Are you a growing business owner, or just some chick or guy leading a group of people and leadership is not going so well? Congratulations. The principles and action points in this post will help you steer that LeaderSHIP in ‘Direction RIGHT’ and with momentum too.
Let’s sail…
By God’s grace, I have had the privilege of running my #JesusGirlsFitness business for about 5 years, and for about 3 of those years, I have had 2 to 3 staff per time I am leading.
I work from home, yes, but there is NOTHING casual about how I lead my Team at #JGF which will henceforth be called #TeamBanah, which is our in-house name.
Banah is Hebrew for Builders, like those Nehemiah builders.
Recently, I did an overhaul of my team, and brought in new builders.
I wanted to also use the opportunity to create a new, authentic, and sustainable culture in-house.
We have always had core values as a team, beyond the Core values in the business itself which you see above, but I started to sense the Lord leading in a different direction
Part of what we do is called PDP that is Personal Development Programs, where we review a self and leadership development content. Since inception, I have been biased to my leadership Hero, Craig Groeschel’s podcast on Leadership
He is lead Pastor at Life Church, the creators of the Bible App we all love, YouVersion and also a leadership expert.
I absolutely love and adore him.
Like I literally will be listening to a podcast, pen and journal in hand, and voice out ‘gosh, I love this man’ randomly as one wisdom gives me a nice hug.
So my team and I would do regular, usually weekly reviews of the podssssss
The first I wanted my fresh team to listen to and review was WHITE SPACE, which was an interview with Juliet Funt.
I discovered JF at the Global Leadership Summit about 4 years ago, and I was just swooned, so when Craig interviewed her, I had to jump in.
I must have listened to this 72 times
Between, this post on 2D 3D conversations, I learned from Funt at GLS that year.
Ok so in this podcast, she was going IN on INTENTIONALLY creating strategic pauses in your day, called ‘white space’ to aid your productivity.
The team had reviewed it individually, but I knew they didn’t get the meat of it, so I decided we would listen LIVE and review together
And we did.
And my goodness, as we did, we came up with THREE major core values that would DRIVE us as #TeamBanah, including me.
Since we came up with them together, we were all going to be accountable for guarding these values
I would share all three while encouraging you to listen too as I am not even scratching the surface of it at all.
Ok here we go
1. A REDUCTIVE MINDSET
JF said organizations usually tilt towards additions and additions and additions, which makes them so heavy and less effective.
This WAS true for me.
If I could do a new program, or someone even suggested, boom, I jumped on.
This year, on a personal note, I reduced the number of programs at #JGF so I could focus on a few, which are a soft spot for me, and absolutely give my best.
Now I know that it is not about ‘Can I do it?’ it really is about ‘SHOULD I be doing this?’
I mean, there is a time for everything, and really I don’t even have to do everything.
This has really helped me save a lot of time to then invest in things that matter more to me.
It also trickles down to my Team, as their workload also reduces automatically.
So that’s the first thing that guides us
A REDUCTIVE MINDSET
We cannot just jump into every innovative idea without counting the cost, and if something has to be added, it not only has to be of the HIGHEST VALUE, something else has to be taken out, or maybe a new team member added, or a training for this new thing so it is producing for us, not slowing us down.
2. RESPECT FOR TIME
This one is so key because since the work we do is mostly online, there was CONSTANT communication plus hallucinated urgency which was just causing my team stress, and also breaking my focus flow.
I mean anyone could ping anyone at any time for anything, with absolutely zero respect for our time. This was both bottom-top (team members to me), and top-bottom (me to team members).
Now, what did we do? Because work still has to go on.
First, we adapted concepts from JF, modified ours and came up with these in-house buzz words
CODE RED
CODE YELLOW
Yellow list (private)
Highlighting
Debrief (2D and 3D)
Fire Hours
Let me attempt to explain
You know how anytime you have an idea or question, you just open chat and send?
Not anymore within Team Banah.
Individually, we all created a YELLOW LIST which served like a holding place for all ideas and questions, which we would then do a 2D or 3D debrief on during the Fire Hours.
So we all respect each other’s time, so we can focus on the day’s work, (everyone has a job aid so they already know what to do per day and time), and then during the fire hours, which we clearly stated, we debrief each other on what is in the yellow list, in person if 3D or in the CODE YELLOW chat
But hey, emergencies happen and if anyone needs info RIGHT NOW on anything, we use the CODE RED chat. That one has to be responded to ASAP
Otherwise, our chats stay silent, and we work on what we already have.
Gosh this really was an IMMEDIATE game changer and, increased productivity and reduced work stress for all
Respect for Team Members time, and this applies to everyone including ME
3. ZERO TOLERANCE FOR MISERY
Now misery is a HARD word but I wanted to keep it.
Basically, if work stress is TOO MUCH, you HAVE to SPEAK UP.
There is no need suffering in silence, as MOST LIKELY, there is something I can do as CEO to relive it.
One time, my OCS (Online Content Strategist) told me she was stressed with work, and if she didn’t say, I would NEVER HAD KNOWN. Me, I will just be bombarding her and expecting magic, then thinking she is slacking when she isn’t.
Between, she is the one who handles all our online content, including publishing this email you are reading, and our mailing lists
She was new and I just assumed she had capacity for it all, but when she said that, I knew I had to dial back, and I did, and we had a meeting on what I can do to help.
In Nigeria and Africa, we have a way of tolerating MISERY at work when we can speak up. We are too scared, too respectful or just too NIGERIAN lol.
Me I won’t ooo. I cannot tolerate misery from anyone, and I wanted my Team to also have that confidence to speak up. Not that they will be working with pain in their heart, and one day will just vex and leave.
I want them to have a life after work, which is why we also reduced the time they spend at work INSISTING that once it is time, they ALL leave, so they can get home on time and complete the rest of the work at home.
Also we have at least one Work from Home day too, which will increase as they prove that they can produce effective work from home too.
Work-life balance is KEY for me personally.
My life is not all about #JesusGirlsFitness and I also want same for my Team
So a question I would ask regularly is ‘what is your ‘misery’ level?’
The goal is to constantly leave it at ZERO, while still embracing the stretch of work.
We also adopted a once in 6 weeks social outing, especially to go and eat somewhere nice and just bond as a Team
ZERO Tolerance for misery ooo..
Ok, there is more but I can’t share all.
The idea is that we are all intentional about our work, even if it is a business we run from home.
And if you are a leader, you really need to take leadership SERIOUSLY whether in a ‘for-profit’ or a ‘not-for-profit’
Remember, everyone wins when a Leader gets better
(That’s not an original. I got it from Craig haha)
Cheers to your BEST season of LEADERSHIP
Eziaha
PS
Between, we recently launched our first GDQ e-book for stay-at-home moms. So if you need wisdom or guidance on how to run things at home and also have a balance as a mom… then, this e-book will absolutely BLESS you.