119: Building a Leadership Focus for Your Design Firm
Michele 00:00
Hello, my name is Michele, and you're listening to Profit is A Choice. On the podcast today is Kris Plachy of Kris Plachy coaching. Kris focus is to guide leaders through the tricky path of learning to lead a team. We're going to talk about her five-step management system on the podcast, as well as many other aspects of leading, coaching, and managing, a team. This is such a great topic because many of you are growing your teams and focusing on this aspect of your business, Kris, and I think the life on these topics, and it was really fun to dig in, enjoy. Every day, empowered entrepreneurs are taking ownership of their company financial health and enjoying the rewards of reduced stress and more creativity. With my background as a financial software developer, owner of multiple businesses in the interior design industry, educator, and speaker, I coach women in the interior design industry to increase their profits, regain ownership of their bottom line, and to have fun again in their business. Welcome to Profit as a Choice.
Michele 01:09
Hey, Kris, welcome to the podcast.
Kris Plachy 01:11
Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.
Michele 01:12
I'm excited to have you here. Your information came across my desk months ago, and I know we scheduled a couple of different times. I'm really excited to talk to you because you have a lot of background, knowledge, and expertise dealing with teams, and I want to want to really dig into that topic with you today. But before we start, I would love Kris for you to take a few minutes and tell our listeners a little bit about your company, and kind of about your journey to what brought you to where you are right now.
Kris Plachy 01:44
Awesome, I'd be happy to so. My business is Kris Plachy Coaching Group, and we coach female entrepreneurs on how to manage, lead, and coach their own teams like really building that dream team and dealing with all of the challenges that come with managing other humans. The work I've been in my own business for about eight years. The work really is an extension of my own sort of trajectory in managing, which I started when I was about 26, with very little training or support. I worked in a startup culture, so we were sort of fending for ourselves, and so a lot of what I had to do was figure it out. Then it just I think I've I've always had sort of this interest in learning something and then helping other people do the same. Even as a manager and I didn't have a lot of tools, I started writing training for new managers because I realized there was so much nobody was teaching us. So I worked in direct ops management, leadership coaching, and management for 20 some odd years. Well, I've been in it totally for 25 years, and I started studying coaching in 1994, before anybody knew what it was. I got certified in the 2000s, and was master certified shortly thereafter. I've always had this equal passion between coaching and leadership, and so the work that I do with my clients is a real blend between true coaching and also then consulting, advising, and mentoring female CEOs on, you know, the very unique challenges that women face when they are building their business and building a team.
Michele 03:33
And how long have you been doing just the business part for yourself?
Kris Plachy 03:39
Eight, about eight years.
Michele 03:41
Let's start with this. What is the difference with and how you define coaching and leadership?
Kris Plachy 03:49
I think leadership is a part of coaching, I don't think they're mutually exclusive, but coaching as a skill is really the skill of inquiry to come from the perspective of saying to you, you have the answers that you need, my job is to help reveal those to you through being the conduit for that. So, many of the women I coach are incredibly accomplished, they're very successful women, and I don't suppose to know more about what they want for their business or themselves than they do. But sometimes, which I think is true for all of us, we get confused. We feel like we're inside the bottle, and we can't read the label, so to speak, right? Leadership has more of a perspective that says, "I'm going to decide, we're going this way, and I'm going to provide support development, resources, tools to create and enact that vision." So, in coaching, I don't hold an agenda for my client, but in leadership, if I'm not leading my business, then nobody knows where we're going. Coaching is like a part of a tool belt that I think every strong leader has. What is that old expression, to a hammer, everything looks like a nail? So if you overuse coaching, you underuse leadership, and vice versa, frankly. That's how I see those fitting, and then management sits in the middle, which says, "yeah, we're going to go that way, and we need this structure. We need these processes, we need these practices to go that way." Then I use coaching to help people get on board with those processes and practices and implement them in a business environment.
Michele 05:40
I really like the way that you describe that, and I would absolutely agree with it. I usually tell my coaching clients, "You're the expert in your business, I'm here to ask you questions and to help you see something that you can't see," like you said, being inside the bottle. What's so interesting, you probably see this too, as businesses are growing, especially when it's very organic, it's not coming from a place where people have a full business plan. We're all of a sudden, at this point where, "Oh, my goodness, I need to hire somebody else, or I need to start building a team." Not as much attention has been given in some cases to, "Okay, how am I going to coach this new employee? How am I going to need this new employee? How am I going to manage? It's more of, "oh, my goodness, I'm overwhelmed, go hire."
Kris Plachy 06:31
Yes. And so I need help.
Michele 06:32
I just need help, and I needed it yesterday, and I don't care just as long as you breathe come in. And then there's the frustration and the irritation. That, they don't get it they don't understand. They're not picking up yet because maybe we didn't give them anything they needed to be able to do the job, and I wish I could say that that happened infrequently. But..
Kris Plachy 06:55
Oh, no it's not
Michele 07:04
Yep. So how do you prepare your clients so that they can be prepared to hire properly?
Kris Plachy 07:10
I actually have sort of a five-step, initial thing I like to take all of my clients through and what we are what we do with our clients who work with us in our group program called How to CEOs. We built the CEO team blueprint. Once we put these in place, then what happens is, we have built a framework that exists outside of just our brain outside of just our opinion in the moment. What you're explaining is so common that I think a lot of women think it's just the way it has to be, it just has to always be this way, and it really doesn't. So the first thing everybody has to know that if you have your own business is why you have a business, what is your compelling reason? What is the reason that this business exists on the planet? I.e., my compelling reason, My vision is to prove the power of one thriving woman. Because I know when one woman thrives, the world changes, her employees are happier, their families are happier, her family is happier, the communities served, etc. So there's all sorts of elements that just one woman touches, and that vision in my business is the string. It's the common filter that we all use to determine who we hire. Are they onboard with that? Do they align with that? Can they subscribe to it and advocate for it? It also helps us to make decisions once we're very clear about what we're doing. So you've got to have that in place. The second thing you've got to have is what I call your leadership and team operating system. Every operating system is what makes something go. Like your computer has an operating system. It's how it goes. You have an operating system, you just probably don't know what it is because we don't get taught leadership and managing skills, anywhere, even if people get MBAs. So, you know, those are the core beliefs you have, the values you have, and the expectations you have of other people who work for you. The majority of performance issues are not skill related. They're behavior related. Are people being late or people missing deadlines? There are people who are not trying to pay enough attention to detail. It's that kind of stuff that is what derails most employees. Those are the challenges for most of us because we don't set up expectations around behavior ahead of time. It's critical to say, Hey, this is how we roll here, and here's why. So you have to know what your values are because they're happening anyway. I know people are like, "Oh, yawn..values," but you can't dismiss them.
Michele 10:12
Well, they're my listeners, they're not yawning, because I probably hit Find Your Why and Know Your Values about that. I just had a conversation with one of my clients yesterday, about someone on their team who was not doing everything they needed to be doing. I have five E's that I go through, how are they educated? Do they know what they're supposed to do? Are they equipped? Do they have what they need? Do they have very clear expectations? Have they been empowered? Are you encouraging them to walk through the E's? Then my next question is, are they able to do the job? Do they have the ability? Do they have everything they need? Or to your point, is this a character or a choice issue? Is this your choosing? Because if they have the ability, they have all the education, all the equipment, they understand the company why and values, the brand, the brand promise, like they understand all of it, at that point, it's a choice not to come in alignment with what you have asked them to do. Then we have to kind of pull those layers back to see if there's something else that's happening. To your earlier point, Kris, I think we tend to go immediately to, "you're not doing it versus looking at, well, maybe I'd even tell you what to do. Maybe I didn't set those expectations. Maybe I didn't share with you the company culture. Here's what we're doing and why we're doing it, how we're doing it here, the tolerances, maybe I didn't even give you any of that." So I love it, and you're singing my songs and keep singing it.
Kris Plachy 11:55
Yeah, so that's those have to be in place. So everything you just said and more, because it's the only way to build a rudder for performance management. Then we have to have what I call role clarity. Everybody needs to know what their job is. There needs to be a job description for everybody in the company, including for yourself. The reason that I teach that is not because I want to torture you, it's because it's how we set the role up for success. It actually has nothing to do with even the person in the role. The role is in place for a reason. You have decided to pay $50K, $60K, $100K, whatever for this role. It makes only good sense that you would have that very well documented so that everybody is on the same page about what's expected from the role, irrespective of who's in it. Then to couple that the fourth step is, are the measures, how do I then assess against the position? What are the key performance indicators that I look at on a regular basis for the role? What are those key behaviors and expectations that we talked about on a regular basis for the position and for just being someone who's a part of my business measures? So when I'm dealing with a circumstance where someone's got someone on the team who's not performing, but we don't really know why those are the two questions I asked. What were the expectations that you set? And if those are clear, then I ask what's your measure? What's your accountability practice? Usually, we either have unclear expectations and unclear accountability, or we have clear expectations, but just no accountability. We were really clear about what we want, but then we don't close the loop.
Michele 14:00
I don't even remember who coined it, but you get what you inspect, not what you expect.
Kris Plachy 14:02
Exactly.
Michele 14:03
So often, we forget the inspection point for a multitude of reasons. I've heard some leaders say, " I don't want to make it look like I'm coming behind them." Or, "I don't want to micromanage," and then they asked, "can I end up going totally the opposite direction?" Making it like a hands-off, that would it almost be the equivalent of us taking a middle schooler and saying, "Here are all the rules for how you get yourself into adulthood?" And then never checking behind them? Like, that seems insane to us? Instead of, here are all of our expectations, ere's how you should care for yourself, here's how you should make decisions. Then we just take our hands off and go, well, we're done. We told them, surely they've got it. I don't want to be that parent.
Kris Plachy 14:50
They shouldn't.
Michele 14:51
I see that a lot. I also see those who are not having the KPIs. Here's the other big one I see with this is not giving a deadline to no dates. It might say here's what I'm going to measure, but not here's the data measuring it by or here's the you know, the timeline or something, so that they know it exists. Here's the deal with measurements, they should be able to look at it themselves and know how they're ranking towards the measurement—the more transparent, the better. I agree.
Kris Plachy 15:28
It's almost done as if you and that person can sit on the same side of the desk, figuratively and say, Whoa, oh, dear. That didn't happen versus me having to tell you it didn't happen, right?
Michele 15:42
Or being able to go to your manager and go, Hey, this is not happening. Something's off, so help me strategize. I love those conversations where it's like, "We're on the same side of the table," because it is so much less adversarial. We're working to solve the ultimate problem instead of we are the problem, not we are the problem.
Kris Plachy 15:59
Yep, absolutely.
Michele 16:02
Okay, what's the fifth one I'm waiting now.
Kris Plachy
Well, the fifth one is probably just exactly what we said. It's follow up and feedback. The follow-through, then it's being able to tell someone yet no, this isn't what I was expecting. This is what I was expecting instead, or amazing, more of this, please. We need to do both. We need to be communication experts at all kinds of feedback. Positive reinforcement is very effective. Unfortunately, we tend to be real busy, and a lot of times we only focus on the mistakes that were made, or the things that didn't go well. And one of the conundrums that a lot of I know, female entrepreneurs bump into is they feel like they have to make decisions all day. They feel like their team is just constantly saying, "Well, what about this? Do you like this? What do you think we should do about this?" And the one thing they'll say to me is "how do I get them to make some decisions? How do I get them to solve problems?" And when I have that kind of a potential issue? My hunch is that the people that work for that entrepreneur don't feel safe. They are making mistakes, which means we haven't created an environment where I'm giving you feedback all the time, not just when things go wrong. If when things go wrong, I rail against people or you know, and that's an exaggeration, but even still, I'm difficult. I get mad, I get frustrated, I take it personally. My team will get afraid to make decisions and take action because they don't want to disappoint me, and they don't want to deal with my response. So the more you lean in and give feedback, the easier it gets, and the more used to all of it. People shared that they just had to tell someone on their team two weeks ago who made a sales page for them, and this is not it right here. What's happening? When we went through it, we did a whole screen walkthrough and like this, and this what happened know that. So you have to build trust, and the way through that is following up and feedback.
Michele 18:41
I was in corporate about 30 years ago, up to about 22 years ago, something like that a long, long time ago, when your feedback came once a year at a big performance review. Then you would go in, they would tell you everything, and some of the things they would say to you. You're like, that was a year ago, where you can't even hardly remember what I did last week, and you're wanting me to now answer for something a year ago. You didn't speak to me about it until you've been holding in your mind about what I did good and bad, and how is that ok? And the interesting thing was, you would walk out of those performance reviews, it didn't matter how great it was, they all felt compelled to tell you somewhere, you missed the mark. But because you had waited a year, you couldn't do anything about it, every single one of them even when they were awesome, you sit down and come up with that felt like a hit. It wasn't a good setup, when it was only once in your entire year that they got to talk to you. I'm seeing a lot more over the last years, the trend is more now, is that ongoing feedback conversation, that ongoing feedback loop. I encourage my clients to have at least a 15 minute one on one call conversation, based on COVID, and how they're having to communicate at least every two weeks. Were you clear on everything to have just a 15 minutes conversation? Where are you? How are you? How close are you? What do you need? Something so that it's this connection point that you can share, and everybody knows you're going to get together to share. It's not like they're nobodies taken off guard, but building that relationship, this is I'm going to block, 15-30 minutes, whatever is needed. We're going to sit down, touch base, and make sure that you have my feedback, and I have your feedback. Because the goal again is on the same side of the table. The longer we wait, the more we start to put the other person on the other side of the table, at least mentally.
Kris Plachy 21:15
Right. Absolutely.
Michele 21:17
And then that causes difficulty. Okay, so I'm going to recap and see if I've got what you said. Your number one was, and I'm sure it won't be as beautifully eloquent as you said it, but the main point number one was to know your why, your compelling reason. Number two was really defining your leadership and your team operating system. Your third one was role clarity because everybody's got a job to do but we need to know what that is. Number four, measure and assess, again, we're gonna measure what we want to see as key performance indicators. Then five, follow up in feedback. Tell me this, I have seen that a good number of issues in a company our process-related, not people-related, but we tend to attach them to the people. Because didn't we do all these things where you're creating a process, a support system, a feedback system, measurement, and leadership system. All of this is processing systems if we pull the people out of it, if it's so solid, then honestly the people that we're interviewing are going to look at this, and they're going to know. They are going to know if they are going to fit into that or not going to fit into that construct.
Kris Plachy 22:43
Absolutely. It's a little arduous to put together. A lot of that's why I think a lot of people resist this part of their work. It's much more fun to talk about making money in marketing and getting clients or customers. But every client I work with who implements this work makes more money anyway because you become more efficient with your team. But yeah, I mean, it's essential. It's you can't have a business if you don't have strong players performing. And the only way to help people perform is to show them how to win. And these processes that we've been referring to are all designed to help you and your team know how to be successful. When you do get emotional, because most of us do. It's our business. We're very protective of our business, and things go wrong. We kind of lose our minds. You don't have to replicate or create something in the moment. You can defer to the business's brain that you already built for yourself through these processes. When a client calls me and says, Oh my gosh, I don't know what to do that I'm having this issue with this employee just happened this week. She has an employee who has been kind of snarky with other colleagues. And I said, well, let's just run this through your values. What's the problem? And why is this an issue in your business? Then we quickly identified the value that was sort of being infringed upon, and she had a way to address it. Versus just saying, I don't like how you're talking to my other employees. That's not okay, which is not very substantive.
Michele 24:36
I had something similar happen with a client this week as well. They had an employee who was pushing up against some of the different boundaries and not following through with their client the way she was being asked to. In her own mind, she just thought those things didn't really matter. So she ignored the directives. I asked my client, Okay, so let's go back. Same kind of thing. What is the company why? What are the company values? And what is the company brand promise? Okay, now let's take a step back, because you have already defined how you want your clients to feel when they engage with your company. Now tell me how her choices if we follow through to what. Everything that happened, because she chose to ignore the directive, and past the point of her ignoring directive, let's look at how it, what did it do to your brand promise? How did it make your client feel is it in alignment, and it was that same thing, I remember, as a young business owner, starting having worked corporate and then working for myself, I didn't write everything down at the beginning. That's when I was very much in that hobbyist mentality, but calling myself a business. I was working as a hobbyist. I didn't have all of this written down. I had not dedicated myself to really knowing why I was doing what I was doing. It was easier to be pushed around and not know how to stand up. I now have my company notebook that has my why in it. It has my value. It has all of these things that we're talking about. What is so beautiful is whether it's my next hire, or a job opportunity or business collaboration, I take every one of those and run them through the filter of who my business is, what it wants to be known for, and how it's moving forward. Are we on the same page? Are we in congruency or are we not? And it takes a lot of the emotion out because yeah, we're emotional, but it does take it out. So I think sometimes, in that moment, especially dealing with employees, we're either not in a good place to have to deal with it or we're in an emotional low. We are overwhelmed, we're stressed, and we almost just let things go. Then they start to build when they have more clients..If we've got the wrong client, and when the phone rings or an email comes through with their names on it, you get that pit in your stomach, and you think, "Oh, I just want to be sick, I don't really want to I don't even want to know what they have to say." When we start feeling like that about our own employees and about coming into our own offices, or we start feeling like I can't even speak to an employee about anything constructive, good or bad, without creating a scene. We need to know that flags are a flappin that we've got. That's a problem.
Kris Plachy 27:59
Yeah. I wrote a book about seven years ago called Change Your Think, and it's all about the thoughts that we think as people who manage people and how those thoughts affect how we behave with them. So absolutely, if you feel dread, resentment, anger, frustration, irritation, any of those negative emotions, when you think about an employee, you need to really look at what the thoughts are you have about them and question them and get back to what the facts are. Because you are no longer effective, leading from negative emotion is not just irresponsible. It can create damage to a relationship and to a culture that is unrepairable.
Michele 28:42
Yes, just like any relationship, right, whether it's a family relationship or others.
Kris Plachy 928:47
It's a misuse of power, and it's a misuse of your authority. And so it's even more exaggerated because when you are someone's boss, they already give you responsibility for that. I believe that leadership is quite an honor. It is a responsibility and a caretaking role. I do not see it as you're entitled to get what you want from people when you lead, or when you own a business at all.
Michele 29:21
Yeah, I agree with that, but it's an imbalance for sure and not one that they can easily write. It is not just about being the owner but being more of the leader. So let me ask you this, what is the best way to hold your employees accountable? How do you set up a good system to do that?
Kris Plachy 29:42
Consistency is the path. So you have to have all the things that we already talked about role clarity, measures, follow through and follow up process with feedback. Then if you are meeting with people talking about deadlines, benchmarks, project outcomes, if they're generating revenue,whatever it is that you're evaluating, there shouldn't be ever any surprises. I've actually said this in previous posts, we don't actually hold people accountable. I know that's the phrase. What we do is we hold ourselves accountable to show up, do the work, and have the conversation to address the challenge and the issue. As long as we are consistent, again, with recognition of contribution, these conversations should just like bumper guards in a bowling alley. If it keeps progressing like I consider most accountability conversations, coaching structures, their feedback with intention to help redirect behavior or outcomes. If it's an ongoing problem, someone keeps being late, like I've coached to people over the past couple of weeks, where employees are saying they're quote, unquote, working from home, but then they show up to meetings, and they're sitting in their car, or they're sitting in a house that you don't recognize, then that's now become a performance issue, not a coaching issue. That's when we have those conversations, short, sweet, and very directive. I love the people that I work with, but I do pay for a result, I don't pay for you to have a job. I don't pay for you to submit time. I pay for outcomes. So I get it, if life happens and if you communicate with me, that's going to be fine. However, if it's a consistent issue, as entrepreneurs, we run on lean resources, we don't have the big robust payroll budgets that have big companies have, we have to be able to make some decisions pretty quickly as the CEO of your business. If you are not maximizing the results that you're getting from a resource and the only way you're going to do that well is if you are very connected, very consistent, and get really involved in their performance. Not micromanagement that's not your responsibility.
Michele 32:27
It's that feeling that so many have, I don't know how to do it. You gave them hints in that and about it being direct. It's short and sweet, and I think sometimes there is the feeling and need to over-explain. It's almost to say what you need to say you can be kind and direct. There's this idea that I'm only being kind if I'm like trying to talk about it. The more we talk about it, we honestly tend to either get angrier, or we tend to almost make it as if it's no big deal. We've talked ourselves out of it being an issue. Can you give us your idea of like say here's an issue we're going to do with your short, direct, you know, feedback that is hopefully going to alter the course so that we're heading down back on the right path, because that's really what we're trying to do is get back on the same path. We're trying to get back in a parallel way so that we're not going in opposite directions in the kind of think about it. As I raised my sons, and I prayed all the time. Lord, if they're going off the path, helped me catch it early so I can guide them back on the path instead of catching it when they were way out. And leftfield helped me catch it early, so I can guide them back. The majority of the discipline that we created in our home was was not punitive. It was discipline, like you said, staying between the ditches or between the bumper guards, it was trying to keep them on a path, that it was going to be the most fruitful for their future and not destructive. It wasn't meant to be mean. I couldn't seriously talk to them once a year. It was a constant day to day, where are you? What's happening? Were you struggling? Not just the How was your day, son? Because we know how we know how teenagers answer that one. Whatever, Mom, you have same question, do you know it's fine, but again, like you said, building that relationship and staying involved. And so it is quite similar in the workplace where we are not so removed from the people that we're working with, that we're not able to share. So I would love to hear from your experience, Kris, how to give that direct, but kind and very detailed feedback?
Kris Plachy 34:58
I have a process for that, too, of course, and I can use an example. I'll use one of a conversation I had with somebody who used to work for me, she doesn't anymore, so I don't feel badly. Shat she would blame. So every time something wouldn't go right, she would just blame me. A lot of the time, she would say, "Oh, well, you said that dah dah dah dah, dah, dah, that right?" So it's always a blame, need justification. She responds, very defensively, and I don't do that I don't do blame. I don't do defensiveness. The truth is, I always assume it's my fault. Can we just go with that and then fix it anyway. I don't have time just cause causes lag in my company, and it's boring to me. So let's move along. The first thing you always need to do so I had a call with her outside of a moment, it wasn't when it happened, but then I had a call with her, and I said, "Hey, I want to talk to you about an issue. And the issue is that the last time the last two or three times that we've had something go wrong, and I don't remember the specific ones anymore." Your comment back was to point the finger, like to say, "Oh, well, that's your fault. Oh, I couldn't do it because of this, or I couldn't do it because of this." So the first thing is the issue, and it's all facts, It's not my opinion. This is what happened or this is what happened, this is what you did. Whatever it is, it's provable, then I just tell her what the impact of that is. I said the impact of you making those comments when something doesn't go is it causes lag for us. It slows us down. It makes it about you, or who was in the blame when we're not actually solving the problem. So my expectation is for you to recalibrate the expectation. My expectation is, mistakes are gonna happen. Let's just move along. We'll figure out why. And we'll fix it. I don't care who did it, just fix it. That's what I'm paying you for. Then I let her have an opinion, and of course, she felt terrible, but for me, this isn't personal. I just want to give her a little heads up. This is something that I think probably is important that we clear up. In this case, there wasn't any like, serious, dire consequence. If this had been the fourth time, I'd have to address it with her. I might say at that point. If I have to bring this up again, with you, I'm going to start to wonder if maybe this isn't the right place for you. We might have to kind of escalate this conversation. I don't want to have to do that, but it could happen. In this case, it was really just a "Hey, you want to pay attention here. And in her defense, she did; she totally got it. I've had two clients this week who are relatively new clients who we've been doing this kind of work with two different people, and both of them are like, "I can't believe how dramatic the change has been." Then the one I talked to yesterday, she's like, I can't get over how this guy has completely flipped. And I said, well, what did you learn? She kept telling them that they're not meeting expectations, and it kinda works?
Michele 38:46
Well, because I think most people, when they are in a job, I know when I worked for other people, I wanted to please them. I wanted to do my job well. I wanted to be looked at as a team member like that those things were important to me. I think they are to most people and if we have a different view of how we fit into the company, or we think we're meeting expectations, and if somebody never tells us that we're not until that once a year, a conversation whether you need it or not, there's no chance to do it differently. I've seen so many like you, Kris, that completely turned around. When people were just made aware, it's almost like, if there's a word that we overuse, and you know, now that I podcast, I can quickly tell that there are certain words or phrases that I might over-use. What do you think so? And then what did you do? But in the moment, I might not even realize it. It's not until I go back, either having to edit and listen to the umms and the so's that I'm like, good grief, Michele, get it together. Sometimes our employees, those team members that we have, they aren't aware of these things that they're doing, or these behaviors, perhaps that they've fallen into. Yet, we can see it because we're on the outside or on the receiving end of it. It almost like turning the mirror back and showing it. Right.
Kris Plachy 40:19
To me, it's always kind. I don't assume. We have to take the assumption out that people are trying to be a pain. They're not, now until we know, but even then, most people don't wake up in the morning and think I can't wait to be a jerk today. I can't wait to be difficult today. They wake up, and they're doing the best version of themselves. Sometimes that version is not going to jam with your brisk business culture, and that's okay. I think there's this belief that somehow once you hire someone, everybody, they should just immediately be amazing. If they aren't, you're terrible. As a boss, a lot of women take it very personally, I call that the voiceless problem, because we just don't talk about it. I just think that's a big lie. It's normal for even very successful, very accomplished, long term entrepreneurs to be blindsided by a new hire, or even somebody who's been around for a while, and all of a sudden, "Wait, who are you? And where? Where did you put the person I used to know? Because you're not her or him? Right? Like, what happened here?"
Michele 41:38
I mean, I've had people that I've worked with for years, and all of a sudden, it's like, something must be going on or something has shifted? Work output is not the same. The attention's, not the same. The responses aren't the same, but you can almost start to see it. It is really hard. Let me ask you think, Kris, sometimes, when we're seeing things happen in a company, and maybe prior to COVID, when everybody was in the office is going to be easier, but we would see things instead of I've seen entrepreneurs, CEOs, I've seen them really try to sit down and think about when do I speak about this just to one person? When do I bring this up for everybody at a team meeting?
Kris Plachy 42:31
Right, when you're addressing one person's behavior, it's to that person. If you see that everybody's walking in late or everybody is consistently not opening the doors on time, or everybody is missing their deadlines, then I would address the group. Then I would also address someone individually because the hazard with the group is someone sits there and says, "Oh, this doesn't apply to me." And if you are concerned with the group as they sit there, and they say, "we all know this is Wanda, why do we all have to be chastised because Wanda can't get to work on time?
Michele 43:16
We're all angry at Wanda." So it created a different issue.
Kris Placny 43:22
And you don't look like a leader. You look like a whiner.
Michele 43:25
Right. I think sometimes that I have seen as a fallback for those who are not really working on developing their own leadership skills. They think it's easier to address the group, and it takes that responsibility off of them for having to have that one on one discussion that makes them very uncomfortable.
Kris Plachy 43:44
Exactly, yeah.
Michele 43:45
But what they don't realize is they just created a team issue or one that didn't have to exist in some cases. They've now created a dynamic, where either they're all like you said, rolling their eyes, or they're all now irritated at Wanda. "Great, you're going to get all of our freedoms taken away. You can't show up on time." You have to go back to what is the impact even of our own decisions as leaders because if we're if we do something, there's an impact. So I think your performance idea of here's what you did, and here's the impact. My whole thing is profit is a choice. Every single thing we do in our company is a decision, not acting is a decision, acting cowardly is a decision, and there is a trickle-down from that there is something that happens based on every decision that we make. The decision to address an issue, address it to the team instead of the person, or even to do it all correctly. There's an impact to that.
Kris Plachy 44:56
Mm-hmm. Absolutely,
Michele 44:59
Then connecting that, what is the impact I want? Now? What's the best decision to make to get that impact? Thinking about it in another way? Is there anything else that you see? We both know that we're talking primarily to those in the interior design, staging field right now, and many of them started their business, just them. Then they might have brought on, a couple of people here and there to help, but they're now building firms, they're building these young teams. I love the five skills that you were talking about or these processes that we put in place, kind of as this framework so that we can have almost a litmus test. Let's go back and test this out. Let's see here, and we talked about how they can have accountability and recognize contributions and do these things to support them, what is something else that they could do that you see being outside of I love that be very direct and give them feedback in the house that your client? I think sometimes we think it's going to be big, sweeping things, but small things, stating these expectations, holding them accountable, telling them where they can improve, right, giving them a chance to do that. Do you see anything else that you think is kind of the low hanging fruit of leadership that we could do, maybe more easily, more quickly, more readily, and see a big impact?
Kris Plachy 46:40
Well, I've actually coached quite a few interior designers, and one of the common themes when you go from solopreneur to entrepreneur, which is where I usually meet most of my clients at that entrepreneur space. So they've gotten a few more people in the team, and they're kind of now don't know what to do with them. There are two things that have to happen, you have to really change the way you think about your role in the business and for designers. This is true for veterinarians and floral shop owners, whatever it is, that's your area of expertise. What we tend to do, when that's what you know, is you try to overuse your competency to manage. You try and overuse your design skill to manage the team. So for designers, their expertise, right, your expertise is designed and so sometimes we sort of lose lien on that even more, to try and manage people, instead of learning the management part, like you have to learn how to be a designer, you can learn how to manage. It's a skill, and one of the things that I've done with quite a few of them is because it's the design element. It's that aesthetic. How do I get my team to think like me in the way that right, that's my superpower that helped me build my business. Now I want to hire designers. How do I replicate that? That's what I've done that with coaching. So I understand that hiring a coach to coach my clients. That's a very personal part of your business, and that is very doable. I want to just encourage everyone that you can teach and transfer skills and approach to other people, but you have to stop thinking it will be innate to them. That they can read your mind that they'll just know because they won't. You do have to learn how to teach it, communicate it, manage it. The simplest skills transfer model on the planet is to tell, show, do review. Tell them what you want. Show them how you do it, have them do it, and then you review it, but the part that we tend to be really good at is we tell.
Michele 50:08
Yes.
Kris Plachy 50:08
But the part that we tend to be really good at is we tell. Yes. And then we stop. Yeah. So that doesn't get the job done. If you want to replicate your business and you want to scale, you have to become not a master, but you've got to get skill in skill transfer.
Michele 50:26
I think there's a fear for many, they don't want to train the person and have them walk away. And then that goes back into leadership building a firm that people want to work, and you don't I mean, there, there are other nuances to that.
Kris Plachy 50:39
Yeah, but you know, I want to address that because I've heard that so many times. You're going to get everything they can from you, and then they will leave. Now, Michele, you and I are online, right? You do a podcast, I do a podcast, I do webinars, I do all this stuff all the time for free.
Michele 50:47
People take my stuff.
Kris Plachy 50:55
And they go use it. I can't control that, you know, what's the superpower? I could have a whole team of people, and if they all quit, I'm good. Because guess what? I can redo it? Can they do it like me? Nope. So I don't worry about that. I really try and encourage people to not let that be the reason that you don't develop people. I think it's actually better for designers. I was actually just talking to my vet client about this yesterday. Why not be the vet that mentors the new vets and builds that reputation? And then attracts all these new grads that you keep for 2 - 3 - 4 years?
Michele 51:57
Why not do that?
Kris Plachy 51:59
So it's just how you that thought is so poisonous for a lot of people with small businesses because they have fear around sharing. Then you don't share, and you don't get the results you want. So it's this quagmire you put yourself in.
Michele 52:15
And if you think about the whole e myth revisited model., they don't want to let go of technician. I want to go back to what you said all the way earlier when you were talking about number three, role clarity, and you made the comment. Everybody has a job description, including you, as the owner. I want to tell you that was one of the most clarifying things for me. I'm talking and working through the idea of what is your queen bee role. Like, what is the superpower that only you can do? Or what is the thing in the company? The task in the company that only you as the owner, or the CEO or the visionary, or whatever it is that how you see yourself? What is it that only you can do? So when I wrote that list, which, believe it or not, is very, very short.
Kris Plachy 53:15
You've been doing a lot. But are you any good at it?
Michele 53:19
Right. So I look at the list of what I think I should be doing like that. I think that there is no way on this earth ever that if I own that company, I should hand it off. I want to say, I think I got it down to three things.
Kris Plachy 53:34
Nice.
Michele 53:34
And when I looked at the list of what I was doing, I was like, snap, that is way too much. All of those things are taking me away from these top three things. That either is where my brilliance is, or what I absolutely need to do to forward my company. It became a beautiful exercise. Then, who was my next hire? And what do I hand off? I actually just met. I still have a coach, right? Because I'm gonna coach at the highest levels that I coach, I need somebody coaching me,
Kris Plachy 54:10
It works.
Michele 54:11
Right, because I'm inside my own bottle just like our clients are, and I said to my coach, today that I'm doing this some of this work repeatedly. I don't think I need to be doing this kind of thing repeatedly, and we sat down to look at it because it's just somebody else to take a look with me. Then she said, "no, you totally should not be the one doing that," then you could hand that off. Your clients are actually going to feel more loved. And I responded, "Yes, you are so right." And so now for the last two days, the only thing spinning in my brain is how do I write down standard operating procedures for that, so that I can show, tell, measure, have a plan and have a job description so that I can hand it off? Because I'm not going to go hire without a job description. I can now detail it. She's right. Even if it just saved me a couple of hours every month, it would be huge. We don't think that way. Not without prompting or a plan. So it's really this idea that it's almost like, I'm going to build this whole company and we don't think that we have to let go of some things to be able to grasp hold of others. Then our plate gets more powerful and more powerful, which resulted in us being overwhelmed.
Kris Plachy 55:35
Yep. Absolutely. A couple in that is a little bit of guilt if you ask people to do things, and that prevents us from asking for help.
Michele 55:48
Probably have a whole podcast on that part, and leadership would be about the books on it.
Kris Plachy 55:55
Actually, I've done one. It's called entrepreneurial guilt. It's a podcast episode.
Michele 55:59
So you sit, and I did one. I did one as well on guilt and shame. So we'll have to, I'll go find yours on an entrepreneurial shame and now and mine on guilt and shame, and will just load you up in the shownotes. Yeah, there you go safe. And I did one. I did one as well on guilt and shame. So we'll have to, I'll go find yours on entrepreneurial shame, and now and mine on guilt and shame. And we'll just load you up in the
Kris Plachy 56:15
Yeah, we're all pretty good at that same thing.
Michele 56:19
We think we should do it all and beat last them at all of it all the time. I asked another business owner this week when she was telling me she felt shame because she's very much a visionary and so she loves to get things going, but she is not the integrator implementer.
Kris Plachy 56:37
Right.
Michele 56:38
So she was feeling shame that she wasn't carrying everything all the way through. Then I said to her, "Well, do you think it's shameful that the people that you do hire to implement aren't the visionary? Why would they be both? like, Well, okay, could we just look at that from the reverse?" The problem is not that you don't fully implement forward is that you don't hire anybody to go do it?
Kris Plachy 57:04
Exactly.
Michele 57:05
You don't have to be the one, for some reason, we're in middle school and high school, and we have to have all these great grades and every darn subject to get where we want to go. The minute we get to the next level of college, they're like, "Okay, what is the one or two things that you really love, and let's kind of forget the rest."
Kris Plachy 57:23
Exactly.
Michele 57:48
Kris, you are a delight and a smart woman. I have so enjoyed our time talking today. I'm really looking into leadership. I think that you have explained it with such clarity and ease that you've made it very approachable and understandable for our listeners. I really want to thank you for that.
Kris Plachy 58:21
Oh, yeah. My pleasure. Thank you.
Michele 58:24
So tell us where we can find you, the name of your podcast, and where you're hanging out these days, and your website. We'll put all of it in the show notes.
Kris Plachy 58:32
Okay, awesome. So the best place to start to interact with me is on Instagram. It's my Instagram. My profile is Kris Plachy Coach. Then if you're interested and you're at that tipping point where you're building a team, I'd encourage you to do the quiz we have. It really helps you determine, are you solopreneur, entrepreneur, or CEO, and what you need to kind of help you make that next transition. That's it how to CEO quiz.com. The podcast is Lead Your Team, and it is on anywhere, mostly you can get podcasts, so I think you'll find it complements the conversations that you have here as well. Useful additional insights for your listeners.
Michele 59:30
I love that. It'll definitely be in my library, and I encourage it to be in everyone else's. Kris, it's really been fun. I appreciate your insight into this, and I took crazy notes. It's always a pleasure to speak to someone who is looking to help men and women but really with a focus towards helping women and think about how to manage and to lead their businesses with excellence, and so thank you.
Kris Plachy 1:00:00
It's my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.
Michele 1:00:04
You're welcome. Thank you Kris, for joining us and talking all about teams. Make sure to check out her podcast and other deliverables. In my aim with intent methodology we focus on being intentional about people, processes, and profits. Today, this podcast focused on the people aspect. Don't feel like you need to find your way through leadership alone. Reach out and let's do it together. You can find out more regarding my coaching services at ScarletThreadConsulting.com. Remember, everything leads you towards or away from profitability, especially the hiring and retention of great employees. Each decision counts, and profit doesn't happen by accident.