036: Why is Company Culture So Important?
26 Sept 2019 · 30 min
Amber McCue discusses how leaders shift from managing to leading, and why company culture matters for sustainable business growth. She shares practical advice on fostering positive culture and engaging teams effectively.
Hey, have you heard there's a new style of CEO on the block. The modern CEO. And she is changing the way businesses are run. She's setting her own hours and her own salary. She's creating a business around what matters most to her. Freedom, family and impact. And her corner office looks nothing like what you'd see on Wall Street. It's a kitchen t your grandma's lake house, a spacious home office, the living room floor maybe surrounded by kids and crayons or the local coffee shop. Your business, your way. This modern CEO is here to stay. Because when you embrace your role as modern CEO, you will have more freedom, more profit, and more fun. Most importantly, you'll fall in love with your life and a business in a way you've only dreamed. Trust me, this isn't a pipe dream reserved for only a select few. You are the modern CEO. You are creating a business and life you love because a better business means a better life.
Hey, I am so excited to talk with you today. I am your host, Amber McHugh and we are back this week continuing our how to Clone Yourself journey. But we're going to do a little something, something different today because we are talking about leadership. And this is something that I have had top of mind for about the last year as we've gone through some changes somehow to clone yourself changes in our business, actually, and in both of my businesses, at my consulting business at Amber McHugh and in our photography business@3boudoir.com and so this is very personal. I've got a lot of things that are top of mind and I'm going to share some of those behind the scenes things with you in our next episode because this is our last episode in our formal how to Clone Yourself series. And leadership is a key piece of the how to Clone yourself journey because if we put systems in place and we figure everything out from a time perspective and we hire the people, but then we disappear and we don't show up and we don't lead and we don't hold the space for success. This doesn't work. Which is why we've got leadership as the final piece in our how to Clone Yourself journey. And there is so, so much, so much that we could cover on this, right? How do we lead and train our team to represent our brands right in the marketplace and even behind the scenes? And how do we onboard people productively and what is it to lead and how do we even spend our time? And it's actually that last piece of this leadership part and it's how do we spend our time? As you grow in this how to clone yourself process, and as your business evolves, you might start to wonder, what do I do again? Like, what is my job? In fact, as people go through the how to clone yourself process, and we're going through, you know, role descriptions and we're breaking down who on the team is doing what and who needs to do what or what we need to outsource so that something can move forward faster because it's potentially not in your zone of genius. One of the things, one of the things that comes up is, wait a second, if all of this comes off my plate, why am I even here? I need something to do. And it's so common in our society that we're looking for something to do because we come from an industrial age, right? We're just coming out of the industrial age, and it's still very much embedded and ingrained in our culture that we've got to be doing something. We've got to be hustling. And I don't mean hustle like hustle harder. I mean, we've got to be moving, we've got to be in action, taking steps, rushing, and we get an adrenaline kick, right? Quite frankly, we get an adrenaline kick when we are in action, when we're multitasking and when we're doing good work. In addition, there's a feedback loop when we put something out there personally, when we execute on something personally, we get feedback from our response and it fuels the continuation of our growth and of our success.
Right?
But what got you here won't get you there. I'm sure you've heard the saying before, right? It's not my quote. Don't quote me on that one. Somebody else said that. I heard a lot of people say it. What got you here will not get you there. So what do you need to do now as you step into this leadership role? First up, let's take a look at what it means to be a manager versus a leader. And we could even take this down a notch and talk about what it means to be an employee versus a leader. If you look at our culture, if you look at our society, we are trained to be employees. Maybe we're a little bit trained to be managers. But even in the corporate workforce right now, people are looking at the space and realizing that we aren't training our employees to manage well, and we aren't training our employees especially to lead well, because we talk a lot about production, we talk a lot about output. What Is the output, how much is that person contributing? Right. Typing at the computer, pounding it out, cranking it out. And it's a very different person that it takes to crank out the work. I must feel like a machine sometimes when I am cranking out the work. That is a very different person who is constantly cranking it out than the person who is leading your organization. And all of them are valuable. But we've got to look at how do we prepare our employees or how do we prepare us ourselves as leaders to go from that employee mindset to one of manager and then to ultimately one of leader. Breaking this down a little bit more, I want to specifically outline some differences between the manager and the leader space. A manager administers. A leader innovates. A manager maintains. A leader develops. A manager plans and executes. A leader sets a direction and promotes change. A manager takes effective action. A leader takes meaningful action. A manager relies on control. A leader inspires trust. A manager has a short range view. A leader has a long term perspective. A manager asks how and when. A leader asks what and why. A manager has her eye on the bottom line. A leader's eye is on the horizon. A manager imitates. A leader originates. The manager is a classic good soldier who falls in line. A leader steps out as his or her own person. A manager does things right. A leader does the right thing. So maybe you heard some things in there where you are definitely acting in the leadership role. And maybe you heard some things where you are acting in a manager or even an employee role, right, where you are still cranking it out on some of those things or as a follow up to what a manager or a leader had. But most likely you're wearing multiple different hats at different times, which is not abnormal, right? We're running small businesses. It's totally normal if we pop on different hats depending on the situation or the time of day. In fact, excellent leaders are able to adapt to different situations and able to step in and take on different roles depending on what the situation requires. But ultimately, as you think about you and your leadership role, as your business grows, as you add team members, as you shift how you look at this business, you're going to be playing more and more time in that leadership role. And true leadership inspires and transforms the people it touches. When you encounter or you step into that leadership role, you have capacity to create the vision and you begin to see the vision translated into action. So you see it right. For example, my photography business. And again, I will dig more into our behind the scenes in the next episode. But our photography business has a vision to reach so many more women because the work we do is so empowering and so inspiring for our clients. And then quite frankly for us, when we see that and we know that we are lifting up other women and those women are lifting up others, and it creates this massive ripple effect. And we have a vision to 5x the impact of our company. So what does that look like in action? Right, and we're going to step into that again in a little bit. Leaders draw on other people by enrolling them in their visions and making them part of what is being created. So take that 5x the impact vision. I can't do that alone. No, no, no, no, no. My business partner and I can't even do that alone. We will be bringing in our team of not even employees. Right. I don't even use the word employees in our business anywhere. And that gets to culture. We are going to engage our entire team in bringing this vision to life. And it's one part. We're going to need some people to manage things. We're going to need some people to step up and lead on some projects, and we're buy in across the board. So it's our job as leaders, when we have an idea, when we have a hypothesis, when we have a belief, when we hold a vision, it's our job to enroll and engage others in that vision. Leaders inspire, empower, and bring people along in an engaging way. I very much do not see leadership as a push. As a push.
Right.
That doesn't feel good. If you want your team members, your contractors, your employees to be ambassadors of your company like I do, saying every employee at this company is an ambassador and simply making a mandate, that that's reality. It doesn't work that way. It does not work that way. You have to enroll and engage people. So not only they hear you say, I want you to be an ambassador, but they want to be an ambassador because they are so excited and so inspired by the vision and you are creating. And you might be thinking, this isn't just about employees. This isn't just about contractors and team members. This is about my clients also creating a vision for your clients, for your community that is so exciting that people just want to be engaged and they want to share naturally. Certainly we might ask people to do that from time to time because we are human, after all. And those reminders and those invitations to take action are sometimes incredibly helpful. But when you make that ask, it feels very natural because your people, your audience, your Community is bought in to what you were creating. Leadership transcends this how to clone yourself process and has an impact at a macro level, right? It goes beyond team, it goes beyond employees, it goes beyond systems, but it ultimately impacts how your business will thrive into the future. It gives us the ability to lead changes in the marketplace, it leads us to drive how we're perceived in the marketplace, and it gradually reduces the need to manage. Oh my goodness. I just thought of a very personal experience that I'm going through right now. I happen to be a part of my school's parent community organization, similar to a pta, but that's not what it's called. And it's so interesting as you engage, right, Everything that we're talking about here in how to clone yourself in terms of communication and leadership and change management. There are living, breathing case studies everywhere that you turn and everywhere that you may be involved in your community or elsewhere as well, where you can watch for these things. Are we pushing or are we pulling our community along? Are we constantly having to manage things or are we setting the tone and are we leading how this organization will behave, how we'll act, how we'll engage, how we'll interact?
Right.
How we'll communicate, how we'll talk to each other? And yes, again, oh my gosh, I already said. But this all gets back to culture and this is one of your biggest jobs as a leader. And actually I want to pivot right now to what are those things that you do if we divvied out all of your responsibilities to other people on the team and you're like, wait, wait a second, I have this really short list of things to do. Now, if you think back to our CEO must do list, I said your list is going to get shorter, but it may take more time to get those things done. It's going to be a little bit more muscle, a little bit more heavy lifting, right? You're going to have to not push so hard, but you're going to have to start pulling people along, inviting them to go on this journey with you. And that's very different than when you are executing and just cranking out the work. What your focus now shifts to is creating space in your schedule for high level thinking and that visioning work and assessing and exploring. How will you bring people along, right? How will you 5x in my example, the impact of your business? So we're going to start to operate and behave a little bit differently in our businesses as we step into this leadership role. And straight up, we're redefining your role in your business and the essential tasks that you as CEO do. You truly need to just carve out time to consider, how do I lead? How do I lead? What is my leadership approach? Oh, okay. I've got to step into this situation right here. How am I going to show up and behave? And what will my being and my energy be as I step into that space? So you really want to think about that. How will you lead in the marketplace? What are gaps in the marketplace? So again, this isn't just about you and your team. This is about how you serve and how you show up in your community as well. And you've really got to be thoughtful about that because it's different, right, than we were in the employee crank it out space and we're just executing. Go, go, go. Let's do this. Let's test this. Let's try this. You evolve in your business and you evolve in your leadership role. In addition, you got to create lots of white space in your schedule for thinking about the bigger picture for your business. How will you grow? What will you sell to 5x your business? What markets will you expand into? And you might even start to think about your exit strategy because you're starting to see that, whoa, we've got this. This is powerful and this can keep happening without me. And that's when know you've created something that will live far beyond you or has the potential to. Now, you may plan on staying in the business until as long as possible until retirement, right? Until there's any number of things or you might be thinking to sell whatever that is for you, it's okay. But you're going to hold on to the vision. You're going to hold to the 5x, your impact vision, for example, that I have, and you're going to hold onto the vision beyond that to and you're going to keep those things in place in the back of your head and start to action and engage with your management team and engage with your broader leadership team now as well. On all right, how do we hit these goals? How do we realize this vision? And the beauty of this is that you don't have to have all of the answers on your own. You can engage your team. And even if you've got a 5x the company vision, you don't have to know exactly how you're going to 5x the company. What are all of the steps we're going to take to 5x company. You just have to think about your next move. We, for Example in the photography business, our next move is to expand into other cities. Now, that might not get us to 5Xing our business.
Right.
We're not going to be able to expand and 5x our business in one year. We're not going to be able to expand in 5x our business, maybe even in two years. Maybe we can, I don't know. I haven't mapped it out that far yet. We've got brand partnerships that we're thinking about and a lot of other things that we're brainstorming. But we know the first step is going to be expanded to cities and that's okay. So if you look at this, you've got a vision and you've got your next move, and your next move is what you now engage with your team on so that they can help you bring that vision to life. You're still holding onto the bigger vision, you're still keeping that top of mind and letting people know what your near term steps are tied to, to that bigger vision. And you get in action, you start working, engaging and coaching and leading the team, collaborating with the team to bring the first milestone to life. And I brought up culture quite a few times. Culture can make or break. It can make or break a lot of things. Right. And have you ever been a part of a culture or a part of a community or an organization or a team or a company that just didn't feel healthy? There were toxic comments being made, there were words that were used or name calling that happened. Nate, it could be name calling of clients, it could be behind the scenes name calling of team members. It could just be a general, you know. Right. General tone that there is. There could be a group of people in the organization that are highly toxic and negative.
Right.
Not moving ideas forward, but swooping in periodically and just dropping off new ideas for you without actually taking anything forward. Culture is vast and culture is powerful. You as a leader get to set the tone with your team about what your culture will be with your clients internally across your brand.
Right.
And oftentimes culture has a piece of it that is tied to values. Values. For example, we embrace optimism, we embrace. Don't stop believing that there is possibility and anything can happen here.
Right.
But when you find that you're not acting in accordance with those values, this is when culture starts to get off. And it is absolutely something that has to be led. Because if you do not lead, the way that your team shows up and the way that you operate together and the way that you engage with your clients, things could Start to feel a little bit funky slowly. And then it may accelerate, and then it might be so uncomfortable. I don't even want to be here. I don't even know what's happening. And I am, to be totally honest with you, this has absolutely happened in my businesses, right? And sometimes in those instances where there was something unhealthy happening, everybody can notice it. And I also thought, is this my fault? What have I done here? You know? And the big thing that was my fault is that I didn't lead.
Right.
I might not like it, I might not want what's happening to be happening, but, man, it got here. And now I have a choice. I can either stew in it, or I can step back into the leadership role and I can be proactive. And sometimes that means you're going to have to make hard decisions. Yes. This is also your job as leader to say, it's just not a fit anymore. We see this company and where we are going two different ways. Thank you so much for where you've gotten us right now. But we're going to part ways other times, you're going to embrace and engage your team in team building exercises, right? Even virtually, you can leverage team building exercises to start to shift the culture, to start to shift how we engage with each other. Other times, there are different communication rhythms that need to happen. And while these things aren't directly like when I think culture, I think something that's intangible. No culture is very tangible. How you communicate with each other, the words you use, the meetings that you have, all of these things contribute to the culture that you are creating at your company. So I want this. This is a little bit of a primer for the how to clone yourself leadership bucket. And this is definitely something that we're going to continue a conversation on in this podcast because, like I said, there is so much that we could dive into. Because this is also bigger than you, right? This is bigger than you sitting in your office typing out your next blog post, Right. Or you, me, sitting in my bedroom working on the next training series.
Right?
So how do you show up differently? What is it? Who is it that you need to be when you step further into this leadership role? And in fact, shifting your being when you're leading sometimes means stepping away, learning to value that you're going to be doing a new type of work. So let go of the guilt. I feel so much guilt. I felt. Correction. I felt so much guilt as I stepped further and further and further into my leadership role. And it was actually just this past summer when I gave up guilt. Like, you know what, this is important work. This is the work that we talk about in this phase of the how to clone yourself mindset. When we're used to wearing all of the hats and being involved in all of all of the things. It takes a mindset shift to be able to step into the leadership role where you're now getting more and more elevation and you're becoming a little bit more detached from the outcome, which is healthy and it's going to help you help your team grow this business. But what are you actually doing?
Right?
I talked about a couple of things that you need to keep your eye on and what your focuses will be. Leading, creating space and nurturing the culture, which all encompass a whole lot of things. But in addition, things that you might do day to day to support your leadership role are taking time for that big picture thinking every day, but at minimum, three hours a week. Check in with your mastermind, your mentors for accountability feedback. Collaborate with a curated group of people that you trust. I highly recommend you have a daily practice around detachment and surrender. Detach and surrender from the outcome and the results and release the guilt around this new role because this is a very important role. Check in with the leadership on your team, your obm, your managers, your team members that are executing day to day and showing up for you in a big way. Nurture your team and your clients. Intentionally foster that culture that we talked about. And this one's highly tangible. I want you to regularly in this leadership role, be reviewing your KPIs, your key performance indicators. These are the numbers that give you the pulse on your business. Maybe it's your revenue, maybe it's expenses, profitability. Maybe it's the number of leads coming in day to day, week to week, month to month.
Are leads up?
Our leads down? Oh, leads are down. We need to do something about that. We need to crank up our marketing efforts. Maybe you've got some metrics and numbers that you're looking around around actual sales. Maybe they're quality control metrics. Are we delivering? Maybe it's the survey data. If you execute a survey with your clients or your team to get their feedback. All right, what's this data? What do we want to do with this? So you've got a lot that you can be doing. And oftentimes, even when you're in a leadership role, you will likely still be in a subject matter expert role. So you might still be stepping in to engage with clients, right? That's highly likely. That you will still be spending a good amount of time with clients. You might still be doing new product development, right? You're creating new training programs, you're identifying new products that might be valuable for your audience because you're listening and you're connecting and you're engaging, right? If your business is social media, you might still be posting things on Instagram. So I'm not saying we're going to throw everything else out and you're not actually going to do anything on the front lines again, so to speak, at those points that are closest to your customer, you may absolutely still be doing those things. I know I still will be absolutely. In my consulting business, I love the work we do together. I am very much on the front lines of that work, so I still stay engaged there. But by shifting and getting this elevation and focus, I not only can think about the future of my business better and engage my team in helping me realize those visions, but I can also serve my clients better because we're getting further elevation and we can actually get that bird's eye view and see across and then dive back in as appropriate. But you're not going to be in the weeds all the time anymore. So this is a big shift that we are making for you, your business, and I'm telling you it's going to be good. These shifts are what are what's allowing me to live anywhere I want. These shifts are what's allowing me to have freedom and flexibility in my schedule and in my life. So I want to invite you and I'm going to do some math. I'm going to put a metric around me. How much freedom have I actually gained? How much is this serving and has this helped my business? So I'm going to put some numbers around that and in the next episode we're going to come back to those numbers and I'm going to share the behind the scenes of how leading and making these mindset shifts and making these shifts and how I show up, engage in my company. How have these shifts benefited us and what else are we doing? All of that behind the scenes and more is coming in our next episode of the Modern CEO Podcast. Right now, I want to say thank you for leading and showing up what you do. Leading is hard. It makes you question and wonder and at the same time, you can have incredible impact on the people around you. So keep doing what you're doing. You are right on time. And we're going to dive more into the behind the scenes in the next episode. Love you so much. Thanks for being here. Talk soon.