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Navigating Leadership: When to Step Up and When to Let Go · Business for Humans

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I'm Jamie Gennaro, business coaching consultant and founder of Practica Consulting.
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In this episode of Business for Humans, I'm diving into the role emotions play
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at work, especially for leaders and CEOs who are growing their businesses.
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I share some personal experiences from my career working with homegrown companies
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and talk about the challenge of elevating yourself out of day-to-day operations as a leader.
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I offer tips on how to make that transition into a visionary role,
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empowering your team, and creating a more collaborative, healthy work environment. Enjoy.
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Music.
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Welcome. Welcome back. Here we are. This is Business for Humans. I'm Jamie Gennaro.
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And today we're continuing this theme of emotions at work.
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And this is an important theme for
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me because I have worked in many organizations where there was a CEO who grew
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the business and was very emotionally attached to the business. this.
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This was my experience, I would say, for the first 20 years of my career,
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where I would get pulled into an organization that was right at that moment
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before having massive growth.
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So in the first company I worked in, they were at year seven.
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And during the time that I worked there in the five years they got acquired.
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So I came in sort of after that first period of startup slash we're getting
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our shit together slash we're finally making money.
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Okay, we've got the ball rolling. We've got a big team. And then we're starting
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to get attention, external attention.
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And then sale comes on the heels of that.
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So it's been this very interesting pattern in my career that I'm working for homegrown businesses.
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And this is why I feel so prepared and experienced in the consulting work that
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I do because I've been at startup, fresh, first-time launch.
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I've come in at year five. I've come in at year seven.
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I've come in when it's 20 people, and then we scaled to 80 people in a year and then get acquired.
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I've been a part of a company that brought me in as sort of a third partner.
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They were just starting to really understand what their value proposition is.
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And then we grew really fast.
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I managed the growth. I managed the team. And then we opened up a second office.
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We were in Portland. And then we opened a second office in New York.
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And then we got angel investment.
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And then it just kind of blew up from there. So it's been this interesting pattern.
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And I only bring it up because I think I've recently been remembering how often
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I've worked in organizations that have been homegrown.
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So basically, it's an entrepreneur, a solopreneur who grows the business,
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or it's a solopreneur plus a partner that they bring in later,
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or it's a team of partners, but it's still theirs.
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I've worked for almost exclusively, independently run organizations.
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Strangely, in my whole career, I've never worked inside of a corporation.
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I've worked with a lot of corporations as clients.
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I've worked with Adidas and Nike and Calvin Klein and Nestle.
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I mean, REI, so many. I mean, it's a long list. So I've worked with a lot of corporations.
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I've been on campus. I've worked with leaders, but I've never worked inside of a corporation.
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So that emotional pull of working in an organization where the CEO owns it,
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it's independently owned, is really different than a corporation where it's,
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fundamentally its own entity being run by a board of directors and is potentially publicly traded.
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Completely different emotional regulation situation than working in companies
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that are privately owned,
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independently owned, and driven potentially by the person who who dreamed up
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that business in the first place.
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So one of the things that was always a challenge, which was always an advantage
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and a challenge in my role of being brought in early into these organizations
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with the idea that I would operationally grow the business,
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the benefit and challenge to that is that sometimes the CEOs I was working with
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and reporting directly to couldn't see the vision.
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I'm not saying my vision. They They couldn't see their own vision.
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It just wasn't clear enough for them to articulate, this is exactly what I'm
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hoping this business will accomplish. This is the outcome I'm looking for.
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Because what happens when you start out bootstrapping your business is that
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you're always in this constant race to get a step ahead.
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You always feel like you're behind. mind. So no matter what stage of the business
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you're in, even if you're bringing in consistent revenue and you have a team
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and the wheels are turning,
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they're well-oiled, there's still this feeling when you're the driver that you're a step behind.
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And that brings emotion and that brings scarcity
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also kind of scarcity thinking but it
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also stop the ceo is not able to
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stop and take that breath and take that step
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back and reassess and and look at the whole and make sure that they're working
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smarter not harder which is why i love my work because i can come in and say
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all right i see what you're doing it makes perfect sense it's what every ceo does they run that race.
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They kind of grind to get the business to a certain place.
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And when you get it to that certain place, that's when it's time to take a step
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back, take a breath, reassess, and see where your new role resides.
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When you're getting a business off the ground, you're doing everything.
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So if I'm speaking to you, if you're a new entrepreneur, you're doing everything.
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You're doing the marketing.
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You're doing the sales. You're doing the proposal writing.
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You're doing the work itself, right? You're networking, you're doing business
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development, you're having to do the research to grow the business,
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you're on the business, you're in the business, you're doing the work,
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you're driving the work, and you're doing all the rules.
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So it's natural that once your business starts flowing and rolling,
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that you kind of just keep going.
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You're like, it's working, it's working, I'm going to keep going,
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keep doing it, rinse and repeat.
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It's no problem until you you get to the point where now you've hired a team
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and the team has no work to do because you're still in there doing the work.
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And what's hard for CEOs sometimes is to pull up because the new role for them,
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the role of CEO, the role of visionary, the role of strategist,
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the role of just being on the business is new.
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It's a new place to be. So when I was working in these businesses reporting
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to CEOs, I was always trying to push them up.
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You have a team. They're supporting you. Trust them. They're doing great.
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Move up, move up, move up. And when I've worked with CEOs who were really open
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to that, it was incredible.
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I mean, I literally worked at a company where that was basically my sole job
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was to clean up operations, clean up profit and loss, understand where we were, where we were sitting.
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And as soon as we were able to do that, help elevate the CEO out of the weeds.
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She was a project manager. So she was project managing everything.
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We built a project management team. She leveled up.
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And literally, within six months of that level up, the business was sold. And she made...
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Let's just call it tens of millions. So it was so successful. And it was not easy.
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There was definitely that moment where there was a lot of resistance to lifting up.
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And as soon as she did, it was it just everything moved into place.
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The team was able to get a little bit more independent shift,
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take on more responsibilities, take over that job that she was doing so that
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she She could move into what the company needed, which was a visionary CEO to
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take them to the next level.
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As soon as she moved into that space, she was able to drive that business six
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months out into a massive, massive sale.
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And she stayed on for another five years through the contractual obligation of that sale.
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But it was exactly that was where she wanted to go.
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She was able to literally from the seed of an idea, grow this business,
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move gradually up in her own business, basically giving herself promotions into
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higher level positions, different levels of responsibility.
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She walked that path very, I would say like with some bumps,
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but mostly pretty gracefully.
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Understanding where she needed to elevate was open to those elevations and then went gangbusters.
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Investors so that's the ideal situation that when
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you're homegrown business you get to a
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certain place where you can evaluate where's the best place for me to be now
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and then continue to elevate yourself into the ceo role because when it's an
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independent company you can't just walk in and say well i'm the ceo i'm not
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going to do any work that's not gonna that's not gonna get you very far in a startup.
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So it's natural and important for a CEO to be or a founder.
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I mean, it's even CEO is a big word for someone who's a one person show.
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But the dream is that you're building your business, you're building a team,
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you're scaling, you're growing, you're getting more clients,
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and then you're elevating every time your business elevates.
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But there are people who don't elevate out of fear, right? It's fear and insecurity.
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They know how to do this one job really well.
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And so there is incredible resistance to moving up the food chain in their own business.
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And I've seen this a couple times in a couple of businesses where I was an employee.
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And in fact, at one point, one of the CEOs that I was reporting to sat me down
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and said, listen, I don't think I'm the right person for the CEO role, which was remarkable.
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I mean, that is a very kind of courageous thing to come out and say as someone
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who's been growing a business for a certain amount of time.
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I think that company had been in business for five years when I came on board.
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And he sat me down and he said, I think that you should be the CEO.
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And I'm going to move into more of a creative role. And unfortunately,
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in that exact moment, I had found out I was pregnant.
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And so I had to decline the offer.
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But what was great about that moment was that was a different,
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that was another place of elevation, right?
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A CEO saying, I need to pass the reins.
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This is not my best skill set.
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I'm going to pass it and I'm going to go focus on what I know are my skills and talents.
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So if you feel like your work is stronger, I talked about this in last week's
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podcast, if you feel like where your skill set is, is stronger in one element.
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Pass the ball to someone who you think would be a great leader and a great CEO
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for your organization. That's an option.
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What's been difficult for me in the experiences I've had working internally
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with some CEOs that were more resistant to that elevation is that it really,
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truly holds the team back.
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So in the first example I gave, what was happening when the owner was in the
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project management role, the other project managers were comparing themselves to her.
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So she had more experience than they did. She had a different kind of background
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than they did. She was also the owner of the company.
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So there's a different level of pressure when one of your colleagues also owns
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the company that you work for.
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So they're your boss, and they're also the person writing the checks.
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So it comes with a lot of pressure that I think is not fair.
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I think as a leader and a CEO, it's your job to give people room and space to grow.
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I think it's any manager's job to give their team room and space to grow,
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which means sometimes making mistakes.
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It means sometimes dropping the ball.
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And if we as leaders are under the false pretense that we don't drop balls or make mistakes.
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Then we need to go to therapy because every single person in the world,
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leader or not leader, is going to drop a ball and make a mistake every once in a while.
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So if we're afraid of passing the reins to our teams and trusting them and knowing
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that they might drop a ball or make a mistake.
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If we think that if we hold on to all that work, if we really believe that we're
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never going to make any mistakes, then we're really fooling ourselves.
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So it's unfair to a team to expect them to manage up to a CEO.
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It's unfair for them to have to work at the same level as a CEO unless you're
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truly a three-person startup.
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But when you're at the point when when you're 10, 12, 20, 50 people strong,
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it is not fair for that team to have that kind of pressure.
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And also there's going to be a stopping point to the ability for a business
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to move forward without a visionary leader.
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And to be a visionary leader means elevating up, mentoring and guiding and getting out of the weeds.
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So the reverse side of that.
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Is when managers are being forced by their upper management to stay in the weeds.
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So I'm also working with a client. You will recognize yourself if you are listening.
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I have a client who has been offered a promotion to manage a team,
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but what hasn't been discussed is how her role will be filled once she elevates.
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So the concern is that if I elevate into this management position,
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position they may not fill my role because
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I'm so good at my job they probably think
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I could just do both I hear this a lot from
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leaders CEOs and hiring managers when
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they say well I could promote this person but
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there's definitely not enough work for me to promote them and fill their old
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role And this is just a really interesting conversation because it's very easy
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to see in most companies what the workload is on a person.
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This specific example of my client who wants to elevate to a management position,
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she has consistently been billing 60-hour work weeks.
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So already, that's a red flag. and it's too late if you notice it weeks out
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that you have an employee that's billing 60 hours a week.
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It's too late to see that later. You need to see that the week it's happening
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and address it in that week if you're waiting weeks and weeks and weeks.
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So already what we know is that's time and a half.
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So at the very least, we know we have one full-time role and a part-time role.
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At the very least, just by looking at the time that people are billing.
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So to say that, well, this is definitely not two full-time roles.
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Well, what the client is saying is that as soon as I elevate and I'm out of
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the weeds, I'm going to be able to focus on business development.
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And guess what happens when you grow business development, when you grow new
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business, when you grow clients,
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or when you grow existing accounts, there's more work to do,
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which means that person that starts with 20 hours a week will very quickly move into 40 hours a week,
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maybe 50, which is a red flag that it's time to bring on another person.
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So this is the thing that leaders seem to forget is that when there's an elevation.
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There's an opportunity for strategy and business development,
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which is where the CEO belongs.
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Business development is a critical component of having a healthy business.
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Some people call it lead generation.
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Some people call it nurturing. Some people call it acquisition,
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right? But it's all the same thing.
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And it's part of the CEO's job. So it's great to think that being in the weeds
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and getting the work done is where you belong.
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But the longer you spend there, the more apt your business is to reach a stagnation
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point because no one's focusing on growth.
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And not that every business needs to grow, but at least on maintenance and health
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and health of the organization.
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So that's that soapbox for me that CEOs need to elevate as their business is growing.
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They need to move up and promote themselves into roles that make makes sense in their career.
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And if there's fear or insecurity in the way of that growth, work it out.
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Get a coach. Get a therapist.
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Have a mentor, business advisor. There are places to work on where that gap
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is between you and growth and what's holding you back. Take that offline.
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Go work that out so that you can come back to the business and elevate.
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Because it's unfair to the the team. There are so many reasons that it's not
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great for the health of an organization, but at the end of the day,
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it's the health of the team.
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It's the health and well-being of the team that suffers the longer leaders are
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in the weeds for all the reasons I listed.
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So there's that piece. And that's an emotional piece, right?
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That's the fear and insecurity getting in the way of the growth and elevation.
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So there's an emotion that's being brought to the table that needs to get worked
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out so that there can be elevation and leadership and growth.
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And that's on every level. So that's not just a CEO.
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It's also senior leaders who
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maybe are working too much in the weeds or working too much in projects.
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We forget how important management is because we're in this era of breaking
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apart old business styles, which I think is great. I'm all for breaking the mold.
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But I do think that there's something we forget when we go too flat in an organization
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when we get rid of, I don't like hierarchy.
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I don't like the idea of what a hierarchy is, but what I do like is the mentoring
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and guiding part of management, which I think is really important.
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So for us to assume that people straight out of university understand.
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Priority setting, not that they don't understand it, but putting the pressure
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on them to decide what's the highest priority, I think is also a disservice.
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If we're not mentoring and guiding and helping people create priorities and
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understand what the priorities are and drive towards those priorities,
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we're really leaving people in no man's land.
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We're not providing them feedback. We're not providing them growth opportunities.
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So as commendable as it is to leave people completely on their own and independent
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at certain levels, it's not doing a service actually to those kind of early
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entry-level employees.
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They're not sure what they're supposed to be doing.
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And particularly in this environment of so much working from home and working remotely,
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to just leave people out there kind of stranded without a lifeboat or without
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a life preserver is truly unfair because they're not going to meet expectations
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and they're not going to know why.
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So that's where there's this kind of middle management tier where if that senior
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management is not elevating, if they're not getting out of the work,
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if they're too busy taking the work off junior people's plates because they
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feel like they're not meeting expectations, they're not doing the work well.
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If that person is in the weeds for too long, they're not spending the time mentoring and guiding.
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And that's a true disservice. Then we're missing a lot of opportunities to really
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expand and grow and see the potential of new additions to our team.
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So on every level, it's really important to understand what your role is.
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And are you helping to support the growth of people and the growth of your business?
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Or are you in there for some other reason? Are you in there because you haven't
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figured out how to give feedback?
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Or that you don't know how to get out of the project work, or you don't know how to empower people.
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Again, look at that. Be truthful and honest with yourself about where your limitations
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might be as a manager or leader.
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Go work that out offline, and
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then come back and be ready to elevate and guide and mentor and support.
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And that's exactly what the case my client is trying to make in saying,
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listen, I want to elevate to this management position,
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but I'm not going to stay in the weeds and do the work and do the job of my
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old role in addition to being a manager because then I will not have the proper
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time to guide and mentor my team and help them grow or to focus on business development.
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So this is a crucial component of that role. This is leadership.
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This is understanding what it means to be a leader.
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Being a leader also means advocating for that team.
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So sometimes when you're in that middle management role,
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it's not appropriate for these new employees to have to go straight to the CEO
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with feedback or go straight to the CEO with any real objectives.
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That's a tough gap to jump when you're a new employee, having to report into a CEO.
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But also, the team sometimes is having issues moving objectives forward because
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sometimes the CEO or the C-level team or the VP team is putting some roadblocks
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in place because they can't see their own blind spots. thoughts, right?
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Because sometimes the senior team can't see into the weeds.
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This is the one disadvantage of that elevation.
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They're not in the weeds in the work. And so they're making decisions that don't
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always align with the team that's doing the work, that's doing the day-to-day work.
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So in that middle management role, it's really important that you're advocating
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for your team, that you understand very clearly what's happening in the weeds.
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You can jump in there if need be. You can get in there and help and support.
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It's not where you live on a day-to-day basis, but you need to know how to do
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that work so that you can properly support and advocate for your team.
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But it's your job to take any concerns they have or any issues that they have
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and unemotionally, completely professionally, bring them forward and advocate
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for the team and drive those things forward.
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If you're sitting in that senior leadership position and you're hearing feedback
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and you're not bringing it forward, you're not a leader.
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Period. I see a lot of people who brush that stuff under the rug.
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They hear concerns. The concerns come forward to them.
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They're not in the capacity to bring it forward out of fear or insecurity or worry about their job.
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And they sweep it under the rug. And this creates a culture of distrust because
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the team is leaning on this person.
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This person is like a congressperson, right? They're a democratically elected
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representative for the team.
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It's their job to bring concerns forward. If they sit on those concerns because
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they have their own emotional.
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Crevasse to get through, if they have too much fear or insecurity to bring that
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feedback forward or to bring those concerns forward to the people who can make
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decisions or make impact or make change,
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then their job is no longer relevant, right?
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Because now this more junior team looks at them and says, they're completely ineffective.
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They're not helping. They're not creating solutions. They're not coming to the
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table of solutions, and they're not helping drive change.
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They're not helping move things forward. And therefore, what is the point?
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The point is that they're there to help grow and guide and mentor that team
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and bring concerns forward and with their experience and with their leadership skills,
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diplomatically and professionally bring solutions forward so that they can foster
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the change their team needs to do a good job to aka create more profit for that
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senior team who's getting in everyone's way.
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We're all working if we if we like to pretend like
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it's not a fiefdom it 100 is because
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everyone who's rowing the boat is rowing
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the boat for the owner of the boat somebody owns that boat and someone is going
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to benefit from the people rowing the boat but if the person steering is steering
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to the left and all the people rowing are trying to row the boat to the right
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no one's going anywhere. We're just going to go in circles.
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So it's important as a middle manager to take your leadership position seriously
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and to understand that it's your job to move these things forward.
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And when you're at that upper management level, ownership level,
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CEO level, it's really important for you to listen openly and understand that you might be standing in
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your own way, in the team's way, if you haven't worked out some of those fears
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and insecurities and worries, scarcity mindset,
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whatever it might be that's standing in your way, you might be accidentally
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self-sabotaging yourself and your business by not elevating.
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Getting out of the weeds, taking responsibility for what's yours,
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and helping smooth the path for your team.
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Back in the day, I worked for a summer camp company.
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It was an amazing company, an amazing job, one of my favorite jobs that I've ever had.
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And one of the things in our hierarchy, quote unquote, was that we had on-site staff.
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So we had directors and camp counselors who were on-site, and they were the face of the business.
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They were the people that the families and the kids interacted with during the summer.
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And then we had a management level that supported the full team.
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So we had a manager that would support a location.
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And they were off-site, but they were managing basically the location rental
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and all the operational logistics,
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hiring those camp counselors, and doing everything to basically prepare and
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prep the camp to be set up every summer, getting campers there too.
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So there was marketing and operations and hiring.
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So basically every manager of each camp location was essentially running a small business.
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And then of course, there was the back office infrastructure supporting everything.
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So making sure that we have the funds and the broader marketing strategies and
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the year-long visions and the five-year plans and that back-end infrastructure
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that kept everything flowing.
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But at the end of the day, those people on site, those were the people that
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needed the most support.
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So even though if you look at a typical org chart, these people might be at
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the bottom quote-unquote of the food chain, these were our most important staffers.
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So the mantra of the the business was always we work for you right like and.
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Music.
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There's a constructive way to give feedback that's not going to fit people.
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But it's all because a combined goal.
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As a sports team, we want to win. We're all working together.
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We cannot do it one person.
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There cannot be one superstar in the field who's going to bring us to a championship.
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Kobe tried it. It didn't work. Right? Messi tried it. It didn't work.
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You cannot just be one superstar. star, you have to work together with your
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team. That's the only way you're going to win.
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It is no different in a business.
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Whatever you're trying to move forward, it is a team effort.
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So any gossip, any triangulation, any, you know, talking about people and their
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work performance and not talking to them about their work performance,
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but talking behind their backs.
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This is all breakdown of culture. It's all a breakdown of collaboration.
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And oftentimes it comes from the top. It comes from insecurity and fear at the top.
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And this is why those emotions are completely valid.
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And every CEO has those those feelings, those thoughts and feelings.
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I think anyone in a leadership has those thoughts and feelings because we all
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have some version of imposter syndrome.
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But if we don't work them out, we are doing a disservice to our team.
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And what does that mean? And why does that even matter?
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It matters because if you are stressed at work, and I'm not talking about stressed
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about the work itself, like I have a presentation I need to finish,
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I have a delivery due, I'm not talking about that work stress.
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I'm talking about the political, gossipy, personality, personality, difficult,
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combative work stress, when you're in the middle of trying to resolve some kind
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of conflict between people, that work stress does not just stay at work.
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That work stress bleeds out into our families, into our extended families, into our communities.
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It keeps us from being productive in our well-being routines.
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We put them on the back burner because we're so mired in this emotional weight
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that we're carrying from our work, which does not belong.
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So I feel that leaders have this really important responsibility to squelch,
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if that's the right word,
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to dissolve these emotional weighted political pieces that come up at work.
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It's the leadership's responsibility to get ahead of those things and to be
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good examples and to put their emotions to the side, because if they don't.
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Entire communities are being affected. Kids are being affected.
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Partners are being affected.
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Now, I'm not saying it's not an employee's responsibility also to understand
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what the weight of that emotion is and to find a place to put it and to find a place to resolve it.
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But please, can we just work a little harder to just not put that stuff on our co-workers?
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It's so gravely unfair. It doesn't belong.
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It does not belong. It keeps us from doing good work and it keeps us from wanting to be motivated.
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So the ironic chicken and egg scenario is that is the work suffering because
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it's suffering or is the work suffering because there's so much of this political stuff at play?
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We might be disparaging somebody's work when really that person has lost all
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their motivation and morale because there's so much of this other gossipy political stuff going on.
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And we can do workshop after workshop and leadership training and all these things.
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But fundamentally, at the end of the day, it's an individual's responsibility to do their work.
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And what I mean by that is the personal work. Get ahead of your fear and insecurities
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and imposter syndromes because they don't belong in the workplace.
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They just don't. It keeps you from setting boundaries. And then when you don't
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set boundaries, you feel taken advantage of.
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And then when you feel taken advantage of, you take different actions.
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So I just implore all leaders, and I know that the audience here,
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you are not the people that are doing this, but you're in a position to help
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the people who are not seeing this, right?
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Who are just not seeing this blind spot. let's all
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decide collectively anyone who's
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listening to this that we will do our best to help understand help people understand
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this blind spot and help people understand how to do this work this personal
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work this fear insecurity imposter syndrome work outside of the workplace workplace,
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to understand what their biases are,
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what their insecurities are outside of the workplace so that together as a team, collectively,
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we can remember what it means to be a team so that we can do that work on the side and then come back.
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And remember that feedback should be a continuous sharing.
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You finish a game, you reflect on the game, you give each other feedback, back.
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And then the next game, you work together.
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There's no name calling on the field. So I use sports metaphors a lot because
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my son plays soccer and I see when he's on a team that's backtalking each other,
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that's yelling at each other on the field, that's getting really negative.
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What I see on those games are violence. I see injuries. I see tears. I see pain.
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And guess what? Nobody wins.
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Conversely, when he's been on teams where the coach focuses on,
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you guys are going to stay after the game.
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We're going to hang out for an hour. We're going to debrief.
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You guys are going to take showers together. You're going to listen to music,
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and then you're going to go home.
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He makes space for the mentoring and the guidance and the constructive feedback amongst the team.
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And when my son was on that team, when they're on the field,
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guess what? There's no backtalking. There's no calling names.
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They're encouraging each other. They're like, good try. Bummer.
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Next time. You'll do it next time. You're doing great. You're doing great.
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And guess what? Those games have less violence, less frustration,
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less injuries, less tears, less yellow cards.
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Also, let's just say that less yelling at the ref because they're creating an
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environment that feels like a team effort.
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They're not jumping on each other
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when they make mistakes. They're understanding, hey, that's a part of it.
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We're going to give each other feedback after the game. We know we have time to do that.
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So we're going to let it slide. We're not going to jump on you.
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This is so important. This is so important to creating a constructive,
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collective team effort.
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So again, I know I'm preaching to the choir. Anyone who's here listening to
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this understands the power of the team and the power of collaboration.
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But I just want to impart again, we're living in a world right now which is
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very angry and very very conflicting, and very violent.
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And the workplace needs to be a place that is not that, right?
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Like we need to know that we're going to work,
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to be supportive of each other. And that can be any kind of environment,
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white collar, blue collar, you know, you're digging up the road.
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I mean, I've seen the guys working on my street who are like digging up the
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bricks and they're listening to music and they're laughing and they're chatting
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and they're having fun at work and they're a team.
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They're working together and guess what? They're probably working a lot more
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focused and productively than if they were mad at each other and ripping on each other and angry.
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They would not have the motivation to finish the work. So it doesn't matter what the work is.
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You can bring a different kind of attitude.
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You can allow people to make mistakes. You can tell them, hey,
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you know what, better luck next time.
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We're going to get it next time. It's okay.
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That's the job of a leader. that's the job of
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a sports coach that's the job of a
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team member that's the part of
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the work that's really important to keeping the whole
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healthy so when we talk all this bullshit about dei and like healthy workplaces
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and then we bring all this baggage to work it's just like assuming that the
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culture is going to happen in our team building event and then we're going to
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ignore the culture when we're doing the work. It's the same thing.
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It's the same thing. If you're bringing a bad attitude at work and then you're
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saying, oh, but we're doing a DEI training today, we're solving the problem.
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It's not solving the problem. This isn't an individual project.
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We all have to individually look at what we're bringing and know and be honest
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about what's ours and then show up for the team.
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And I'm not saying it has to be some kind of fake toxic positivity,
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but let's just encourage each other instead of discouraging each other.
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Let's not talk shit about each other behind our backs.
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Let's just be open and able to give feedback, constructive feedback,
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and let's be able to receive constructive feedback equally.
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And that's it. That's my soapbox for the day.
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This is something I am so passionate about. It's the foundation of the mission of the work that I do.
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I have been an employee in a lot of environments, and I bring a lot of perspective to this.
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And like I said, I've worked in a lot of these homegrown environments,
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which is a unique place to be.
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I think there's so much opportunity in an independently owned company because
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you can pitch new ideas and there's much more room for innovation and risk and
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different types of growth.
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I think it's so exciting. I really love those environments.
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But conversely, if leadership teams aren't taking the responsibility that you
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need to take as a leadership team,
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then you're doing a disservice to the people who have sacrificed and been willing
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to do the job they're doing for sometimes less pay than what they could get
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other places in independently owned companies.
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There are exchanges and benefits, but also if somebody's made the choice to
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be there, choice to be there.
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It's our job as leaders and managers to give them growth and opportunity and
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support and make them feel like they're the the most important person in the
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company. They are the most important.
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They're doing the work. They're front-facing. Hopefully that lands.
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You get something helpful from that. And I will leave it until next week.
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Music.