How To Create Your Own Leadership Style With Laura Weldy

TRANSCRIPT AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED Hey, Hey, today's guest. Laura Weldy is a women's leadership and career success coach who creates customized roadmaps to help her pre-suit clients get to the C-suite as great leaders. Between the two of us, we have seen the good, the bad and the ugly. Incorperate So we're going to go deep into how you can show up as a leader in your business. And the skills that you might need. [00:00:43] Diane: Hey Laura. Welcome to the Shire. [00:00:45] Laura: Hi, Diane. Thanks so much for having me. [00:00:48] Diane: So let's do a quick intro to you and your business for everyone. [00:00:52] Laura: Yeah. So I am a women's leadership and career success coach. And what that means is basically I partner with really high performing employees in the corporate world that are women. To help them really define their leadership style and effectively make that transition from employee to leader or employee to manager, because we know it is a big shift. I know that you are familiar with that as well. So I can't wait to talk more about it. But my kind of passion for women is women in what I call the pre suite. So women that are not yet in the C-suite, they don't have the big title, but they're eager to start developing themselves personally and professionally. And in my experience, a lot of companies just don't have a success structure in place to help them do that, which is what happened to me. So when I was in corporate, I ended up leaving to build that success structure. And now that's what I teach. [00:01:48] Diane: amazing. Yes, I can relate to that. I can remember leaving corporate, just being completely burned out, going, traveling and going on my first like personal development experience ever. It was like a, like a nine day retreat thing in Bali. And I cried for nine days. I was like, I have literally done no personal development work for over a decade. [00:02:10] Laura: Yeah. It's wild. Isn't it? I mean, I had already. Multiple leadership positions under my belt. And whenever I moved companies, I was still being told the same BS over and over again about how I wasn't old enough for leadership. I wasn't experienced enough and I needed to start at the bottom and customer service. And that's what I'm here every single time. So for me, It was so obvious that I was just one of thousands of really high-performing women that were leaving corporate in droves because they felt the only way that they could be in control of their lives was to start their own business. Now, being an entrepreneur is great in a lot of ways, but I am 100% an accidental entrepreneur. I didn't want to be out on my own and I had to do it because that was the only way to kind of take back my ability to lead the way that I knew that I could. And I just think every day now about how different the workplace would be, if all of those women who have kind of max mass, Exodus, I don't know if that's a word that you can use. Max Exodus left the corporate world. We're still in it. Like how different would it be? So [00:03:18] Diane: or if you could somehow take all of those women who left for those reasons and put them all together in a company, just imagine what that would look like from a performance perspective. But if I think back into corporate, so you start off and you get maybe one direct report or maybe two, and then you progress and you become like a team leader. So you've got a few people under you, right. And you get to learn. Those skills of motivating somebody who has a direct line to you. You get to learn how to influence somebody who doesn't have a direct line into you to still get something done. And you're at the feet of these great leaders, And some really awful leaders. So you have this kind of roadmap of here's what I would like to do. Here's what I really don't want to do. And then in the online space, it's like, oh my business scaled overnight and I need to hire, and I now have 10 direct reports . And I just think that must be so scary, [00:04:15] Laura: Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up. It's like you are expected to make that shift again from business owner to leader overnight with no idea how to do anything, which is why, you know, a lot of the clients that I work with obviously are from corporate. I also get quite a number of entrepreneurs coming to me and say, Can you just tell me what it means to be a leader or what it means to be a boss? Because I have no freaking clue. So I totally think that that is a major gap in our industry, in all entrepreneurial industries. And it's interesting if you look at the, the path, because it's almost reversed from incorporate, right? Like you said, incorporate you start with the people managing. Very slowly, add that up until you're in a position where you have oversight of financials and how the business works. And in entrepreneurship is completely flipped and it doesn't mean it's worse or harder or better or anything. But we have to acknowledge that just because you know, the ins and outs of your business does not mean that you have the skillset. You need to manage a team of 10 . They're just different skills. [00:05:19] Diane: It's not like suddenly, well, I'm a CEO or so now I just magically. Should be able to do this perfectly. I think that's so much pressure to put on yourself. So if somebody is listening and they find themselves in that position, or, this happens really quickly. So it could be that you see yourself being in that position in the coming weeks or months as your team has grown. what's the thing that you would tell someone to start with bearing in mind that they don't have a lot of time to go and read, leadership books and that they need to kind of up-skill yesterday. [00:05:49] Laura: Yeah. Yeah. So I always say that I believe that leadership development happens in three phases. So I think the first phase is management of self. So that's where you kind of quickly triaged. Okay. Am I holding up to my own expectations? Am I performing as well as I could be? Am I showing up fully, et cetera? And if there's something that needs to be adjusted there to make sure that you are modeling what you need from your team, that you do that first. Right? So management of self second is management of others, right? I fundamentally think comes down to communication, which is why a lot of my work is focused on how can we as women really confidently own our voice and communicate effectively. I have a free guide to that on my site that I'm sure we can link in the notes as well, to give you even a format for how to do a one-on-one, if you've never met one-on-one with the director report before. So that is the kind of the second thing I would focus on. And then the third thing that I always suggest we focus on. Optimizing how you're showing up, which for me tends to be all about emotional regulation for leaders as you go into this whirlwind of, okay. Overnight, I have a team of 10 and I am overwhelmed and I am stressed and I don't know how to handle all of the stuff that comes with being a leader. Then you need to focus there a little bit, but I would start first with self-management and just make sure that you're living up to the ideals that you are expecting of the people that you're hiring. [00:07:14] Diane: Yeah. I think that's another piece that's a little bit blurry and online space. When you're talking about the emotional regulation. I mean, entrepreneurship is a roller coaster for everyone, but a lot of businesses have got maybe like a couple of people. Who've been with them for a really long time, who they are friends with now. And so I see the space where. You've got the so-called friends that you, you can't really talk to. Because I mean, some people do, but I don't know that you should really be venting to your team or asking your team to hold space for you, for your leadership challenges and struggles, and you know, just that ability to talk to somebody else. So. I'm always conscious when I'm talking to someone saying like, where are you downloading to? Like, who's holding space for you, But I'm curious, like, do you think once people get to that, what's the level where you're, you're no longer just like one of the gang, [00:08:07] Laura: yeah, I think when you have full-time employees of any kind, you're no longer one of the gain, honestly, though, I think anytime you're paying somebody for a service, even if they're a contractor, you need to be. Conscious of what you're sharing with them and how it could impact their relationship. And I don't mean that that anything negative is necessarily going to happen. But I do think that it's, it's our responsibility as a leader to be the one in charge of holding the space for them and understanding their challenges and fixing that. And they can't do that if you're bringing your own. Stuff to the table. So that's why, you know, there's this interesting study. I think it was by the university of Notre Dame and they surveyed a bunch of really high ranking women leaders. And over 75% of them said that they have a very tight knit group of other high-achieving female. Workings working women. And then that was part of what led them to their success. Was that ability to kind of share their experiences, get validated with an external support network. Now I would argue, you know, a one-on-one coach is a great way to do that as well, but either way, you've got to have somebody who has. Your ultimate success in mind and is willing to hear what you're going through. That's not going to, if you're in the corporate world, be in direct competition with you for a role in the future, somebody who's possibly susceptible to gossip and spreading around what your challenges are. And if you're an entrepreneur, somebody who's not responsible for reporting to you and also managing your emotions for you. [00:09:46] Diane: Yeah. I think it's such a lonely place to be. I always say the best piece of business advice I ever got was you have to find one person, at least one person who you can be completely honest with outside of your business about your business. Right. But I think incorporates you would have like your buddy who was a manager in a different department. Of a team that you knew and you would have like a coffee or a glass of wine and you would be able to download and brainstorm. What could you think all potentially, as you're learning, you have a manager above you or a mentor, and it's such a wide space. How does somebody in the online space build that network? If they don't have. [00:10:24] Laura: Yeah, I call this building your career success board. So actually thinking about it as a company board and considering, you know, who, whose advice do I find very valuable? How often do I really want to have a conversation with that person? And can I kind of coordinate that ahead of time? And then also, how do I get together? A group of my peers who are at a similar growth stage as I am, who are maybe from different industries than I am, who are willing to share their experiences. And I tell women in corporate to do the same thing, right? It's really not that different. If you're in an entrepreneurial space, I do think it's worth checking out. You know, masterminds or groups that are curated, but also you can curate one yourself that speaks to you. The only thing that's different between, you know, talking to your contractors about your challenges and joining a mastermind or creating one is that you have an agreement that whoever is in that. I can take off the hat of friend and put on the hat of, you know, coach or advisor or a mentor. And that can be really a powerful shift and really encouraging the days when you, as an entrepreneur need that honesty and also need a little bit of pep. [00:11:38] Diane: Yeah. I think entrepreneurs have got really good at being, it's going to sound so cynical, but strategically authentic, like, yes, I'm going to cry on Instagram. I need to show you the whole meat, which is totally fine. I have no objection to people showing their emotions on Instagram, but people will tell you about their system failures, people that they paid to coach them who were a disaster. They will tell you about the offer that flopped the launch, that flop, but no one speaks about. Anything that's happened in their team. And it's a complicated one because you've got that confidentiality with your employees as well. You don't want to be like shouting that into the internet, but I think it gives this gloss where you think that everybody else has got this leadership thing figured out. And so if you feel like you're struggling, it must be you. And so having that great. Oh coach or person that you can just download too, and know that like they can say back to you, like this is not unusual, is such a good idea. [00:12:34] Laura: And that's what leaders do, right? Is we, we moved from the challenge to solution solutions. As quickly as we can. So if you're not getting that external support, I mean, it's, it's just harder on you and you stay stuck longer in whatever it is that is giving you issues. But I agree. I think. That vulnerability online is very curated. I think people are not likely to tell you the real challenges that are happening in their business, unless you're speaking to them. One-to-one and I know everybody under the sun is like, don't compare yourself to other online business owners. But of course we do. Of course we do. We're human. So you have to kind of have. External sounding board to reflect back at you. Okay. Understand what you're feeling and what you're thinking right now. But this is who you are, not the way that you're showing up currently. And how do we get you back to there? [00:13:26] Diane: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's such a fraught journey, especially cause it's for the first time in your business, it's something that's really out of your control, Because if you needed more money, you sold more safe. If it took too much time, you put a system in place and now you've got this other person who is also having emotions and feelings and has dreams and goals and ambitions and stuff happening at home while you're having all of that. And so your ability to show up for that is more complicated probably than anything else that you experienced. The business space. So let's get even more complicated. Let's talk about new leaders, leading new leaders. So, I always loved the, like the rule of seven, like seven ish direct reports is about all the capacity you have. And sometimes it's not even that. So once you've kind of got to that stage and you've got your, let's say seven reports and you start to build a leadership team, this can also happen. Really quickly and now you're leading a new leader while you're still a new leader yourself and potentially managing the emotions of people who weren't made a team leader who have been with you forever if that's coming up. So maybe somebody in that situation right now, or they can see it coming down the line. What should they be thinking about or preparing for that specific company? [00:14:38] Laura: I would say it's going to be a lot of conversations, right? It's a messy, I mean, it just, there is a window in which there may be some messy growth and that's okay. I think what your responsibility is as a leader in that situation. Over communicating to everybody what your expectations are and what your values are as a brand and as a company so that they know how to best get you the results you're looking for. So that is things like, you know, do you value, speed, or do you value innovative? You need to know the difference so that they understand how to prioritize their work and their projects. And a lot of people under communicate women, especially we under communicate out of a fear of saying the wrong thing. And the reality is you just, you got to keep talking and you've got to keep trying until the way that you message it hits home in terms of like, how do you manage a new leader? Who's also managing people for the first time and you feel like a new leader yourself. Sitting down with your new leadership team that you're building and developing systems is going to help everybody. Creating templates for how you're going to have these hard conversations. And also just having a generosity of time. I think in the entrepreneurial space, we get very like gatekeeping with our time because we have so many things going on, right. We're like, yes, I'll talk to you, like schedule the time in four weeks. And then we can sit down and have this conversation. You can't do that with your team. And what you need to do is. Generous and have an open door policy as much as you can. I'm not saying no boundaries, but encourage them to come to you and communicate, and then actually activate on what they're saying. I think it will be kind of messing. It probably will feel a little bit scary, but as long as you have good intentions and you are open to self-correcting and you were open to owning your mistakes at each step of the process, you're going to get through it. But and you just got to get everybody on the same page as quickly. [00:16:41] Diane: I think sometimes the hardest thing in that situation is the person who doesn't acknowledge the new structure and goes to you. And how you manage saying to somebody who has potentially had a lot of access to you that like, look you just no longer have that access to me, I think is a really difficult conversation, but I think it goes back to like, you are no longer their friend. I think people think that if they put some kind of corporate structuring, their culture is just going to like go into the toilet, whereas from my perspective, and I'd love yours on this, but from my perspective, that's about safety. That's about allowing somebody to know exactly where they fit, what the boundaries are. It's like, it's like parents with small children, right. They're looking for what is my boundary? How can I, how can I. [00:17:21] Laura: Yeah, that's how you create that psychological safety for sure is structure boundaries, telling people, and you don't have to reply to that email and be like, Hey, never freaking email me again. I don't want to talk to you, right. You're not going to be rude about it, but if you reply and CC the person they're supposed to communicate with and just say, Hey, thanks for this moving forward. I think so-and-so, it's the best person to manage your requests and your questions and optimize that process. [00:17:51] Diane: I can just picture everybody's. Like taking, taking like dictation on here's here's what to say in this one. Yeah. exactly. Maybe, maybe I'll put that one as like a, as like a court card or something to make it really easy for everyone to copy when they need it. So you touched on earlier funding your leadership style, and there are a lot of leadership styles, and I think once you start reading on leadership and you get into the topic, especially. in some of the more traditional books or some of the more you've had some of the more traditional education it can be very confusing and I think again, when you read them, it feels very corporate. And then I know like online businesses, people are like, oh, that feels really corporate-y. I just want to throw it all out. So how do we start building our own leadership style? So taking the good, figuring out what doesn't work for us. [00:18:38] Laura: Yeah. entrepreneurs as a whole, or are rather non-traditional I would say, right. We like coming up with our own solutions to things and I get that instinct to reject it all because it is traditional and it is corporate. What I like to ask myself. What systems and structures. When I was in corporate, did help me be successful and did help me do things well. And then how would I implement them for myself in my company? So if morning circle ups were really effective, like as some, is there some variety of like daily communication briefs that you can give your team that will help them all be on the same page. And I think the same thing is true of leadership styles. So. It's something that makes me bristle at some of the more traditional leadership books and trainings is that they're very masculine focused. And again, that's a generalization, I know gender spectrum. I agree with all of these things, but they, they tend to favor very traditionally masculine qualities that people are raised with. So being very assertive, being very outgoing Just some ways that folks use language and use their body and everything that has been established as the executive presence, the one kind of executive presence you need to embody. And we know from being women in the world and being. Individuals who have been through the corporate wheel that women tend to, they call it the double bind, rather researchers do, but we're women tend to be judged if they do not embody the leadership traits that men do, but they also get judged if they do embody them. Right. So what that told me, I, when I started this business, I got coffee with just a bunch of high performing women who were in corporate and. I asked them, like, what is holding you back from having the career that you think that you should have at this point, or that you want to have? And they all said, I don't have a champion in the workplace. Who's like speaking up for me. And what that showed me was two things. So if all of the traditional leadership styles and assessments are based on traditionally masculine qualities, And if all of these women feel like they're being held back because they don't have men volunteering to speak up for them and sponsor them. There's a huge gap here around vocabulary to talk about more traditionally feminine traits and how those can translate well into leadership and also giving a vocabulary to women's who start to advocate on their own behalf rather than seeking out sponsors and mentors, even though those things are great. So I actually did create my own. Leadership assessment tool, it's called the personal power code. And I created it based on the five qualities that companies tend to look for when they're hiring leaders. And then the different styles within those qualities are based on the ones that I see as most prevalent with the high-performing women that I work with. So yeah, that was my answer was like, all right, well, let's make a new system. And let's get women to start appreciating the fact that a lot of women already embody traits that are incredibly valuable in the managerial world, whether the current business space is recognizing it yet or not. [00:21:55] Diane: yeah. I think we have to think about all the studies that have been done around what makes a great leader or what characteristics turn into a leader and understand that they have predominantly cupboard. At least middle-class white men. And so. We're never going to look at those traits and be like, oh yes, I totally tick those. Or if we do, when we go out into the world, everyone's like, oh, hi, I'm lady. Like, you know, I definitely come from that school of like, I'm going to be as assertive as a guy and I'm going to be told I'm aggressive. But I think what I see in the entrepreneur space is a swing too, from traditional to that more servant leadership. But I think that's potentially a recipe for feeling like you're failing again, because that really true deep servant leadership is all else before you. and I get where people are coming from, they want that they want to put the employees first. So I love the model of it. It's like let's focus on employees and everything else will take care of itself. But as a leader, you are still. in business to make money, to pay for your lifestyle. That's just put it out there, right? If you read the kind of servant leadership thing and it's become like a trendy focus in the entrepreneur leaders, and I don't have a problem with it, I think it's a really interesting model. But that requires you as the leader to. Cover everything. I mean, some of the examples of it all just magnificent, like, on actually on this week's podcast, I was talking about a damn price, the guy who raised his minimum salary of his employees and took a million back hit, he didn't give up all of his salary. He didn't like not be able to pay his own rent on behalf of his employees. Right. He wasn't buying them all houses with his salary or anything like that. where we have to be careful that we don't swing so far away from tradition that we get ourselves into the space where either the business starts to be problematic, or we feel like a failure because one of our employees had a really bad day. and I think women in particular, in the online space are, so what did I do wrong as a leader that created the situation and then. Potentially or holding on to employees or situations for longer than they should be. [00:24:00] Laura: Yeah. I personally I've loved the idea of servant leadership. Like you said, I think for most women entrepreneurs or any entrepreneurs, really it's a recipe for burnout. I mean, you can't be, it kind of has echoes to like traditional. Ideas about like women putting everybody in their family before themselves. So it's almost, it is an overcorrection, so folks don't want to come across as this like aggressive top down leadership, and then they default to servant leadership, but you, you have to find, I think the middle ground that allows you to be an authority figure when you need to be an authority figure and to be. Helpful to people when you need to be. So I actually call it like conduit leadership instead of like a king or queen leader. Right. That's like a traditional top-down conduit is more like, how can I help facilitate your. It's not I'm responsible for your success or I'm responsible for your feelings. It's how can I use my abilities and help you get through this and come out on the other side. And there's actually, you know, people are inspired by more of a coaching style leader. When you come to your boss or you come to your leader and you say, I don't know how to do this thing. There is some empowerment that happens when they don't tell you how to do the thing. And they instead ask you why don't you tell me like five different ways we could tackle it. And they help you workshop through your ideas and articulate those until you arrive at a final spot. It takes a little bit more time as a leader, but that's how you start to teach. To think for themselves and make those choices for themselves. So you don't have to be at their Beck and call and responsible for all of it all the time. [00:25:51] Diane: I like it , from the point that it shifts that leader who has a larger team, it shifts their perspective away from being client experience focused, to being what I call team experience focused and thinking through what does that model look like? How do we make sure we have a great workplace? How do we build that culture? It just loses me when it goes, you should give up everything. What I love about the coaching style is even if you haven't been in corporate, so someone intrepreneurs have had no experience of corporate, they've never seen that hierarchy. They've never seen that sort of leadership in action is most people have had a coach at, at a sports. And so that you can think back to like, okay, so before we did something big, there was the pep talk. And then we were talking about what our goals were. And then that one day I had a really bad day and the coach called me into her office and we had a little chat. So I think it's more identifiable and probably safer for the CEO then that full-blast servant leader. [00:26:49] Laura: I mean, and if you've never played sports, you've seen Ted lasso, right? Like you step last. So it was kind of somewhat of a model. I mean, I'm not saying he's perfect, but yes, it does. It is reflected well in that sports analogy of the coaches there. To inspire the team, to rally the team, to observe and give feedback to the team. But if the team isn't performing well in the middle of the game, the coach doesn't get out there on the field and start kicking the ball around or whatever. That's not, they don't come in and they're like, I'm going to save us. That's not what their job is. And it's the same thing for a leader as an entrepreneur, you know, You know, be happy and into your people's spreadsheets or into their tasks to do it all the time for them, or they're never going to learn it on their own. [00:27:38] Diane: I love that. So let's talk about how people can. Started with this. What's a really easy resource that you have. I know we'll put the communication one in a show notes. What else have you got going? Because I feel like this is a space that people need some help. [00:27:53] Laura: Yeah. Well, I'm excited that you feel that way because I feel that way too. And I talk about it all day, every day. So something that I'm doing right now, I mean, this is for both women and corporate and for entrepreneurs who are now turning into leaders of teams it's called the new leader success method. It's through the whole month of March and next week, we're doing a free training actually on the emotional regulation piece of leadership. So if folks want to join, we can share a link to that and you can do a free hour long training with me. I'll do live Q and a. So any questions you have. Emotional regulation or some of the other topics we've been covering, like imposter syndrome and communication with your team, bring them there. I'm happy to answer or workshop them or coaching through some of your experiences. And you're going to just learn more about this method and hopefully walk away with a couple of actionable tools that you can use to really get started down that path. [00:28:50] Diane: I love that. So to finish up, I always ask my guests a couple of the same questions and I'm super curious, what is your number one lifestyle boundary for your business? I love asking this question to people who I know have been. Because it's always so solid. [00:29:07] Laura: My number on lifestyle boundary for my business is that I can't feel dictated by my calendar. I just can't. So I do a lot of group coaching. I do limited numbers of one-on-one because I know what needs to happen every day in my business, but it does not have to happen at 7:00 AM rather than 7:00 PM. Right. So for me, it's just that flexibility of choice around when I make things happen and how I make it work with my desires for that day. [00:29:38] Diane: I think I'm very much the same. Every time somebody says to me, have you tried? Time-blocking [00:29:42] Laura: I'm like, no, cause I don't hate myself. [00:29:45] Diane: No. I'm like, yes, I did that for 13 years in a corporate job. So thanks ever so much. I I'm very experienced no interest debt. Okay. Secondly, what is the worst piece of cookie cutter advice you've been given as an entrepreneur [00:30:01] Laura: Scale before you're ready. [00:30:03] Diane: or [00:30:04] Laura: Yeah, I hear it. I heard that all the time, especially my first year or two. How you're before you think you're ready, invest before you're ready. No. [00:30:13] Diane: the higher before you're ready, one always gets to me. Cause I'm always like, you probably don't need a VA. I feel like at some point that became like the symbol that you were this next level entrepreneur, because now you had a VA when actually what you need is a social media manager or a podcast editor or a designer, or something way more specific to you. [00:30:34] Laura: Well, typically I feel like entrepreneurs hire VAs when their business feels overwhelming. VA is not the solution to that because now you're just adding to your plate, managing their tasks and their work. If it's overwhelming, it's a matter of going back to your business model and figuring out what about it. Isn't working for you, what you need to cut, et cetera. But we have become convinced by that idea of hire before you're ready that bringing another person on is going to solve. I wish that were true, but no, [00:31:04] Diane: This has been so much fun. I could nerd on like this topic for so long. Where is the best place for people to carry on the conversation with you on the socials? I can only imagine the conversations that are coming [00:31:15] Laura: Yeah. I'm really excited to talk to some of your listeners. I could also speak out about this all day, every day in the DMS. They can find me on Instagram at Laura Weldy and on LinkedIn. [00:31:28] Diane: We'll make sure that everything is linked up in the show notes. Thank you so much. This was such a fun episode. [00:31:33] Laura: Thanks Diane. I had a blast.