it's the wrong one, right? So strategic in terms of looking at all the angles, being disciplined in your decision making and ensuring that what you're doing aligns to your company's ultimate vision and that's where I think last week's podcast episode really comes into play is, if you struggle with being strategic, it's probably because you struggle with your decision making, if we're being totally honest, that you don't have that kind of filtering system to put your ideas and your brainstorms through.
Speaker 1:The other thing I think about with being strategic is being flexible, with testing out new ideas or approaches. So let me give you an example I want to test a different type of launch format, even though the one that we've done for years works Okay. So how can I be strategic about this? Would it be strategic of me to completely blow up and eliminate the launch that we know works for sharing with teachers about our membership and our programs? Probably not a good choice. But how can I be strategic with testing out this new idea? Well, I can do my launch the same way that I've always done it, at the same time that I've always done it. But I can do this other separate launch idea, maybe at a different time in the year, at a smaller scale, just to see how it goes from a place of curiosity as opposed to a place of completely replacing my launch, being stressed out, worried, fearful that this was a bad choice. So you can get with this example of how I'm being strategic with my decision making here. I'm not blowing things up and like fingers crossed. Hopefully it goes well. I'm making a solid choice for the business.
Speaker 1:In this capacity, I also think about being strategic, too is really important with the long-term vision for your business, and this goes back to that question that I just shared of what do you really really want it to look like? What do you want your business to look like three years from now I mean, how many of you have actually sat down with that question? Or five years from now or 10 years from now Some of us probably don't even know. And I remember back to when I first started utilizing the framework from traction within the business. That was one of the things that they had us do as a vision traction organizer, and it was like in 10 years, what do you want the business to look like? And I was like I have no idea, like still here. Do you know what I mean? And so I want you to think about if, in three years, what does your life look like, what does the company look like? And once you have at least some semblance of an idea of what that is, it does allow you to be more strategic in your decision making towards that vision.
Speaker 1:But if you don't have any inkling of a year from now, two years from now, three years from now, what you want your business to look like, you're not gonna be able to be strategic because you don't know where you're going. Right. And think about how much can happen in three years. I mean hell. Think about how much can happen in a year. What's possible in three years, five years, 10 years.
Speaker 1:So when I first sat down with this years ago, when I first started following the traction framework in 10 years, I just put $25 million and I was like I have no idea. You know what I want the business to do. And it was helpful to just have a number because then you can work backwards from there. Right, if 25 million is the goal and overall revenue, look, I'm not talking about $25 million for me, I'm talking about $25 million for the business, right, that has expenses and overhead and team and impact and all that stuff. But if I look at the business from that perspective of 25 million and 10 years, okay, well, what does five years look like? Okay, five years from now, maybe we want to be doing 10 million. Okay, three years from now, maybe we want to be doing seven million. Well, so then I have a barometer of okay, if seven years from now or three years from now, I want to be doing $7 million in the business and I want the business to be generating that much revenue, well, what do I want the team to look like at that point? What do I want the product to look like at that point? What do I want the customer experience to look like at that point? And how am I building now for that potential future.
Speaker 1:That's where being strategic comes into play. I'm working backwards, I'm not just flying by the seat of my pants. Well, hell, hopefully this works right. No, we got to have a place to go to, to grow to, in order to know why we're making the decisions that we're making right. And I just went through this with restructuring our business. I had to be very strategic, and if I didn't have my eye on the prize of what my ultimate goal was for EB, I would have made a completely different decision, and so being strategic really ties into having that longterm vision for your business.
Speaker 1:And then the last thing I want to say about being strategic I mean, I don't know how much this ties into play here, but I do think it's important is that we do get to have a positive outlook in the face of all of the adversity that's going to come your way. I think about what I can handle now versus what I could not handle four years ago, kaitlyn, and how much I've grown, and so give yourself some leeway here and also some like hell, you can handle it. Love like that tough love that you might need here, that yet it might be hard, like we just talked about, but you can do it and you get to choose how you approach, how you do it right. So I'm not talking about toxic positivity in any capacity, but life is a choice. We get to decide if what we're going through is a good thing, a bad thing or just a neutral thing that's benefiting us in some capacity in the future. So, having that positive outlook in the face of adversity, of receiving adversity, as like this adversity, this issue, this problem, is here to teach me a lesson. It's here to help me grow into the leader that I need to be in order to be the leader of the company that I want to lead five years from now.
Speaker 1:I just think about the problems that we have at the level of business that we are right now. If I can't handle these problems, how am I going to handle the problems at a $25 million revenue business level? They're going to be totally different problems, and so I've got to start to build this emotional intelligence muscle. I've got to start to build all of these qualities of the leader who can lead a team at $25 million versus leading a team at $5 million or at $1 million or at $100,000 a year. Totally different ball games, totally different levels of self. So you get to choose as seeing adversity as a way that is changing you and molding you into the person that you've, quite frankly asked to become in the pursuit of your vision. So the less that we can stop resisting it and the more that we can start to lean into it with a positive outlook of this is serving me in some way. Hell, it's hard right now, but it is growing me into the person that the business needs me to be, is inviting me to be, and you have that perspective of it.
Speaker 1:It becomes again I go back to this that it's not about you. It's not about you. You've got to be able to work through your stuff in order to be able to handle and hold the energy of the business that you want to create. And if you don't want the business to grow and you want it to say exactly as it is, that is totally fine, too right. There's no judgment. There's no right or wrong. There's no, it needs to be this way or that. It's whatever you really really want. Which is why I asked you that question of what do you really actually want the business to look like three years from now, five years from now, 10 years from now. All right, we've got two more Accountability.
Speaker 1:I think all great leaders have some level of extreme accountability because, at the end of the day, the buck stops with you. We all know the Taylor Swift song hi, it's me. I'm the problem, it's me. If there are problems in your business, it probably lies with you. The accountability starts and ends with you.
Speaker 1:If your team is not performing the way that you want them to look to yourself, how are you holding them accountable? How are the systems and processes and structure that you've put in place with the team held them accountable? How are you being held accountable? You wanna have high retention of your team. You want to have low turnover with employees and contractors, because the more turnover we have, the more money it costs the business. The more time, the more efficiencies it creates. It creates a lot of problems for us. So the more that we can retain our team because we are great leaders, we're holding people accountable to the highest level of their performance and of themselves. We're creating a great culture where people wanna be. People want to have the best taken out from them. People want to leave it all on the court and if they don't, quite frankly, they don't get to be a part of my team. Maybe they get to be a part of yours, but that's something that you can look at too and think about this also.
Speaker 1:If someone has left the business, someone's like I'm out, I can't be here, or you let somebody go. I always find that as a great opportunity to reflect and really sit with myself. What is it about my leadership? What is it about the culture of the company that my leadership has created that is making someone want to resign or leave or that is not allowing someone new to be successful? So you're accountable for this. This is a you thing and you're accountable to getting the stuff done that you are responsible for completing within the business.
Speaker 1:So let's say that there's a deadline for a big project coming up and you don't complete it, but you expect your team to hit all of their deadlines all of the time and you don't. What kind of an example is that? Right, and I'll give you a great example of this for my own business in terms of people leaving. I just had to let somebody go on the team and for me, I reflect on like what was the issue here? Why am I having a problem with this? And, quite frankly, it was that we as a team just did not have the time, unfortunately right now, to slow down to help this person and give them the support that they needed in order to be successful. So there are a couple other things at play there, but that was one of the big causes of us not being able to onboard this person properly, and in fact, it all works out the way that it's supposed to, because we have other internal team members that are going to be able to fulfill on this role in a more efficient capacity.
Speaker 1:But I think about that too, like what was my contribution here? How am I accountable for what happened? I love the concept of just radical responsibility. I think that ties into accountability so beautifully. If you think about, in every instance, how did you, as the leader, contribute to this? I guarantee you you are going to uncover things within yourself, within the business, within the structures, within the processes, within the team, within the culture, that can be changed for the better. But if we're not able to sit down and hold ourselves accountable to the problems that happen in the business, we're never going to be able to do this, and that's where self-awareness, being the number one thing, comes into play, and I think the same thing goes. I know the same thing goes.
Speaker 1:We're first employees are not meeting your expectations or aren't operating as high performers. How are you accountable? Where's your responsibility in that? Did you not, you know, set the expectations forth properly at the beginning? Did you not set them high enough? Did you not paint the vision well enough for them to be able to want to fulfill on it? I'm not saying it's always a you problem, but a lot of the times it is an accountability problem with you and with you holding your team accountable. I hold my team accountable. We have a done list that everybody is responsible for contributing to and filling out on a weekly basis. I have one-on-one meetings with all of my heads of departments on a bi-monthly basis, so I meet with them twice a month. My heads of departments meet with all of their teams on a one-on-one basis once a month as well, and everybody has a key performance indicator that they are all working toward within the business. And it is my responsibility to hold my heads of departments accountable and it is my responsibility to help them hold their teams accountable to the KPIs that their team has set forth. But if there's no accountability, if no one is responsible for anything, then what are we even doing here? How are we going to expect to be high performers? How are we going to be able to expect to be a championship team? It's not happening. All right, sorry that got a little intense, but I feel very strongly about that.
Speaker 1:Okay, the last one is effective communicator. Gosh, it's so interesting. I was a communications major. I had no idea how helpful being a communications major would be ultimately in my life. When I graduated from college, I was like, oh man, I want to be a teacher. My degree in communications is going to be of no benefit to me. And now here we are, years later I'm no longer a teacher and it's one of my greatest assets is being an effective communicator. So I think one of the things that is hugely important here is effective communication, and you heard my dad actually talk about this on the episode where I interviewed him of communication, communication, communication, communication.
Speaker 1:A lot of the times, frustrations for us as leaders will come up because of unmet expectations. Maybe in our brains we had expectations of what we wanted our team to do, how we wanted them to do it, how they knew that they were going to perform. Well. What does a 10 out of 10 look like with this particular task, this particular KPI, et cetera. But I want you to think about like did you really truly communicate those expectations to the team, or are you just assuming that they would know what to do and how to do it? Well, I think that's a big one. That a lot of us get to sit with is unmet expectations that we have because we did not effectively communicate. Going back to accountability, why that's so important?
Speaker 1:I also think about two-way communication. Here. This is incredibly relevant. Your team needs to be able to communicate openly and honestly with you, and that is up to you to facilitate. That's up to you to give them that space for them to do so.
Speaker 1:So I always tell my team and in fact, I just tell everybody in my life, because this is just a way of being that I've adopted is that nothing offends me. I am defenseless against anything. So I never emotionally react to my team's feedback on anything that they're sharing with me. I might get upset myself internally, but I don't want them to pick up on that necessarily. I just want to receive feedback from them of look, we're all in this together, we're all trying to be a great team and as much as feedback is hard in terms of performance, on skills, on things like that I always go back and I tell this to my team too. This is just like sports.
Speaker 1:If Brock Purdy, our quarterback for the 49ers, was doing something incorrectly with his form, with his throw, and his coach wanted to help him correct it so that he could be even better, brock Purdy would want to know, and I want all of us to be Brock Purdy on our teams. I want all of us to be open and willing to receive feedback, because the ultimate goal is for all of us to be operating at the highest level that we possibly can within the team's goals and within the company's mission, and if we aren't able to create a culture of safety, of psychological safety for our teams, we're never going to be able to elicit this of feedback from them for us as leaders, and we're never going to be able to give them this type of feedback where they feel safe receiving that feedback from you, and that's why I think creating a strong company culture is incredibly important to being able to have these types of conversations. So I know not everybody has listened to episode two about core values, because I watch your guys as listening patterns and behaviors. On Buzzsprout, that gives me all of the downloads information. But, like that is a very important episode If you want to be able to create a culture where people feel confident in doing this, and that effective communication is so important to people being able to do their jobs well, to you being able to do your job well as a leader.
Speaker 1:That two-way communication for feedback is so important for them and then for you to be able to receive it. That's hard. Like you just got to start to separate your feelings and your emotional intelligence has got to level up in order to be able to handle feedback about you. That maybe you kind of suck at something and, quite frankly, you probably do. Like I have some deficits, for sure, in my leadership, in my skill set and things along those lines, but I want to know. I want to know so that I can get better and we want to be able to breed that within our teams.
Speaker 1:And I think, too, with communication. This is where you as a leader is so important that we don't want to put this responsibility onto an OBM or someone else coming in and leading our teams. Like you get to lead the team because you get to be the one to communicate how you're creating the culture at the team, how you're creating growth mindset, how you want everybody to always be looking to be the best version of themselves, without any ego involved, where people feel safe to do so, and I think that that is a you thing, that is a you responsibility. Also, with communication too, is being clear in our communication with others. If you often find that people are like wait, can you explain that to me again? Or I don't fully understand that's going to be an area that you want to look to, that maybe I'm not communicating everything clearly.
Speaker 1:And how can you more kind of step by step, succinctly give people direction around expectations that you have of them? One of the things that I always ask my team is does that make sense? Do you have any questions about that? Do you need clarity around that Right? So before I even send them off on a task or on a thing, I want to make sure that they know what the expectation is, what that looks like, that they can come to me with any questions right now, before they get started. And I'll give you a great example of this we are moving one of our team members into supporting us with a specific task that someone else was currently responsible for. Well, we're going to make this transition of hands. Basically, we're going to move it from Megan to Anna, and when we set out to do this, I wanted to make sure that Anna knew the expectations of her, that she had everything that she needed, she had the proper guidance, all of that stuff. And before we're just like, okay, go. I'm like what questions do you have? How can we support you? Is it clear to you? Do you know what is being required of you, etc. And so forth. So I think that's really important when we're sitting down to just talk about anything with our teams. Okay, so that was a lot.
Speaker 1:This podcast episode is probably really long. I don't even know how long it is as I'm recording it, but I really hope that you found this helpful and I want to just give you the five of them again, and I want you to just pick one that you want to work on for the next month and, like, put this on a post-it note, nucks to your computer, hold yourself accountable to actually doing it, because this is where the real change lies. Right, you can sit here and listen to all the episodes you want to listen to, from anybody that you want to listen to and from, but unless you actually put things into practice, nothing is ever going to change. So we have self-awareness, discipline, being strategic, accountability and effective communication. So which one of those you want to focus on developing first for the next month? And I want you to write down on a post-it note or a piece of paper in your journal somewhere why, why is this the one that is called out to you, that is, inviting you to begin to practice this way of being so that you can be a more effective leader for your team?
Speaker 1:All right, if this was helpful, let me know over on Instagram, caitlin D Mitchell, and send me a direct message. And then I would love it if you would leave me a podcast review. Just let me know if this is landing for you. Anytime I read one of them, I'm like, okay, I'm going to keep making sure that I record an episode because it's helpful for people. That way, I know I'm not just, you know, speaking into the abyss of the atmosphere of the internet. All right, you guys have a wonderful week and I will see you next week on the podcast.
