Latest / You're Overqualified Podcast - Career and Leadership Strategies for Women / 101. How to Lead Through Growth Without Getting Lost in the Day-to-Day

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101. How to Lead Through Growth Without Getting Lost in the Day-to-Day · You're Overqualified Podcast - Career and Leadership Strategies for Women

• 0:08
  Hi, I'm Danny Tan and if you are here, you are in the right
• 0:11
  place. Welcome to the Pivot and
• 0:12
  Promotion podcast where we say forget the rules because they
• 0:15
  weren't written for us. I'm Danny Tan, I'm your host as
• 0:18
  well as career and leadership coach and a proud advocate for
• 0:21
  redefining what success and leadership looks like.
• 0:24
  And here's what I know. You can lead at any level, you
• 0:27
  can pivot at any age, and you can make moves that feel right
• 0:30
  for you, whether you're climbing the corporate ladder, starting
• 0:32
  something completely new, or just figuring out your next
• 0:35
  step. I've got you covered with
• 0:36
  strategies, stories, and straight up inspiration.
• 0:39
  So let's make some moves. Today we're going to talk about
• 0:46
  how to lead through growth without getting lost in the
• 0:49
  day-to-day. So maybe you are a leader, an
• 0:53
  entrepreneur, a business owner, founder, insert name, but you
• 0:57
  are leading a business that is definitely growing and you're
• 1:01
  kind of like I'm getting lost in the sauce of the day-to-day of
• 1:04
  the things to do. And so let's kind of like
• 1:06
  breakdown what you can do to leave without just getting stuck
• 1:13
  in the weeds of things. And so this first prompt is
• 1:18
  maybe growth changes the job, but you're still working like it
• 1:23
  hasn't. So for example, your business is
• 1:26
  growing, your job is changing and evolving, but the work that
• 1:29
  you're doing, like how you are working is exactly the same
• 1:32
  since day one. And that's just not going to
• 1:33
  help. That's not going to serve you,
• 1:34
  right. What you did in day one is
• 1:37
  definitely not going to necessarily serve how you've
• 1:40
  evolved and grown in your business in your role in
• 1:44
  general. And so at the early stages,
• 1:47
  especially like you're a founder, your role required
• 1:49
  wearing every single hat, right? So you're wearing the heart, the
• 1:53
  hat for marketing, you're wearing it for when it comes to
• 1:56
  inventory, when it comes to operation, when it comes to
• 1:58
  systems, when it comes to hiring, all that stuff.
• 2:00
  But now your team has grown, but your calendar for some reason
• 2:04
  hasn't changed. For some reason, you are still
• 2:05
  involved in every single thing functioning like you are in the
• 2:10
  early stages or day one of the business.
• 2:12
  And so you're still in the weeds even though your business or
• 2:15
  team needs more from you at a strategic level.
• 2:18
  So you're just in the leads constantly the day-to-day, all
• 2:21
  the things and your your business and your team.
• 2:23
  It's like, hey, we need some more strategy.
• 2:27
  We need more vision. And so staying so close to those
• 2:31
  little details is just not sustainable, right?
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  It's keeping you from making clear, confident decisions
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  because you're just in this constant day-to-day of the
• 2:39
  weeds. And so thinking of a founder
• 2:42
  that I was working with and she had skilled her team.
• 2:44
  Her team had grown. We talked about hiring, she
• 2:46
  talked about what role she needed, but she was still
• 2:48
  reviewing every single detail, fixing everything personally.
• 2:52
  And once we kind of had this like sit down and clarify like
• 2:54
  what are your priorities compared to your teens
• 2:57
  priorities like who is doing what within it?
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  Because yes, even though you can be a startup, even though you
• 3:02
  can be early stages in a business where everyone's
• 3:04
  wearing all the different hats, there can also be some scoped
• 3:08
  out priorities of who is working on what.
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  And that just had to be done right.
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  There was of course, like a job description for each person in
• 3:14
  an outline, but at the end of the day, the priorities were
• 3:17
  just not necessarily aligned to each person.
• 3:19
  And she was still jumping into everything.
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  So we had to do that as a step one.
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  And the next piece was being able to set like a weekly
• 3:25
  decision making like time for the block.
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  So instead of her getting pulled into the day-to-day to make
• 3:32
  these decisions, it's like, OK, what are the decisions that are
• 3:34
  truly important in time sensitive versus the ones that
• 3:37
  can wait during these blocks of decision making?
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  Because it was also just not helping the stress levels and
• 3:43
  also not helping the ability to make clear decisions.
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  And so by doing this by really realigning the team, the roles,
• 3:51
  the priorities, as well as like creating a, a cadence for
• 3:54
  decision making and what needed calls on what, they were able to
• 3:59
  really drop the stress and became more consistent when it
• 4:02
  came to focusing on strategy versus that balance of like
• 4:05
  being stuck in the weeds. And so the question that I have
• 4:08
  for you, the prompt that I have for you, where are you still
• 4:10
  showing up like it's day one, even though your business has
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  potentially moved on and grown. So if you were to think to
• 4:17
  yourself, whether it is your calendar, whether it is your
• 4:19
  team, whether it is the work that you're working on, how are
• 4:22
  you still kind of showing up like it's day one of business?
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  And where potentially, if you're going to list it down, do you
• 4:29
  need to like to re evaluate and create a strategy and a plan to
• 4:34
  really align yourself for growth and set you up for success in
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  order to make that happen and your team for success in order
• 4:40
  to make that happen. Because what we did on day one
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  is not going to serve us in day like, you know, 300.
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  So there's that. The next piece is you're not
• 4:51
  delegated because it feels faster to do it yourself.
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  And so I have this come up with definitely founders, leaders,
• 4:59
  business owners where they're just saying like, you know, yes,
• 5:02
  I have the team, but there's just some things that I have the
• 5:06
  knowledge for that I have the information for and it's just
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  faster if I do it versus explaining it to so and so to do
• 5:12
  it. Now, yes, of course, logically
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  that makes sense where if you are the one that knows how to do
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  it and you have the knowledge, it's faster for to do it for
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  sure. But is that scalable?
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  Is that scalable? Is that going to allow you for
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  growth? Because if you're going to start
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  serving more customers, having a larger audience, whatever it may
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  be, is it scalable for you to be the keeper of all the keys?
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  You will have to have a little bit of a slow down to speed back
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  up. And what I mean in the sense of
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  that is sometimes it feels like we are slowing down the process
• 5:47
  by teaching somebody else something.
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  But by doing that, we are then allowing that in the long run to
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  be scalable because all the information is not dependent on
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  me and I am not going to be the stop in the blocker for
• 5:58
  everyone. And so you have hired the help,
• 6:01
  but I mean, hot take, you're not actually fully trusting them.
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  So if you are not delegating because you think it's faster
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  for you to do it, that means you have hired help and you don't
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  trust them. So we had to kind of talk about
• 6:13
  that also. You think it's just like, it's
• 6:15
  just easier that I do it. Then you are truly bottlenecking
• 6:18
  the growth of your business and your team.
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  So like that's just wasted money there for for hiring people.
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  And then delegation is not just about tasks.
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  It's about making space so you can lead.
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  And so delegation isn't just about like, let me give someone
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  some tasks. I have fewer tasks for me.
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  It's about by doing that, you're creating space for your
• 6:35
  strategy, for your business, for growth, for your vision, for the
• 6:38
  things that you should be focusing on.
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  You should not be doing everything.
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  And you should be able to createspace to train others as
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  well. So, you know, I had a client who
• 6:46
  was always getting poles in a fire drills.
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  Everything was a fire drill and everything she was intertwined
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  with because she was worried like she's like, I built this
• 6:54
  business, this business with my baby, You know, it's, it's a,
• 6:57
  it's an extension of her. It's a reflection of her, all
• 6:59
  the stuff. But she had a really good team.
• 7:02
  Like she had a great team. They were, they were really
• 7:07
  smart. They were completely capable.
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  But she also had to make sure that she was creating a process
• 7:12
  that allowed them to make decisions on their on their own,
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  that allowed them to lead on their own, allowed them to be
• 7:18
  able to go ahead and focus on the things.
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  Because she had a focus honestly on her investor meetings on her
• 7:23
  board of directors. Like she didn't have time to
• 7:25
  worrying about like the color of the font that's going to be on
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  the e-mail. Like she needed to be focusing
• 7:29
  truly on what it is that she's doing in order to grow the
• 7:33
  business. What it came to like reporting
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  how the business is doing when it came to talking about future
• 7:37
  partnerships and deals. It was not supposed to be that
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  she's spending her time on these things.
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  So the biggest thing we had to talk about was for her to feel
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  like there was a checks and balances that things were not
• 7:46
  going to go off the rails was creating a a communication
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  cadence. So we built a process for
• 7:52
  communication cadence for versus her getting pulled into every
• 7:56
  little thing or versus her jumping into every little thing.
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  What could become a cadence of communication for her to talk to
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  her department leads for them to ripple the information up to
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  her, roll it up to her so she had time to give feedback and
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  but without getting too in the weeds, give feedback.
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  That way there was enough timeliness for everyone else to
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  do things. And also so she was not
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  bottlenecking anyone. The other piece too, was to
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  create guidelines. So versus it being that all the,
• 8:23
  you know, ideas were in her brain, what were the guidelines
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  for what she wanted when it came to marketing?
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  Were the guidelines that she wanted when it came to the
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  product line that they could essentially like have as a
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  guiding light and then also giving them some autonomy and
• 8:36
  creativity to give them some leeway to come up and solve some
• 8:39
  problems on their own as well, right?
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  By doing that, she won, built some trust and belief in her
• 8:45
  team. It gave them more confidence to
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  also come up in problem solve and come up with recommendations
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  too. You don't hire people so
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  everyone can just think the same way as you.
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  You hire them because they're experts at what they do to
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  challenge and evolve. She got some really good ideas
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  from that team by doing that versus her constantly being the
• 9:00
  one that was feeding everything up.
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  They were able to either honestly, it creates safety and
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  challenging her on giving feedback and also by bringing
• 9:06
  new ideas. And so by doing that, not only
• 9:10
  was she able to get better relationships with her
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  investors, which is really important and we're with her
• 9:15
  board of directors, more to have that overall vision and strategy
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  was happening for her brand and her business.
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  She also was able to get some more partnerships because she
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  was focusing her time on the things that actually move the
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  needle and allowing her team of experts to be experts at what
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  they do and drive that forward as well.
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  So my prompt for you is what are you still holding on to you that
• 9:33
  someone else could do right now? Because we love to hold on to
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  things that either give us that dopamine hit that we're getting
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  something off DOF our To Do List or that lets us know that we are
• 9:47
  moving something forward. Like we love to hold on to those
• 9:49
  things that are like we feel so good to get them crossed off our
• 9:53
  To Do List. But what are you holding on to
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  that is not important for you to overall in a big way move your
• 9:58
  vision forward that you can have somebody else do on your team.
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  All right, the last piece when it comes to how to lead through
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  growth without being lost and getting stuck in the day-to-day
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  is going to be all about leading through growth requires a new
• 10:12
  version of you. And I bet you maybe weren't
• 10:15
  seeing me saying that, right? We're talking about delegation,
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  we're talking about trust. We're talking about, you know,
• 10:19
  communication, decision making, all that good stuff and not, you
• 10:23
  know, how new systems and new processes have to like evolve in
• 10:26
  order for us to evolve with them.
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  But how about this? You are going to have to, it's
• 10:31
  going to require a new identity, a new version of you, because
• 10:33
  you can't use the same tactics and tools that you used to use
• 10:39
  for yourself, right? You're going to have to be able
• 10:41
  to kind of push yourself a little bit forward.
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  And so that means for you in general, in this like version of
• 10:47
  you, this identity of you, you have to shift your focus.
• 10:50
  So, you know, being so focused on like output, output, output
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  cross a thing off the list. Like you have to go from output
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  to vision, like visionaries, strategist.
• 11:00
  You can't be the doer anymore, like doer check off the list.
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  You have to be the decision maker, you know, the
• 11:07
  communicator. And so you don't need to do
• 11:10
  more. You have to do the right things.
• 11:12
  And so how are you going to be able to to create clarity in
• 11:16
  chaos? That's the biggest thing.
• 11:18
  And so by doing that, you have to start to identify for
• 11:21
  yourself of I can't be the doer of everything.
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  So how can I go from the doer of everything to really being able
• 11:31
  to become a decision maker and become more decisive?
• 11:33
  So you have to work on your decision making skills.
• 11:35
  You're gonna have to work on your ability to create
• 11:37
  strategies and to and test and experiments those things.
• 11:41
  You can't just stick to what you had before where you're just
• 11:43
  like executing things and firing them off.
• 11:46
  And so being able to create this new version of yourself, this
• 11:48
  new identity of yourself and to expand it, right?
• 11:51
  We're not throwing out the old version of you, we're just
• 11:53
  evolving it. And so that'll be very important
• 11:55
  because it affects how you lead, it affects your team, it affects
• 11:59
  how you build your business. And just knowing that there has
• 12:01
  to be some expansion, some expansion there and there
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  creates a lot of self-awareness. I was talking to a founder
• 12:06
  yesterday who's built her business the course of eight
• 12:08
  years. And the biggest thing that she
• 12:10
  came to find was just like being able to have the self-awareness
• 12:13
  to understand the things that one, she was good at 2, the
• 12:17
  things that just did not let her up that she needed to like
• 12:20
  essentially hire experts for. And then three, like sometimes
• 12:23
  it's not fun, but just being self aware of what the business
• 12:25
  actually needs versus like the things that we want to do and
• 12:28
  execute. But what is actually needed for
• 12:30
  that? And I just was saying, you know,
• 12:31
  it's, it's kind of crazy and the level of like awareness you need
• 12:36
  to have of yourself in order to make sure you're getting your,
• 12:39
  you're, you're keeping yourself out of your own way and out of
• 12:41
  the business's way. And by doing that, it's being
• 12:44
  able to grow and evolve. And so you know, my, this one
• 12:48
  client that I'm thinking about, she was just reacting to
• 12:52
  everything. So it was like very like
• 12:54
  reactive of the things that were happening versus like driving,
• 12:58
  directing and leading. And so we really had to recenter
• 13:01
  her on like, what are the priorities?
• 13:03
  Because, you know, something would happen like a delivery
• 13:05
  would be delayed, would be delayed or a campaign would be
• 13:08
  late. And so we were like constantly
• 13:10
  like, it was like scramble, scramble, scramble.
• 13:12
  How do I problem solve? Or a team member was like
• 13:14
  underperforming, like how do we fix this?
• 13:16
  But it was like, OK, how can we start to create like real clear
• 13:22
  goals of what it is you want to be focusing on once a month,
• 13:25
  quarter to quarter on all these different like pillars of you
• 13:28
  know of the business. So we can create more proactive
• 13:31
  plans. Obviously, things are going to
• 13:33
  happen last night, but create more proactive plans around it
• 13:36
  so you have a better way to expend and spend your energy as
• 13:40
  well as be able to have the resources needed to support
• 13:43
  them. Because once you start to
• 13:46
  prioritize what's important to you, then you start to look at
• 13:49
  what tools, systems, or people are needed in order to achieve
• 13:51
  that. So you become more proactive
• 13:53
  versus reactive. And if you're somebody who's
• 13:56
  like staying in the past identity of yourself that is
• 13:58
  just in the doer aspect or the get things done aspect, you can
• 14:03
  you don't have time to plan proactively and then strategize
• 14:07
  what is needed in order for that to happen.
• 14:09
  And so that's the part that I always say.
• 14:10
  It's like you got to have all the self-awareness of getting
• 14:12
  out of your own way because it's so easy to say there's not
• 14:15
  enough time. It needs to get done now.
• 14:18
  It's easier if I do it. But lady, I mean, what's that?
• 14:22
  What is that going to get you? What is that going to get you
• 14:24
  going to get stuck doing the same thing?
• 14:26
  If you are doing the same thing you have always done, you will
• 14:28
  be the same person you always have been.
• 14:31
  So you have to change it up. All right.
• 14:33
  I feel like I was giving some tough love on this one, but I
• 14:36
  just wanted to bring it home because we want to evolve, we
• 14:40
  want to change, we want to grow, whether it's our business,
• 14:41
  whether it's ourselves. But we are so easy to get caught
• 14:46
  up on the day-to-day of what we do.
• 14:49
  And then we wonder why days, years, months, etcetera,
• 14:52
  etcetera go by and we haven't changed or evolved.
• 14:54
  And I'm going to repeat it. The biggest thing that it comes
• 14:57
  down to is you can't keep acting like you've been always acting
• 15:01
  in order to be someone new, you have to evolve and change it.
• 15:03
  So what does that require from you?
• 15:06
  And so that way, is it scalable for what it is that you want to
• 15:09
  do? You know, are you delegating?
• 15:12
  Are you asking for help? If you've hired them, do you
• 15:14
  trust them? Have you communicated for them?
• 15:15
  Are you creating systems in place for that to happen?
• 15:17
  Are you creating an overall vision of what you want, goals
• 15:20
  and priorities, and then breaking down what steps need to
• 15:23
  happen there? That is where the misses happen
• 15:26
  for my entrepreneurs, my leaders, my founders, when they
• 15:29
  are building something that is growing really rapidly and
• 15:32
  things start to kind of like crumble.
• 15:33
  There's like these different breaking points in the business
• 15:36
  and they're like, wait, what do I do?
• 15:38
  It's not working anymore. No, it's just time to evolve
• 15:41
  with the business. And that's the biggest thing.
• 15:44
  So the last thing I would say to you, if you would change, like
• 15:47
  if you could change one thing that you feel like you were just
• 15:50
  not executing on, that you would like to execute on, what would
• 15:53
  it? Because I'm kind of curious,
• 15:54
  like sometimes we're saying to ourselves like we're going to
• 15:58
  get this thing done. I really get this thing done,
• 16:01
  get this thing done. And it's like going constantly
• 16:03
  to the bottom of our To Do List. So what is that thing?
• 16:06
  And it better be a big thing that's going to move the needle.
• 16:08
  And if it is, you know, what's stopping you And what would be
• 16:11
  your plan to kind of implement it?
• 16:12
  All right, perfect. If this got you curious of what
• 16:16
  it's like to work together because as you can tell from
• 16:20
  listening to me, I'm all about creating a plan, having action,
• 16:23
  having strategy, being curious and challenging the standard.
• 16:28
  Then if you want to work together, you can go to
• 16:30
  mywebsite@dannytan.com. That's DAMIT am.com and there's
• 16:35
  information there on private coaching, group coaching as well
• 16:38
  as strategy sessions. So if you're like what is like
• 16:40
  to work together, I always recommend book a strategy
• 16:42
  session. We can see what it's like to
• 16:44
  work together together in general.
• 16:46
  And even before that, you can just put a call just to get to
• 16:48
  know me and say hello 1st to see what is best for you.
• 16:52
  But I would say the difference between somebody who evolves and
• 16:57
  grows and changes their life as somebody who takes action and
• 17:00
  you take action by doing something different, doing
• 17:02
  something new that you haven't done before.
• 17:04
  So what will you do this week? All right, have a good one and I
• 17:07
  will talk to you soon.