Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 220: Leadership lessons for TAs from championship coaches
Transcript
- Rachel: Welcome to the Travel Agency Near Podcast. I am your host, Rachel K, travel agency owner, helping travel advisors get into their CEO mindset and like really build the business that builds you up. That's my tagline for Elevate with Rachel K. Head over to elevate with Rachel K.com. If you're interested in how I can help you build up your travel agency. Today's 220. Dream team. I've done a lot of hospitality work. any any any actually anything I've ever done work-wise since I was 16. I've always had dream team! Like I just create my own little dream team with random staff members at different jobs I've had. even with my own travel agency, I'm like, dream team! And I actually got into hospitality management at 17. They promoted me even though I wasn't old enough to make bank deposits. But they were like, you're good at this. Do it. And I was like, okay. And they're like, you're gonna train everybody. And I was like, alright. So I would have my dream team and we're gonna talk about building your dream team. So the dream team and this was this is also I like to talk I like to say dream team all the time. It's like highly motivational for everyone when you are in a leadership position to be like, we have the perfect dream team today. Let's do this. You're a rock star for this reason. You're a rock star for this reason. You can do this because you're such a BA. And also me. Let's get this going. And it just is a really good motivator. So let's talk about how to build a dream team from championship coaches, which I'm gonna bump. Botch all the names because I had to look all this up. I am not a I like to watch sports, but I'm not like, the bl like I don't know the name of the players. I pick a team. I have no loyalty except to one team in the NFL, which anytime I mention it, people are like, What is wrong with you? And I'm like, I know, right? I will watch sports. I understand the play of the game. I don't really care about any of this stuff. So if you are a Rando coach listening and I mispronounce your name, sorry. Alright. We are closing out this whole 10-episode stretch with a question that matters whether you're staying boutique or building towards something scaled. What does your dream team actually look like? A lot of advice about building a team stops at delegation. Hand off the tasks you don't want to do, free up your time, review what they're doing, correct them when they're doing stuff wrong. That is very true, and it is so incomplete. The deeper question isn't just what you're willing to hand off, it's what kind of leader you actually want to be and what kind of team culture you're trying to build on purpose rather than by default. So think of yourself as less as an owner barking orders and more of as a coach. Some of the most instructive examples of what actually that actually means, like comes from sports, which I don't know crap about. But there's a lot of team building and leadership philosophy that gets tested constantly in regards to like sports. Often under enormous roster turnover. Like college football. Like they are they're gonna eventually graduate college and move on with their lives, right? Or basketball. so there is a college football coach named Nick Saban whose program operated under the idea that a strong system and a culture matters way more than any single player. It didn't it didn't matter if your Enneagram testing scores lined up. None of that none of that matters. The phrase often used is that a dynasty doesn't rebuild, it reloads. Are you building a dynasty, BT Dubs? Replacing star talent year after year without the whole operation collapsing. Okay? So you need to be able to deal with personality differences because you can't become a good leader if you only are matching up with people that are like the perfect personality for you, right? And their personality has nothing to do with your business systems. Or we can look at Phil Jackson. Who won championships with two completely different rosters in Chicago, later in LA, by installing the same underlying system and philosophy, regardless of which specific stars he had on the floor. Like it doesn't, it does not matter. It does not matter like it does to a certain extent. Like you obviously want to look for like the A team, B team, C team. You wanna avoid the C team and have primarily A and B team, right? Because your team performs at the same level as like the weakest link essentially. And you don't need crap performers, right? But that doesn't mean they have to be an ENTP to be on your team. They just have to have certain skill sets and you have to be able to train them to follow your system. The Celtics coach from I don't know built a culture around selflessness and defense that outlasted any single player's tenure. Bilichek's Patriots, whatever you think of the coaching style itself, not a fan, ran on a do-your-job culture designed to make role players productive within a defined system, not just a roster of superstars. The common thread across all these examples, the strongest team cultures aren't built around any one star player, including notably the coach's own irreplaceability. So you can't build a team coach culture based around yourself is what that means. They're built around a system, a set of standards, and a culture clear enough that the team can absorb any turnover, even significant turnover, without collapsing. You're not gonna have the same people for your entire life as a travel advisor on your team. Like You'd be lucky to get that, but you're you're not. People change directions in their own careers, they have free will, right? Some people aren't gonna work out, some people are gonna be great. And entrepreneurs and small business owners, as they start hiring, they have to learn very quickly how to filter out those they deem to be like C players versus A players. And they have to be okay with letting go of a C player after they've made the mistake. Okay, so let's apply this to a travel agency. This means your dream team isn't really about finding the perfect individual advisors or assistants. It's not really about that. that is important. But it's not about that. And you can help shape that by demonstrating the proper leadership and setting the standards for your company culture. It's about building a system and a culture that's clear enough that your business doesn't depend entirely on any one person, including hopefully eventually, you being personally involved in every detail. If you want the boutique model, you're probably gonna lean a little more that way, but you shouldn't be involved in every single detail. And if you're like, I'm never giving that up, I refuse. We need to have a conversation. It's fine. What are your actual standards for how a client is treated? And is it realistically scalable? What's the do your job quote unquote version of your business? The specific things each role is responsible for, clearly enough that someone new could step in and understand what excellence looks like in your travel agency. So take a few minutes to actually picture it. What roles exist on your ideal team? Whether that's for the next year, five years from now. I don't know what you want. What's the culture and the standard that you want everyone operating under, regardless of who specifically fills each seat? And what's your own leadership style within that? Are you hands-on, involved in a daily basis, or more like a coach setting the system and trusting your team to execute within it? my gosh, we're gonna do more episodes probably later on, let me think. This is all tied, by the way, if you're listening still, to our Success Circle program. It's like a weird supplemental thing. And once this is done, listeners, I got a great sugg suggestion from a Success Circle student. I don't know what to call them because I'm like, I feel like you're adults. But they made the suggestion of linking the start of that week's podcast episodes inside the success circle. And I'm like, that's a great idea. And also, I need to finish this whole podcast first. So there are going to be, let's see, I think we're in like in about two months, we're gonna revisit and talk about leadership styles. That was my entire degree in college, was all about leadership and business development. So we're gonna talk about all the crap I learned in college. A lot of this stuff that I talk about in this podcast. Like you're getting a free leadership studies degree and business development degree. Taught by Rachel. And success circle goes even deeper. now, before I close out. This episode well no, I think I'm done. I'm done. Sorry. I was gonna do something, but I'm not. I'm not gonna do it. That was the ten episode run. Batching your content and batching your operations, a video first workflow that multiplies your content easily and effortlessly, that starts all the way back in day 210. If you're like, what? I just found this thing. Mindset shifts around your own discipline, potential avoidance. weaving your storytelling into your systems and finally zooming all the way out to the kind of business and the kind of dream team you're actually building towards. This is travel agency the year. Day 220. Have a great day.