Episode 316: 10 Ways to Become a better leader
Want to become a better leader? In this episode, Fiona shares key strategies for leadership and personal growth, covering essential skills like active listening, defining your leadership style, continuous learning, overcoming unconscious bias, finding mentorship, and the power of patience. Tune in!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
Importance of leadership in various contexts
The negative impact of bad managers
Creating a psychologically safe workplace
Understanding when to be proactive and when to pause
Practising empathy deeply
Recognizing individual learning styles and preferences
Building trust and fostering open communication
Encouraging growth and development
Providing feedback and recognition
Balancing accountability and support
Empowering and delegating responsibility
Leading by example
Continuously learning and improving as a leader
The Listening Squad (a business focused on developing listening skills)
Deciding on the type of leader you want to be
Five Ways of Leading
Engaging in learning to improve leadership skills (books, courses, online resources)
Recognizing and addressing unconscious biases in leadership
Finding a mentor or coach for support and guidance
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business Coach
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
You have to practice deep empathy as a leader. That means putting yourself into the shoes of whoever is in your team and understanding what are their fears, motivations, pain, and what's their pleasure. All the things that you'd also think about when you're thinking about a buyer persona or an audience mapping to think about that in terms of the people that you're leading.
Welcome to episode 316 of the My Daily Business podcast. Today it is a coaching episode, and this is an important one, particularly if you have a staff or you are thinking about bringing staff into your business, even on a remote basis or a very casual or part-time basis. This is something that you want to spend some time reflecting on and trying as much as you can to get right if there is such a thing as right or wrong. But in this case, I do think there is. Stay tuned for that. Before I get stuck, I want to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the land on which I record this podcast. And that is North Warrandyte. It's the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. And I pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded.
The other thing I wanted to mention is that if you're in Australia, it is getting close to the end of the financial year. If you need help with your money, you can feel free to book a session with me. We have one-on-one laser hour sessions. You can find all of that at mydailybusiness.com/shop. Also there you can find some of our courses, which include Money Mapping, which is a short course online self-paced that goes into detail about how to figure out what your survival rate is, what your thrive rate is as a business, and how to calculate all of that, and then figure out what your revenue streams are and reverse engineer your marketing to hit those revenue streams. If you're interested in either of those things, you can find that at mydailybusiness.com/shop. Let's get into today's coaching episode.
I have been running this business, this is my eighth year. Prior to that, I was head of marketing for a large accessories brand here in Australia, I would say probably the largest in Australia with locations in New Zealand and South Africa as well as Australia. And in that, I had to manage a team of between 16 to 19 or even 20 people. Prior to that, I worked in digital marketing roles where I also had teams and remote teams. And then I worked at Amazon in the UK where I headed up the whole of the home and kitchen and had a bunch of people that reported to me as well. I've worked at other places like that. Over the course of my career before starting my business, I've probably managed about 60 or 70 people. In my business, I have my own staff that work with me, but I've also worked consulting and working with larger companies and a lot of CEOs of bigger companies where they've got up to 50 staff and helping them understand how to lead.
Today I wanted to talk about leadership. This is something that if you are working by yourself, you might be like, I'm working by myself. I don't need to lead anyone. You are still a leader for maybe people in your community, maybe people who are coming in and getting a mentorship with you, maybe people who have asked you for help or down the road, people who you may be employing for admin services or other services that you are bringing into your business and you want to outsource. Likewise, if you are lucky enough to be a leader, to have staff already that are working with you, it is an important thing to not get complacent in that role and to keep reminding yourself of the privilege that it is to be a leader in a company and also the impact that you are having on other people's careers because you are having an impact.
You're having a massive influence. I was going to say we all, but maybe some people reading may not have ever worked in a position where they've had a manager or a leader. You may not know, but a lot of people will know that you can have a leader or a manager that's very inspiring and incredibly amazing at bringing the best out of you. And you can have others who do the absolute worst, they're toxic, they are just horrible to be around. They make you second-guess yourself and all sorts of things. And maybe even the reason that you leave a position, it's statistically shown that up to 82% of workers have admitted they would consider quitting purely because of a bad manager. And that was a survey done by GoodHire in 2022. It's a big problem if you have a leader or a manager or if you are that person who is adding to somebody's fear of coming into work, not feeling psychologically safe in there, but also if that's the only leadership model they've ever seen, that may well be what they think you have to be like if you get into that position.
It's just perpetuating the toxicity that is out there in the workplace. And we all know it. We've all heard of people being burnt out or stressed or being bullied and harassed by bad management and bad leadership. You do not want to be that. You do not want to have those things coming out about your business. Today I'm going to go through 10 things that I think are very important if you are a leader currently or if you are going to become a leader. And particularly if anyone's reading who has never led before, who's never managed people, these things are essential to work on. Some of them are easier than others and some of them will be things that you will work on for the rest of your life. But these things are essential in order to create a psychologically safe place for your employees or people working with you, but also to enjoy your role as the leader in a company.
I'm going to go through them again, I'm just riffing like I usually do. I just have them listed out here. Of course, there are so many other things that make a great leader, but this is from my own experience and my experience working under a lot of leaders in my career but also having the privilege of working alongside many small business owners who are CEOs and MDs and have quite large teams underneath them. Understanding the issues that can affect you regardless of whatever industry you're in the business when leadership isn't at a place that it should be for people to feel amazing and encouraged and excited by coming to work.
The first thing that is important is to reflect on your journey in your career. You may be in your fifties and have worked for 30-plus years, you might just be joining the workforce. But you want to think about what it is that has stood out to you when you think about management and leadership from the companies that you have interacted with. If you haven't worked inside a company, you might be thinking about the leadership of maybe your teachers at university or maybe even your teachers at high school if you had some great teachers. Because in a way, leaders are teachers, they are setting the example, they are the role model in a way that people might wish to go in a company. When you're looking at succession planning and where your hires are going to go in the company often they're looking above to see, do I like that role? Do I like what that person represents? Do I like their approach? This is also super important if you are trying to build a sustainable business that retains its staff and keeps them engaged.
Reflecting on your journey, if you have been managed, if you've had leaders in spots higher than you in a business, you want to be thinking about what was great about their leadership, what did you love about it, what if you become a leader or are a leader you would like to replicate from that? For example, I had a manager in one of the positions that I was in. I can't say she was the best manager. She would get incredibly emotional very quickly, which is not a bad thing, emotions are fine, but it was quite to the point of aggression and bullying in some cases. Not to me, fortunately, but to other people. One of the things that I think was amazing about this person, and this is years and years ago, is that she taught me the power of a sunshine folder.
The sunshine folder is the idea that anything good comes into your inbox. Like, “Hey Fiona, I loved how you did this,” or whatever it is, you put it into a folder in your inbox called the Sunshine folder. And when it comes to either time that when things are tough, you can go through the sunshine folder and read everything, or if you are employed, as I was at that role, she was like then you can pull that back up when it's review time and you don't have to try and think of all these examples. You've got all this stuff ready to go. That was a great thing that she taught me and it also taught me about mindset. She talked a lot about that, which is quite interesting because then on the flip side, I think she was overwhelmed in that position and she was only in that position for about six months.
She'd come into the company, took on the management role and then left. I think it was probably because she was in over her head and projected that frustration and overwhelm through aggression, which wasn't the best tactic, but there were some great parts about her as well. You want to be thinking about your management and I've had some incredible managers. I had an amazing manager at Amazon. She was fantastic. I cried when she told me she was leaving to go on maternity leave. And we've kept in touch ever since. She was only my manager for maybe nine months, but she had such a big impact on me. She was so empathetic. She has always had a smile on her face. She was encouraging, she was curious. She would sit with you and talk through things you didn't understand.
She always made time for people. She was just incredible. She also laughed, she was fun. She was just a joy to work with. You want to think about who these people have been, and what were their amazing traits about them. What were the things that maybe you'd have a different approach? Even with managers and leaders that I've worked with that, I felt was not, if I had to put them into two different buckets, maybe would be in the bucket of the more, not the best leader, they still had incredible things that were amazing about them. You can learn from everyone. I truly believe that you can learn from everyone. The first thing is to sit down and reflect on the career that you've had to date, the managers and leaders that you've had to date, even if they're in a university setting or a high school setting.
And think about what you loved and what you didn't love. And then when looking at the things that you loved, consider how much of those you're bringing into your business at the moment as the leader. If there are things that, when you think about and you're reflecting, you're like, I don't think I'm that fun to be around. Or I'm not making time for people, I'm having a monthly one-on-one when I think that my staff are expecting a weekly one-on-one and I know that this can bring up things like, I don't have time for that. This is the problem. If you don't make time now you're going to have to make time later hiring somebody else because that person is going to eventually get resentful or feel like they're not being valued and appreciated and look elsewhere.
These are the things that you want to get clear on. The first thing is to sit down and reflect on your journey so far and what was great about people and what was not so great about people. And get truthful to yourself. If you are already a leader, how many of those great aspects and qualities are you bringing into your leadership journey? The second important thing is to understand when to be proactive and when to pause. I know that can be a difficult thing to get your head around because sometimes it's almost like you have to be both of those simultaneously. Part of being a leader is to not react to everything because you literally can't. It's like being a parent in a way, and that's not to diminish employees or anything else, but being a parent, you can't react to every little thing.
You can't react to every single tantrum that your kid creates. You just can't. Or you would be exhausted. You have to know when to pause what is worth the effort. Also when to be proactive when you can see that, for example, I'm not giving people enough time right now, so I need to be proactive, even if they haven't asked for it, consider checking in with you every week, would that be better for you? Because I think that maybe we could check in a little bit more often and communicate a little bit more or whatever it is. Being proactive, but understanding when to be proactive and when to pause. And I know that I've talked about recently in another podcast, Viktor Frankl and the quote from Man's Search for Meaning, which is between stimulus and response. There is always a chance to pause.
I think that is one of the key lessons to understand, can I pause at this moment without getting emotional, without getting annoyed, without getting frustrated? Can I just take a minute to pause? That is the second thing, understand when you need to be proactive, which most of the time you should be proactive. But the other big thing is understanding the importance of pausing. To understand that maybe right now let's say you're in a meeting and things get a bit heated, let's all just take a minute, let's breathe, let's maybe park this and come back to it tomorrow morning. Let's all have a night to sleep on this because that is your job as the leader is to create a safe environment for everybody. Yes, people can have their peace, but you are not adding fuel to the fire of that.
If things are getting heated, you are, you are understanding the importance of your role to be proactive and pause at the same time. That's number two. Number three, and this can be very difficult, particularly if you have never managed people before. It is one of the greatest steepest learning curves, and that is to practice empathy and deeply practice empathy. Some people are naturally more empathetic than others and this goes to things like your personality type, how you're raised your experiences, what leads you, what motivates you, all sorts of things. Some people naturally are very empathetic and maybe too much. Recently I saw a program, I love the Insight program on SBS. If you're in Australia, it's amazing. If you're overseas, I don't know if you can check out Insight by SBS, it's a long-running program here in Australia.
They had an actual episode. When empathy can be a bad thing. I find myself as somebody who is very empathetic and potentially sometimes feels too much. But you have to practice deep empathy as a leader. That means putting yourself into the shoes of whoever is in your team and understanding what are their fears, are their motivations, what's their pain, what's their pleasure. All the things that you'd also think about when you're thinking about a buyer persona or an audience mapping to think about that in terms of the people that you're leading. Maybe they are being defensive because they're insecure, they've never held this role before. Maybe this is the first time they've had a full-time office job or the first time they've had to be facing customers in the coal face.
They're putting up their defences because they are insecure of like, maybe you are going to see through them, maybe you're going to fire them. And getting empathetic, also understanding that in that empathy that your way of learning is not necessarily everybody's way of learning. Whenever I'm running a course or let's say the marketing for your small business course and coaching program, I try and make it very clear all the way through that this is one way of learning. And if you are not a visual learner or if you are not this or that there are other ways to do X, Y, Z. Even with Money Mapping, for example, I like to draw that out. Some people don't like to do that. They like to have bullet lists, they like to have Word documents.
Whatever way you learn is fine. That's also something with your leadership. If you have always done things a certain way and then you are put up in a leadership position, it can be easy to go, well everyone should just step in line and this is the best way to do it. Everyone should just do it rather than have empathy and understanding that everyone has different experiences. People might learn a little bit slower than you, people might learn faster than you and just be incredible at things. But also that people have different associations with work and also you need to put yourself in their shoes that they have and have empathy for them. I've managed all sorts of people and I have managed people from people who were a little slack and through two people who worked too hard and you had to fight them to go home and be like, “You need to go home. You need to have a life outside of work.”
You want to have empathy and practice it and practice it. It might mean that you want to go and read some books about emotional intelligence. You might want to read some books about empathy. You might get frustrated by people. Again, coming back to number two, pause. You are the leader, you are leading this team. And you want to practice deep empathy. Number four, and this again goes with everything I've been saying is to understand your shortcomings, your areas for improvement. Again, this can be confronting because maybe you've never had to manage people and suddenly when you are you're realizing, I'm a bit of a control freak, or I like to micromanage, or I don't trust other people to do it as well as I do. Or whatever the things are that come up for you.
You want to be aware of those things. Sometimes it's managing people is like putting a mirror up to yourself and realizing, there are some gaps here. Sometimes you just don't see them until you're in that position. It's understanding those things and even writing them down and running through, like when you're getting frustrated with somebody running through those things and being like, “Okay, how is this my fault?” Or how have I not set this person up for success? Or how am I looking at this through the lens of my shortcomings? For example, micromanaging is a big one. It's a big one that a lot of people don't like to be micromanaged, some people do, and some people like to have complete direction all the time.
Please tell me exactly what I need to do at all times. But I would say most people would err on the other side and want to have a little bit more autonomy in a position. No one wants to feel like somebody is looking over their shoulder all the time. However, particularly if you have done that role and now you're being promoted to the leader. This happens all the time in small businesses, you've never had anybody do the role. You were doing everything yourself from the marketing to the HR, to the finance to the actual job. And then you hire somebody and you're like, “Let me show you how it's done.” “Excuse me, you're still not doing it, how I was doing it.” Maybe in some cases, you might need to do that.
Maybe they're making mistakes, but a lot of the time they may be finding a different approach that is still working. It may not be your exact approach, but it is their approach and you've got to give them that space and that place to figure that out because it may well be a better approach than you had. That is number four, understanding your shortcomings. Again, if you haven't ever done a personality test, it can be good to just have a look through it. They're not set in concrete, but to look through. 16personalities.com is a free website. You can go and do your personality test online, it's about 15 minutes and it will show you the areas of improvement, things that are amazing about you, but also things that may be, for example, if you are a highly empathetic person, that's a great trait to have. It is.
But on the flip side, one of the negatives of that is that you can be very sensitive to critique or feedback. You can also potentially get so caught up in other people's problems that you are distracted from your stuff going on. You can put yourself last but then get resentful about that. There are lots of things that you want to be aware of when it comes to your shortcomings as a leader. And this also includes healing. You may have things that trigger you that only are going to come up and you don't even realize that they're triggering you. There are all sorts of things you can do to help that. I know that my friend Kylie from Of Kin runs Dare to Lead workshops from the Brene Brown teachings. Amazing. I've known so many clients who've done that and said it's fantastic.
You can find her at ofkin.com and we'll link to Kylie in the show notes. Of course, there is the Dare to Lead book by Brene Brown. There is, I think it's Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek. I mean, there are so many ways to look deeply into this and to look into your healing as a leader. But also it might be a therapist, it might be a psychologist that you go to. I know if you're in Australia Beyond Blue is now doing new access, which I think allows you to have like 10 sessions with a mental health coach. It is not a psychologist, but a mental health coach. That is all funded by the government. there, there are so many places to think about what I need to heal as a person and how I bring that into my leadership and maybe even bring these open wounds into a leadership role.
That is number four, understand your shortcomings and spend some time on healing as a leader. Number five, I think it was Audrey Hepburn who first said this, I'm not sure who exactly first said this, “We have two ears and one mouth, and listen twice as much as we talk.” That is a big one. It is a big one to sit and listen and have the power and the beauty of listening to people as opposed to talking over them. As a coach, this is something I've had to work on because my innate trait is to want to fix everything to go in and fix. Sometimes you need to listen and let people come to that solution on their own. That is how they learn deeply. Not in all instances, but in some instances.
If you are the leader and somebody is talking to you, sometimes they just need to talk through a problem without you jumping in to fix it straight away. The other thing too is thinking about what you are not hearing, but what is being said if that makes sense. Maybe somebody's talking to you about their late consistently and you're like, “Come on dude, I get here on time, why can't you get here on time?” We can associate being late with all sorts of things like laziness and disorganization, all these other things. Maybe there's something else going on for them. Maybe they have a child who has some special needs. Maybe they have a child who is going through a difficult part of school, such as the last two years of school, which is high school.
Maybe the child is transitioning to a new school and there's a bit of extra care that needs to happen that morning, in which case then sometimes they're late and maybe they're saying, “I'm so sorry, I just had some issues this morning with my son or with my daughter”, or whatever. They're saying that maybe they said that three times. It's listening and thinking about what's not being sent. And it is not necessarily your job to fix their personal life, but it is your job to be there and create a space where they are feeling that they can be hurt. I'm not saying they should then just come and rock up whenever they feel like it. If you have times in time, places in place. But it's about saying, “Hey, do you want to talk about what's going on? Because you've been late a few times and I know that's not like you and I know that. Then you're feeling stressed about that and maybe bring that stress into the business. I just want to know what's going on and maybe how can I help you.”
Maybe it's okay, this kid is transitioning to a new school, we are going to move your start time back by half an hour for the next month just to see and could you stay half an hour back or whatever. You can fix that up. But it's to listen, as a leader, that is going to go to be one of the greatest strengths that you can work on and build just like any other muscle in your business, is to be a listener, to understand what is being said but also what is not being said through what people are telling you. On that note of listening, if you are in Melbourne, I think they also work in the whole east coast of Australia and maybe they work remotely with people all over the world. I'm not entirely sure. There is a company called The Listening Squad and you can find more about them at thelistingsquad.com.
I know that they work with businesses and business owners and leaders to develop their listening skills but also to understand the importance of listening strategically from a business perspective. Dusk Liney, who is somebody that I know from there, together with Jo Capicchiano, they both run that. Anyway, we'll link to that in the show notes. It's just called The Listening Squad and you can find them again at thelisteningsquad.com. That is number five. Number six is to decide on the type of leader that you want to be. I know there are lots of people listening who don't have kids, who don't want kids whose kids are not a part of their life and that is fine, but I'm sure that they can still appreciate that as a parent, a lot of people have to take that decision at some point.
What parent do I want to be? Do I want to be the same type of parent my parents were? Do I want to be different? What do I want to be, what do they call it, like the gentle parenting method? Do I want to be more authoritarian? You've got to figure that out and everybody's got their journey. In leadership, you also have to figure out what type of leader do I want to be. There are all sorts of ways, I've mentioned a couple of the books before as well. There is a good book called Co-Active Leadership: Five Ways to Lead by Karem and Henry-Kimsey House. In that, they talk about, as the leader that you're developing and responsible for the world in which you are building. And that world being in this case I'm talking about the world within your small business.
They talk about these five ways of leading it. If you imagine that these are like a Venn diagram and in the middle is within, and then there are the other four outside. They talk about leading from the front, visionary leadership from beside like a very collaborative leader from within a purpose leader from behind a servant leader or from the field, like an intuitive leader. It's reading through that and figuring out which one hits home, but also that sometimes you have to be a bit of each of these things and understand your personality. Again, it comes back to assessing yourself as well and having that self-awareness and being willing to do the work on yourself to understand what leader am I like, I've worked with leaders who are visionary, who are very much in front and they're like, “I've got all these amazing ideas.”
You as the employee going, “Okay, how do we reign this in a little bit? How do we make sense of this? How do we organize this?” And I've also had leaders who are very much collaborative leaders and working alongside and in there with you. I remember I've had some lovely feedback on my leadership and I'm not saying I'm perfect by any means at all. I've had incredible relationships with the people I've managed years and years later, and I still get asked to be their reference for different things. I think I've got a pretty great relationship with most people that I've managed. Of course, you don't have a great relationship with every single person, but I've found that one of the best compliments that I've received was, and again, this goes to my personality and it won't suit everyone that's a leader, but I remember we were doing this PR activity for one of the companies I was a leader in.
One of the people was in there. I didn't manage her directly, I managed her manager. If you want to have a look at the stupid hierarchy, not the stupid hierarchy, but if you had an organizational chart, there would be me then her manager, and then this person. We were getting ready for this evening event and I was there early and it should have been set up and all organized. But sometimes as everyone knows running events, it's not always running to plan. I looked around and I was like, this floor is dirty and these people are arriving soon. I asked the people at the venue, “Do you have a room?” And, they were like, “Yep.”
I was there in my heels, I took my heels off, I never wear heels anymore, but I had to for this job. I was in bare feet sweeping this floor and this lovely woman said to me, “What are you doing?” And I said, “I'm sweeping the floor, it's filthy and people are about to arrive.” And then she said, “I love that you're such a doer that you are in it with us.” And I was like, “Aww, thank you.” To me it wasn't like, I'm the manager so therefore I'm not going to get my feet dirty and I'm not going to sweep this floor. It's like, this has to be done so someone needs to do it. And it's not beneath me to sweep a floor.
It's just figuring out, and some people that wouldn't be, some people would be like, this should have been done before I got here. One of you is going to do this because this floor is a mess. Someone going to get a broom. And maybe that's also my issue with delegation, but it's figuring out what leader you want to be. The book that I mentioned, Co-Active Leadership: Five Ways to Lead is just one way of looking for a tool that can help you figure that out. There are so many other books that people have recommended on leadership. I have quite a few, I'm just, I went to look at my library but realized it's all been packed up because we're about to move house. But we will definitely be linking some other books in the show notes for this, which you'll be able to find over at mydailybusiness.com/podcast/316.
That is number six. Decide on the type of leader that you want to be. Number seven, and I think this is just something that should be in everybody's life, regardless of where you sit in your business or in your employed role, is to engage in learning. I've mentioned quite a few books, and there are also courses, as I said before, my friend Kylie from Of Kin runs a number of courses in leadership and you can find all of that at ofkin.com. There are so many places to get this information. If you don't necessarily have the money to invest in a leadership course or even in a book, go to your local library, look online, or look on Medium, there are so many incredible articles on Medium or Substack or just look on YouTube. I mean there's so much content out there for you to be self-educating and to get your leadership level up.
I think also, I was just talking to a client recently, they're hiring a leader in their business and they were talking about the questions that they want to ask in that interview process. I said one of them should be what books or what activity have you engaged in to become a better leader? Because if somebody is serious about becoming a better leader, then that should have been part of what they're doing, that they're investing their time into learning the skillset and learning strategies to become a great leader. None of us is just born knowing how to do all of this stuff we want to learn, and you're going to learn most from doing it from the experience of it. There's only so much I guess that books and education can teach you until you're in that position.
However, they can also be such an incredible tool to help you if particularly you don't have other help around you. Let's say, for example, you are running a business and you're about to hire somebody and you need to become a leader and you've never managed people before. Books, tools, references, and even this podcast is a way of learning about this. It's something that you want to invest your time into. That is number seven, engage in learning. And that shouldn't be something that you just do. Even if you are currently a leader and you've been a leader in your business for 10 plus years, 20 years, you want to continuously be learning. Maybe there are new strategies, maybe there's more stuff coming out. For example, many leaders may not, if you've read about the business for 10 years and especially in a small business, you may not have done enough in terms of diversity and inclusion training, self-awareness about that, reading books about that. There are so many incredible books.
One in particular that we read recently in one of the business book clubs that I do as part of Group Coaching is called The Leader's Guide to Unconscious Bias by Pamela Fuller, Mark Murphy and Anne Chow. We'll link to that in the show notes as well. But that was a book that we did recently in the business book club. Its byline is how to reframe bias, cultivate connection, and create high-performing teams. It's to look at, we all have unconscious bias and I know that when I used to work in the recruitment part, I mean I didn't ever work in recruitment technically, but I put my hand up to do a lot of the recruitment at Amazon years and years ago. That was a huge process for people to get hired there.
It was almost like a full day of assessments, role-playing like all these things. Plus you had to do two exams before you even got to that point. I remember the training that HR put on about recruiting people and interviewing skill sets and all of this. A huge part was put on biases. And how many of us will judge somebody in the first 10 seconds of when we are seeing them? And often we will be looking for attributes that we like about ourselves. Let's say, for example, I like big earrings. I am interested in style. I may not be the most stylish person out there, but I'm interested in it. If somebody comes in the door and I'm like, check those shoes, it's stupid and superficial because it doesn't tell me anything about their skillset.
But I might find, because I have a bias towards, I like that they're stylish, I like this. I already have this high like intention of, they're going to be good. Which is superficial and I'm totally aware of that. Yesterday I was in a shop, a very well-known shop in Australia and I was buying something from my aunt overseas and the woman serving me was Irish. I come from an Irish background I always find a level of familiarity with the Irish accent. My parents both had strong Irish accents, it feels like home to me. Instantly I was already like, “She's Irish, she's lovely.” As if I can paint that whole country that everybody there is just so nice and sure they are, but it's that bias that is there because of the experience that I've had. And you can have it can be the flip side.
You can have negative experiences and think certain things before people even open their mouths in an interview. As a leader, we want to be aware of our unconscious biases as well. Number eight. I would say this goes for any role that you're playing in your business or a business is to find a mentor or a coach. Because I work with a lot of leaders, I work with a lot of people who have quite a few staff or are working with multiple territories that they're running. It could be difficult if you are the leader and you feel like you are not supported and sometimes you have to be the person who has to show up and everything's fine and not to be fake, but sometimes you don't necessarily want to be able to discuss or you don't want to discuss your challenges, particularly things like financials or other things with your staff when you're in the heat of it.
Sometimes it's great to be able to have either a mentor or a fellow leader that you're meeting up with or somebody who's a little bit further ahead than you or somebody like a business coach who is able to see a wide variety of businesses, see what works, the common issues and frameworks and strategies to overcome these. As I said, I work with quite a few CEOs. I work with a lot of small business owners and a lot of them may have a couple of staff, many of them have 10 to 20 staff. They're coming to me to chat, to download, to vent, but also to talk about strategic decisions when they're just brainstorming them. They don't necessarily want to take them into an exec meeting yet with their top tier or to take them into a meeting because they haven't fully fleshed it out and they want somebody to flesh all of that stuff out with.
I think if you are in a leadership role, you want to be thinking about support for yourself as well. it's similar to psychologists having to see a supervisor because they can't just take all of that stuff on all the time without then talking to somebody about it and dissecting it. If you've watched Couples Therapy Australia, I just watched that recently on a Qantas flight because Qantas shows it and I was like, “Awesome.” I think I was the last person to get off the plane because I was like, “I want to keep watching this series.” In that, there's a great psychologist, she's a relationship psychologist and you see her downloading and chatting through the challenges that are coming up with some of her patients with her supervisor who is further along than her. If you are a leader, particularly if you are new to this, I would be 10000% looking for either an accountability group with other leaders or a group coaching program or a business coach or something like that.
I offer these things and if you're interested in that, we have a Group Coaching program starting in August this year. If you're interested, you can just go to mydailybusiness.com/groupcoaching. We have many leaders in there often people are talking about staff challenges, everything else, it's a very confidential safe space to discuss that. And of course, there's also one-on-one coaching if you just wanted to work with me directly, that is number eight. Find a mentor or a coach or some way of having a support system around you because it can take its toll being a leader and particularly if you are a leader and feel that you're out on a lurch by yourself, you want that support. That's number eight. Number nine. I'm laughing at this because this is something that takes so much practice and you never get there.
You never necessarily get there perfectly. And that is to be patient, to understand things, to take time, and staff take time to get up to speed with stuff. Everything that you've wanted to launch and everything else, takes time, it takes longer sometimes when you have staff doing it than if you were just doing it yourself. And that can be a hard thing to grapple with, particularly if you are going from being the only person in your business to hiring somebody in there is a massive learning curve for that person. And just remember that you have so much context going on in your head that is, even if you have the best systems and processes, not every single thing is going to be documented and you have the context of different situations and past experiences that this person coming in does not. there's a level of patience that has to be there rather than you rushing in and trying to fix things or thinking somebody's failing in their job.
You want to be a patient leader. Again, this goes back to the idea of pausing and having that moment to reflect on things or that's not necessarily a moment, it could be a week or a month to reflect on things and let people get to where they need to be to help your business flourish. Number nine, practice patience. That is a difficult thing to do, especially if you are like, I've hired this person, I'm paying their wage, this is money that's coming out of my business I want them to be here straight away and they're not a leader. A good leader has to be patient with people, patient with their learning, patient with their understanding, patient with their input or output, but also patient with themselves. you need to develop a self-awareness that you are going to need to learn how to be an incredible leader on day one.
It is something that you're going to learn and grow and probably be developing for the rest of your career and for the rest of the time that you have your business as well. That's an important thing, to practice patience and not get frustrated. Also quite often when we're not practising patients as a leader is when we make mistakes or when things come out of our mouths that probably shouldn't have come out. You want to think about how often am I being patient and what patience look like. You don't want to be a doormat but also you want to be patient and not expect everything yesterday and finally round it out at number 10. Again, there are so many other lessons and elements to be aware of when you are becoming a leader or trying to become a better leader.
That is to let go. I think sometimes when you're a leader, and particularly if it's your business and you are developing people and paying for that development and everything else, there's a tendency to take things very personally if somebody decides to leave rather than understanding that people will leave people. Even if they're your best people, they're not going to just necessarily stay around for 10 years. I think the average person in a job now is about 2.7 years, which is not long at all. These are not the days back in the day when everyone would stay for like 10 years, or 20 years at a job, people choose to develop themselves or change. I recently went to a high school open day for my son and the principal at that high school talked about this next generation of where my son is. I think she said something like the average person that will be graduating whenever he graduates in their thirties, 2030s.
She's like, they will have an average, I think it was like of 22 jobs in their lifetime or something. Whereas when I graduated it was probably seen as you might have like three or four jobs, that's it. Like you'll be at most jobs for 10 years, or maybe longer. It's not to say that people aren't, I have family members who've been at jobs for 17 years and will stay at that job for ages. But in most cases in small business, particularly if you're running something like retail or hospitality people will come and go and you cannot take that personally. You've gotta let them go. But also you've got to let go of the idea that if you're the perfect leader, your staff will never leave. But also not just never leave, but that they'll never disagree with you.
That you won't have challenges or issues that are raised. It will come up, no one is perfect. And even if you are an incredible leader, people have emotions, people are not robots. they're going to go through things that maybe test both of you in that relationship over time. You've got to understand people will leave, even if you give them the most incredible environment, they will leave. That is not a reflection on you, but also as a leader, you are teaching them about this world and you're teaching them what to expect from their next job and their next leader. I think that one of the greatest gifts that leaders can give is to create an environment in which that person is going to flourish and they're going to excel and increase their skillset and understand their experience and become better overall so that when they do leave they're in a better position than when they started in your business.
That's something I keep bringing it back to like parenthood, but it's something that I know a lot of my clients, a lot of my friends are grappling with teenagers at the moment and understanding that idea of like, I don't want to let them go, but I understand that I've got to let them go and have I prepared them and all of that. in a way, if you're lucky enough to have staff, you want to understand that there probably will be an endpoint to that relationship at some point, even if your friends you can remain friends outside of work, but that you are preparing them to do as well as they can in your company, but also that you're giving them the tools to go on and flourish later on in other companies. That can be a scary thing to consider, but it also allows you to have a little less attachment to situations and to let go like the frozen song Let it go.
I think that's an important thing as a leader to understand that one, don't take if somebody leaves that it's a personal dig at you, but also that you are encouraging this person and teaching them about this industry or just how to have a great relationship at work and feel psychologically safe at your place of business, but also potentially in the future when they go on. Again, it comes back to the start of reflecting on your career and reflecting on the managers and leaders that you have had an understanding that if you'd had a toxic leader and that's all you'd ever known, that's all you'd expect from the next job. Whereas if you'd had a great leader, you understand what the difference is and that's what you're looking for. It's a nurturing perspective of leadership as well.
Just to go over those 10, the first is to reflect on your journey with leaders. What's been good, what's been bad, and how often are you bringing those good aspects into your leadership? Number two is to understand the importance of pausing as well as being proactive. Number three is to practice deep empathy. Number four is to understand your shortcomings and understand your own need to heal certain things before you can become an incredible leader. Number five is to listen twice as much as you talk. That whole concept of two ears, one mouth, listen. Also, listen to what's not being said. Number six is to decide on the type of leader that you want to be. Number seven is to engage in learning and upskilling yourself. Number eight is to find a mentor or coach. Number nine is to practice patience. Very difficult at times, but to practice patience.
Number 10, is to let things go and understand people will leave. Part of your role as a leader is to nurture them in the journey that they're having with you, but also so that nurturing can withhold them into future opportunities when they come up into other jobs and other businesses. I hope that it helped. If you wanted to explore this more, of course, you can do some one-on-one coaching with me. As I mentioned before, we do have Group Coaching. We have another round of that starting later this year. You can get on the waitlist if you are on the waitlist, you will get access to a few more goodies people who are not on the waitlist. It's worth just getting on there. If you're interested, you can find all of that including how to get on the wait list at mydailybusiness.com/groupcoaching.
If you've got any questions, feel free to just email us at hello@mydailybusiness.com. I hope you found this useful. If you have, we would love it so much. If you might spend a spare 10 seconds leaving us a review on Apple or Spotify or wherever you usually listen to this podcast, if you decide to share it, we would love that so much. Please tag us on social media so we don't miss it. You can just tag me @mydailybusiness_. And if you've got a friend that is in a leadership position or maybe becoming a leader or wanting to develop their leadership skills, feel free to share this episode with them to help other small business owners understand how they can be great leaders. That is it for now. You can find all of this in text format in the show notes, which you can find over at mydailybusiness.com/podcast/316. Thanks so much for reading.
