Rewiring Leadership
Episode 106: Rewiring Leadership, with Audrey Kwan
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Rewiring leadership will help your agency grow. Listen to Audrey Kwan and start learning about empowering your team by rewiring leadership.
When I sit down with agency owners and their teams for the first time, our conversations often revolve around the same themes — where new clients are coming from, how engaged their email lists are, and the consistency (or lack thereof) in sharing valuable content to grow their audiences.
And without fail — I hear something along these lines:
“We’re the cobbler’s kids, Stephen. We know what we should be doing, and ironically, we’re doing that work for our clients. But when it comes to our own agency, we either drop the ball entirely or we’re consistently inconsistent.”
Sound familiar?
Being consistently inconsistent is not just costing you opportunities — it’s costing you peace of mind. Having a predictable biz dev system in place can provide a sense of stability that’s priceless.
We often talk about the Sell with Authority methodology — and how it can solve these issues.
But for this episode of the podcast, I want to approach the cobbler’s kids syndrome from a slightly different angle.
That’s why I invited Audrey Kwan to join as our special guest expert today to talk us through about rewiring leadership.
Audrey is the Founder of AJK Consulting Inc. and specializes in helping agency owners who are at capacity leverage systems and leadership to reclaim more of their time — time that can be dedicated to business development if they choose.
What sets Audrey apart is her deep understanding of how agencies, like yours and mine, operate from the inside out. Having worked alongside over 150 agency owners and their teams, she knows the ins and outs of agency life like few others.
This conversation with Audrey about rewiring leadership shines a light on the constraints, obstacles, and roadblocks that may be silently hindering your progress. We tackle the feast and famine of biz dev head-on — and address that nagging feeling that your agency is the cobbler’s kids.
Taking and applying the insights and wisdom Audrey shares during this episode will unlock opportunities so you’re equipped with the time, space, and capacity to Sell with Authority — and roar through 2024.
What you will learn in this episode about rewiring leadership:
- Steps for moving from agency doer to strategic leader
- How to recognize and address avoidance behaviors that stifle growth
- Why delegation isn’t just about passing tasks along
- 4 pivotal leadership styles that empower your team
- How to prioritize marketing as a key CEO activity
- How you can start rewiring leadership within your agency
Resources:
- Website: https://audreyjoykwan.com/
- LinkedIn Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kwanaudrey/
- LinkedIn Business: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ajk-consulting-inc/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/audreyjoykwan/
- Breakfree From Being the Bottleneck in Your Business Podcast: https://audreyjoykwan.com/breakfree
- Free Workshop for Agency Owners: https://audreyjoykwan.com/leadershipstyles
- Register to this FREE 60-minute live workshop and become efficient in rewiring leadership in your agency
Additional Resources:
- Website: www.predictiveroi.com
- Visit our newly expanded Resource Library
- Join us in our free How to Fill Your Sales Pipeline Facebook Group
- Check out this similar podcast about rewiring leadership from our guest, Sue Hawkes
Rewiring Leadership: Full Episode Transcript
Welcome to the Sell With Authority podcast. I’m Stephen Woessner, CEO of Predictive ROI, and my team and I created this podcast specifically for you. So if you’re an agency owner looking to sell more of what you do so you can grow a thriving and profitable shop that can weather the constant change that seems to be our world’s reality, then you’re in the right place.
Do you want proven strategies for attracting a steady stream of well prepared, right fit prospects into your sales pipeline? Yep, we’re going to cover that. You want to learn how to step away from the sea of competitors. So you actually stand out and own the ground you’re standing on. Yep. We’re going to cover that too. You want to futureproof your business so you can navigate the next challenges that you know are going to come your way.
Well absolutely. We’ll help you there as well. I promise you, each episode of this podcast will contain valuable insights and tangible examples of best practices. Never theory from thought leaders, experts, owners who have done exactly what you’re working hard to do. So I want you to think practical and tactical. Never any fluff. Each of our guests, who built a position of authority and then monetized that position by growing their audience, by nurturing leads, and, yes, by converting sales.
But all the while, they did it by being helpful. So every time someone from their audience turned around, there they were with a helpful answer to an important question. So their prospects never, ever felt like they were a prospect. I also promise you every strategy that we discuss, every tool we recommend, will be shared in full transparency so you can fill your sales pipeline with that steady stream of right fit clients who, again, were never, ever made to feel like one of your prospects.
Rewiring Leadership: The Sell With Authority Methodology
Okay. Before I introduce you to our special guest expert, I want to take a moment to tee things up. Because if I had a dollar for every time when meeting an agency owner and their team for the first time, and we start talking about where their new clients come from or the engagement of their email list, and by how much is growing month over month, or how often you know what cadence they share helpful content to grow their macro and micro audiences.
If I had a dollar for every time I heard these types of things next, then I’d be a really wealthy person because typically I hear something like this. Well, we’re the cobbler’s kids, Stephen. We know we should be doing all of that. And ironically, we’re doing that work for our clients and we’re helping them win. We’re helping them crush results.
But when it comes to doing it for our agency, we either drop the ball entirely or we’re consistently inconsistent. And I know that you know this everyone. But being consistently inconsistent is costing you opportunity. And perhaps more importantly, it’s costing you the peace of mind that having a predictable biz dev system in place can provide. Yes, we teach and share a lot about the Sell With Authority methodology and how it can help solve these issues.
Rewiring Leadership: Audrey Kwan’s Introduction
But today I want us to tackle the cobbler’s kids syndrome a bit differently, and that’s why I invited Audrey Kwan to join me as our special guest expert today, because Audrey helps agency owners who are at capacity, and then she helps them leverage systems and leadership to grow a business that gives them back more of their time. So if they choose, they can actually dedicate that newly found time for busy stuff.
So one of the things that I appreciate about Audrey is that she gets how agencies like yours and mine, how we work from the inside out. She’s worked alongside 150 agency owners in their teens, helping them grow and then train their leaders to move their agencies forward. So the conversation with Audrey and I that we have today is going to shine a bright light on the constraints, the obstacles, the roadblocks that may be even silently in your way, blocking progress.
And then they’re keeping you stuck in the feast and famine. Biz dev mode, feeling like your agency is the cobbler’s kids. I promise you, taking and applying the insights and wisdom. Audrey shares during this episode is going to unlock opportunities, so you’re equipped with the time, space, and capacity to sell authority in raw through 2024. So without further ado, welcome to the Sell With Authority podcast, Audrey.
Rewiring Leadership: Audrey’s Path and Journey
Hey, Stephen, thank you so much for having me here and for that wonderful introduction. I really appreciate it. You are very welcome. Thank you for saying yes. I am just absolutely delighted that you’re here and unwilling to share your expertise. So I’m really looking forward to that conversation. Before we do that, though, actually take us behind the curtain and and share maybe 2 or 3 minutes of context about your path and journey.
Obviously, I introduced you, but that’s just a little snippet of you, your expertise, who you work alongside. So give us a couple of minutes of context there and then, and then we’ll dive into the questions. Yes. I look back at my career and I see how it all came together. And it makes sense that I help agency owners.
Gather day to day at what strategic systems and leadership. I went to university thinking I was going to be a lawyer. And, if you’re an Asian kid, I grew up in a very traditional family. You probably heard that you could be a lawyer, a doctor or an engineer. So I thought that I was going to be a lawyer.
And I went to university thinking that, you know, I was going to spend my time, going into law and then actually going into politics. And in that third year, I received an internship with our federal government, that was up in Ottawa, and I had an epiphany moment. And that was, this is not the life that I want for myself, but while I was there, something really cool happened.
Rewiring Leadership: Audrey’s Goal in Starting Her Business
So this is way back when, when digital marketing wasn’t a thing, but I was tapped because I was young. I was tapped for a committee that was called e-services, and it introduced me to the world of marketing and also what was happening in the online world of marketing. And I got really interested, and I knew that that was where I wanted to be.
So I finished my degree. But, I kept an eye out for jobs that were in marketing, and that meant that when I finished school, I had a marketing job, and my goal was to get into agencies because I wanted a fast paced lifestyle. And we all know if we work in an agency, we’re fast paced. So I wanted a fast paced lifestyle, and I did end up getting a role inside an agency here in Canada that provided services to fortune 500.
And I feel like I was raised in agencies because I started my career there. And I eventually went to the client side. And as I’m sure everyone here listening to the podcast knows what that means. It means that you go to the client side because the client wants you, and so you go client side. And I spent time building out their marketing teams, and that was a good 12 years of my career.
Then something happened in my life that really changed how I saw what I wanted to do. I never thought I was actually going to start a business. I never thought that was going to be my path. But, my mom passed away from cancer, so she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and passed away in three weeks.
And you know, not seeing where you can step off the curve and get hit by a bus any day, that was my step off the curb and get hit by the bus moment. And she really inspired me after her passing to not only look at what I want for myself, which, by the way, wasn’t climbing that corporate ladder, because that’s what I thought I was going to do, climb that corporate ladder.
But instead, she really inspired me to look at why her life was the way it was. So she was stressed a lot. And I’ll be honest, she wasn’t always present with her family. And she could have worked less. She could have lived more. And I wanted that for her. And that really helped navigate where I want to take my career.
And that is helping other leaders out there to be less stressed, to be more present with family, to work less and to live more. And yeah, I initially had a master’s in communications focus organizational development and I quit my job and that’s how I started this business. And that’s been ten years since the ten years I like you’ve mentioned, I’ve worked closely with agency owners.
And agency owners are my niche because it’s what I know. It’s what I grew up in. I’ve helped an agency owner sell and exit a business as well, too. And so, you know, I’ve been working alongside agency owners, and I know what pains and challenges they have.
Rewiring Leadership: Putting Yourself in Your Client’s Shoes
And Stephen, you mentioned in your introduction that one of the things that agency owners struggle with is carving out this time for doing more marketing, or at least being consistent in marketing.
And I see that with the clients I work with as well, too. I’m excited to have this conversation about why that happens and what we can do about it. Oh yeah, I’m on my I am on my heels a little bit when when you talked about your mom in her battle with pancreatic cancer and was a short three weeks, and how, how deeply emotional and, and powerful of an event that was in all of the loss and how it happened so quickly and, and as I just wrote in my notes, I said, I wrote about your why and how it is a powerful why and and deeply emotional.
So my senses and or maybe I should say my guess is that when you’re working alongside agency owners, that is what is driving you. So when you see an agency owner that is working 90 hours a week and just stressed to the hilt, and it has no free time or space or any of that, not only do you want to help that person and their team and all of that, but my guess is that a reconnection back to your why over and over and over again, and why that work is so meaningful?
Is that a fair assessment or a guess? That’s accurate? 100%? I think when my mom passed away, you know, they say there’s a silver lining to everything, right? And you know, of course, you know, I wouldn’t have won her. Possibly. But there is the silver lining that led to where I am right now, this understanding of why I was truly put on this earth.
I truly believe that’s why I was put on this earth. And so every time I do the work of helping an agency owner carve out the time that they need to live their lives, I know that I am giving back because I can put my shoes, my myself in the shoes of their family because I was the child who saw my parents’ stress.
I was the child who knew that my mom was busy with work because she was trying to make a better life for us. And I was the kid who saw how my mom was not present for many things. You know, if I had more time with her, I don’t know what would have happened. But I know that I would have had the opportunity to get to know her better, and that was taken away from me.
And so when I do the work that I do, it is essentially about helping people and agency owners in specifically getting back their life. That’s exactly what it comes down to.
Rewiring Leadership: Doing Some Rewiring in An Agency
Wow. Powerful. But this is going to be such an amazing conversation. Conversation and I think transformative, for our audience. And again, I’m grateful that you said yes when you said, carving out the time, a few minutes ago, that made me think of some of the conversation that you and I had, in the green room before I hit record, and you said this in the green room, and I thought it was so insightful.
I wrote it down immediately. You said agency owners are typically the doers of things, not the marketers of the thing. And so I wonder how that relates, then to carving out the time? If they carve out the time, does that make them less of a doer of the thing and more of a marketer thing?
My guess is no, there might need to be some rewiring there. So I thought that was really smart because those aren’t necessarily a direct correlation. Or are they? If they get more time, then they’ll be able to focus on being more of the marketer of the thing. I’m looking forward to your thoughts. Yeah, soon. You said a keyword there.
The word is rewiring. I think you and I both know and I’m sure, in your experience working with agency owners, what you see are really great specialist people who were really good at doing something right. So it could be that you were really good at copywriting. You were really good at SEO. You were really good at PPC.
You were so good at it that your business grew and you got to capacity right. And out of the need. You started to build your business, i.e. you built your team, you hired people. Right? And so this is what I call the doer to leader journey. I think most agency owners are on what I call a do it a leader journey.
Rewiring Leadership: The Leader Journey
You start out as doers and they have to unlearn a lot of that. Doing that specialist mentality or that specialist mindset of doing to transition into becoming what we call a leader. And that is the word rewiring. And we’ll rewire ourselves to become leaders. We have to do things like carve out time to work on the priorities.
Even though we fight ourselves to do that. And when I say fight ourselves, what I mean by that is it’s hard to put ourselves into the shoes of someone who talks about all the great things that we do for our clients, right? Like we have a natural tendency as doers to want to just do the work, do great work, and be recognized for that work automatically like I do great work.
Someone sees a great work, I’m cool, and that’s all I need to do, right? But that’s not how it happens in our not in our world where there is so much noise, we have to get out there and do the marketing and do the activities that bring that visibility. And that’s what it means to have that rewiring is to think about, as a leader, what you’re now new role is, are really about.
And so yeah, and when we think about carving out time in our calendars, of course, you know, we can create the systems that give you back more time. We can help you train up your leaders so that they are helping you move the agency forward. And that essentially gives you back more time, meaning ideally, let’s say you have a five day workweek and you decide that, you know, Mondays is going to be a marketing day, and that’s all you’re going to do is keep Monday as your marketing day.
But I see this a lot. You can carve out Monday as your marketing day, and then get distracted by making that Monday a day of a mini task or a day of, you know, urgent client calls that you decided were urgent because, you know, that’s what you thought. They were urgent, but they weren’t. They were really just distractions.
And I would say in some cases, even avoidance behavior and doing marketing, because I don’t think that agency owners, at least small agency owners, the ones that I work with, are naturally inclined to be marketers.
Rewiring Leadership: Starting The Rewiring Process
Okay, boy, you would laugh if you could see my notes. Well, here, I’ll just show them to you. Anyway, there are all of these little boxes here of layers that we’re going to go into because you mentioned the rewiring.
You mentioned systems and training of leaders, avoidance behavior, Holy bananas, Audrey. There are some really, really big topics there to peel apart. So I love what you just said about the leader’s journey. And then you talked about that transition. But then that’s where you also mentioned the rewiring. So I know that’s going to lead us into other things like systems and in the training of leaders in avoidance behavior.
But how do we start? Like how do we do? First describe a little bit more detail about what you mean by rewire and then how, when we think about rewiring, it’s almost like the act of unlearning something to learn. So we have to unlearn things to become a great leader. Some of the things that we have to unlearn are a person who is a problem solver to someone who empowers.
Right. So when we think of a, we think of how we are. Let me just go back here to define what a small agency owner usually does in the business. Right? So a small agency owner is typically when they’re first starting their business, they’re typically the one who does all the things, right? They’re doing everything from being the person who actually delivers the service to account management to project management.
And they’re solving all the problems. Right. But when you become a leader, you have to unlearn that. You have to unlearn being the problem solver to someone who empowers the team to do the things. That’s one of the things you have to unlearn. Another item that you have to unlearn is from time management to priority setting. So what does that even mean?
Right? So when you are someone who is a great doer in the business, you’re really good at figuring out how to put the time in your calendar to do all this work, to get all this work done. It’s the reason why your business has grown really fast. It’s the reason why you might be even at capacity right now.
Because yes, you were at some point in time really good at time management. But now when you step into the leadership role, it’s about priority setting, right. And priority setting isn’t always about getting that client to work out that door. That’s what your team is there to do. That’s what training up your leadership team is supposed to help you do, to help them help you get out of the work.
Right. And when that happens, your job is to set the right priorities for your business and the priorities as a leader of your business. Either see all of your business is always going to be growing the business. And what does that mean? It means sales and marketing, right? And if we don’t carve out that time, our priority setting marketing, then we’re never going to get to it.
Rewiring Leadership: Avoiding Things That Could Sabotage the Journey
Yeah. Boy, this is so great. I’m trying to try to write so quickly in my notes, because there were so many, really good, good golden nuggets back in there when you just said the team is there to help you get out of the work, like, again, from a personal perspective, you know, when I started Predictive and Predictive was was just me.
I started with, you know, SEO related projects, search engine optimization. It was an area of expertise for me. And I am still 15 years in, when we’re onboarding a new team to we’re working on a project or something like that. I like to get my hands dirty. Now I know that I need to focus at least 50% of my time, and I like to try.
I have about 75% of my time focused on business development to grow the agency, but it’s intoxicating being able to jump back into that project and get your hands dirty and all of that, I’m like, ha, that was so amazing, right? And it can become a very slippery slope. I’m like, whoa, okay, I need to not do that on a consistent basis, because sure, that kind of scratches an itch for me.
But it also, I don’t know if it’s too strong a word to say, but it works against what you just said. Like, I get the exhilaration from problem solving, but when I do that, I’m not empowering our team. I’m not being the best version of a leader that I should be. Am I tracking with you with what you’re saying?
Yeah, absolutely. I think when you jump back into the work, it shows a team that you don’t trust them. And the minute you show the team that you don’t trust them, you’re going to become that person they go to to ask all the questions, which is the opposite of what you actually want from your team, right? I mean, ideally what we want is to delegate things and have that thing done well.
Right? But you’ll self-sabotage that journey if you delegate something and come back into it and correct it all, and then set it back to get it done again. Right? So, you know, that’s the type of behavior you want to avoid. But I also want to mention this, I see this kindly the idea of just delegate. And I’m going to air quote this idea of just delegate.
It’s very dangerous. And I see that in a lot of agency owners and the ones I work with where when they come to me, they say things like, well, I just delegated that thing and it’s not working the way I want it to work. Right. And one of the things I’m always sharing is that delegating is actually one style of leadership.
But there are other styles of leadership that we have to consider when we want to make sure our team is functioning well. Right. And so just delegate is one style. The other styles that we want to look at are coaching, directing and supporting. Right.
Rewiring Leadership: Understanding A Person’s Level of Commitment and Motivation
So there are really four styles. And if we want to make sure that our team is actually giving us and helping us carve out time in our calendars, well, we’ve got to understand which of these styles we need to use.
When we are working with the people that are on our team. And so let me just give you a quick example. Let’s say, I have a client who has an events agency, okay. And they are putting on bullying events in the community. So they put together these bullying events in their community. Okay. And, they go out and they hire someone to support doing this work.
Right now, this person comes in and they have a track record of building out what we would call maybe nutrition or health events. Right? So it’s not exactly bullying, community events, bullying, anti-bullying, by the way, anti-bullying events in the community. So they don’t exactly have that same niche knowledge. And it’s different nuances because, you know, nutrition is not bullying.
Right. And so because of this, my agency owner needs to look at two things, right? They need to look at what is the competence level of this person doing the task and what is the commitment level. Right. So knowing that the person is committed or motivated but the competence is not exactly there, meaning that, hey, they haven’t actually done the whole anti-bullying event before, but they have experience doing nutrition events.
Well, you’re most likely not going to delegate because delegating is used for when you have a track record of working with someone and then doing that thing over and over again really well. So what do you do? Right? Well, you then lean into what we call a supportive method, right? Because this person has demonstrated a track record, just not a track record in your niche right now.
Rewiring Leadership: Providing Coaching and Direction
Let’s look at another scenario okay. Let’s look at the fact that maybe they hire someone who is not experienced in actually managing events, but maybe they’ve had experience or needing an event or being an assistant to that. Right? If that’s the case, you can bet your bottom dollar that in terms of competence, they haven’t done this thing before, right?
They may have a viewpoint to it from their role as a coordinator, but definitely not as a manager. Right. So if that’s the case, you are not going to delegate. It’s not just delegates. You’re not to come in there and say, hey, okay, here’s all the responsibility. Figure it out. No, at this point in time, you need to lean into coaching, right?
You need to understand that the competence isn’t there yet, right? They may have a motivation, i.e. the commitment, but the competence isn’t there yet. And so you need to apply more coaching because they need more direction and coaching is about providing more direction and support is less direction and just more confidence. Now there’s one more I want to cover here and that’s, directive.
People often say, okay, I don’t want to be the person who has to tell my coordinator or my manager exactly what to do. I want them to know exactly what they need to do. Right. And I will say that directive behavior is exactly that, telling someone exactly what they need to do without giving them, you know, much room for input, right?
And I will say there is a space for a directive type of leadership. And let’s say, for example, this bullying workshop that you have to put together in the community needs to happen within ten days. Right now, if it needs to happen within ten days, and you’ve just had someone in your team say, see you later, I’m quitting.
And they’re out the door, okay. And you don’t technically have anyone tapped to fill that role, well, you’re going to need to get in the directive seat and bring someone in and tell them exactly what to do. But you’re not going to delegate at that point in time because too much is at risk. So I just want to say that because I think that carving up time for yourself is really about becoming a better leader for your team, the better leader you are for your team, the more time you’re able to carve up for yourself.
And then what you choose to do with your time is really important. It’s about unlearning the doer in you to become the leader, which is the person who sets priorities and follows through with those priorities. In this case, really following through with the idea of marketing activities and sales activities. I will grow your business. This is so good and I’m grateful that you stepped us through the four different styles.
Rewiring Leadership: Training Leaders
When you mentioned delegate coaching directive and support that gave us examples that hung off of each of those. And then, here’s two. I literally wrote this in my notes, Audrey, that we have to be astute and nimble enough to know the difference. And in which of the four need to be applied and when, in order to raise the bar in our own leadership and then also to help grow our team not just in size, but grow our team in capability.
And so then, to your point that then frees up our time and that, of course, through my lens, that means, you know, more time to carry the torch for the agency and being able to implement something like this. I was already methodology and built their expertise in their niche and in their sales pipeline and all of that.
So let’s go back to something that you had shared with us a few minutes ago when you mentioned the rewiring that took us into systems and training up the leaders, and then you gave us the four styles of leadership. And I’m sure there’s more that we can talk about with respect to training up to leaders.
But the other box that I, where I, guess what I, the other two words that I circled in my notes was avoidance behavior. So because when you said that, I thought, okay, it is about creating time, space and capacity so that somebody who’s working 80 to 90 hours a week already doesn’t think, oh, great, now that’s another 15 hours.
And I’m working 100 hours a week, right? So once they free up the time, space and capacity. But if they haven’t confronted the avoidance behavior.
Rewiring Leadership: The Avoidance Behavior
So tell us more about how you define that and then give us some examples. I think we can probably all think of maybe blatant examples of what avoidance behavior was or is, but give us some of the nuance, some of the more subtle sort of silent killers of avoidance behavior.
So help us slice that apart. Okay. I’m going to give you an example of a client that I’ve worked with, who was struggling to step into the marketing shoes. And so, let’s say, let’s call him James. And James owns a design agency. Okay. And, James needed to get into doing more marketing for his business.
Now, he knew this, like, he knew in his brain that this is the work they had to do. But there were a ton of excuses why he couldn’t do this. Right. So one of the excuses that kept coming up was, well, I don’t know if my account managers are really ready to own all the client presentations yet. All right.
So that was an excuse that he was telling himself, I don’t know if they’re ready yet. Okay. So part of the work is number one identifying are they really ready or not. Because it could be a reality. Are they ready or not? Right. So yes, investigating that reality. And when we investigated that reality, sure, we saw some opportunities to improve. Their presentation skills for the client. Right. But was the solution which was what my client was thinking, really necessary? And the solution was, well, I just have to keep going to every single client meeting, and that’s going to solve this. And if I come into the client meetings and I am speaking into the problem areas, i.e. saving my account managers from the situation.
Douleur. Right. That’s the thinking that was happening. Right? So that’s self-sabotaging behavior because now you’re not carving out time for yourself. You’re actually creating more work for yourself. Yup. Right. And so identifying that self-sabotaging behavior is number one, right. And looking for if there’s a reality to what he thinks is the problem and acknowledging if there is a problem.
Yes. In this case, being not sure they could do and have some improvement in terms of their presentation right now, how we solve that is not what this agency owner thought we were going to do. We’re not going to keep him going to every single meeting. Instead, we need to look at creating and helping him create more of a self-sufficient team.
In this case, what could actually help these leaders be better presenters? Well, we don’t need James going into every meeting. What we need is probably James to just step up into a space where he is identifying a system, that is, a training system in his business to help these leaders become better at doing this one thing. Right.
Rewiring Leadership: Understanding a Challenge and Recognizing a Solution
So the solution that we identified was, okay, let’s start off with a weekly meeting that we have is just one hour here. And the purpose of this weekly meeting is to bring the team in to practice their presentations. Straight up. They come into the meeting, they practice the presentation, and then the self-sabotage, the mindset of, well, this is going to take up even more of my time starts to bleed into the thinking, which is I don’t have time to do any of the marketing or any other thing because this is going to suck up on my time.
And then we investigate again. Okay, well, why do you think that’s going to suck up all your time? Well, because now I have to plan out workshops for every single one of my meetings with everyone. And, you know, I got to write all these agendas and create training plans in my mind. In my mind, I’m like, no, you’re this is an over exaggeration of what has to be done, right.
Really, the only thing that we need to do at this point is understand that there’s a challenge, recognize that the solution is to bring people together, to give them opportunity to practice the workshops and so all we have to do is pull James in, have James set one agenda. The agenda is every day on Tuesday at 9 a.m., we’re going to come in and one person is going to self-select to practice a presentation.
When the call starts, we’ll do a simple hello for everyone to meet and greet. How is everyone doing? And then we dive right into that person doing a presentation. After that presentation happens, it’s very simple. The team gives feedback to that person and you’re done. There’s no designing a workshop here. There’s no designing training here at all. No, it’s a solid that helps build a system in your business that trains up the people to do the thing that you thought they couldn’t do right now, by doing that for one month.
Okay. One month. James was able to remove himself from his meetings. Is he trusted? And this isn’t just about their skills, remember, this is also about him trusting his team. So by doing these meetings, he was able to see the team do the thing by themselves, which built the trust in for him, which then quieted down the self-sabotage and allowed him to carve out that Monday for his marketing.
Rewiring Leadership: Example of Avoidance Behavior
Yeah, I love this so much, and I know there’s going to be more examples of the avoidance behavior, but I just want to insert this one thing because as you’re sharing the, story of James, I literally thought back to so Brian and Kim Walker, who owned Shop Shop Marketing Pros, so they were kind enough to join me on the podcast for back in episode 96 and in not necessarily conversation during that episode, but something that we had, offline, we were talking about, SOPs.
And I asked them, like, who on the team, you know, does the SOPs and because Kim, you know, runs ops for the entire agency, she goes, well, it’s not me. And I said, it’s not you. And she goes, no, she goes out, our individual team when they notice something different with Facebook ads or search or, you know, whatever they record videos and they update the, you know, the SOP document and all of that in that shirt with the entire team.
Then an update has been made and I’m like, and you don’t do that? No. Or each individual team is empowered using your word. Audrey is empowered to do those things. And I’m like, that’s amazing. And so when you’re just describing James and you were obviously talking about client presentations, I immediately thought of Brian and Kim and I’m like, oh my gosh, here are two powerful examples in, you know, the last handful of weeks of how we can really not only free up our time, but probably more importantly, is empowering our team and giving them ownership over that process.
Right? Yeah, I feel that’s what me and Brian, we’re really looking at when they were, building out their business and building out the SOPs. Is that giving the people in their team that autonomy, right? Other than coming in and saying, I’m going to do it all because I’m the only person who knows how to do it?
They basically said to their team, look here, here’s the thing you need to do, right? This is delegation, right? Here’s the thing you need to do. Here’s the SOP, how to do it. Go ahead and do it right. And I think that when it comes to things like building out SOPs, for example, and there’s a clear SOP to how to build out an SOP, I think that’s even easier to empower people with because quite honestly, building an SOP does not require as much strategic or critical thinking, right?
For me, empowering someone with and so at the very basic thing we can do. But when we look at someone like James, where the idea of doing a presentation well requires a lot of likes, being able to read the client, being able to understand the work, being able to critically think, strategically think those are the things that require kind of a different level of empowerment, right?
And in this case, you can see by designing a SOP and putting out SOP, yes, you can follow an SOP to do that, an empowered team follows the SOP. Whereas with something that requires sometimes a bit more critical thinking, a bit more strategic thinking, we have to add in the extra layer for our team. Right. And that extra layer isn’t even that extra, because what we’re really saying is give them a place to practice the thing that you don’t feel confident that they’re doing well and that builds your confidence.
And sometimes that’s what it comes down to with entrepreneurs and business owners and agency owners, is that you just have to build up your own confidence to let go. And once you can build up your own confidence to let go, you are going to get rid of and hopefully at least quiet down that avoidance behavior that you have.
Rewiring Leadership: Carving Out Time Can Be a Form of Self-Sabotage
Yeah, that’s so good. So, do you have another example, with respect to avoidance behavior that might really be helpful because this, this is such great momentum, Audrey. Yeah. So when we think about avoidance behavior, other things that typically happen is coming into a day that you have perhaps carved out for doing a priority item and looking at instead of doing that work, going back into your business and purposely looking for fires to put out.
Okay. Yeah. And, you know, and I’ll, you know, I’m sure I’ll share an example of, in an agency that works in the sustainability space. And so she has built herself an amazing team. So when we look at her team, they are truly self self-managing. They don’t need her in the actual day to day. And I think what happens in the South sabotage space is that when you actually build a team that doesn’t need you in the day to day anymore, it can also feel like they don’t need you, which can create a sense of oh, now what?
Now where do I belong? Right? And that can create a lot of mindset challenges where the business owner creates situations that require them to jump back in. Yep. And so with this business owner, that’s exactly what was being done. And on the Mondays where she was carving out space for this priority project that she had to do, rather than focusing her time on that priority project, she was busy checking in with her team to see how things were going, which didn’t need to be done because they had a system in place to do that, and when she would check in, she was asking questions that were productive, meaning she was looking for a challenge to solve. I just like going in there and really asking these questions of her team, questions that didn’t need to be asked, creating more work for our team because she was asking those questions. Right. Which then doesn’t allow for an efficient team. And then once she found the problem, she would spend the next hour solving it.
But the reality is that problem that she would choose did not require solving. It was just really extra bonus work that did not need to be done at that point in time, and in fact, may not need to even be done until the next quarter for that matter. Right? So, you know, and that’s a core example of how I see people really self-sabotage even when they’ve carved out the time.
Rewiring Leadership: Recognizing That Behavior First is Part of the Journey
Yeah, I don’t know if this was your intent or not, but holy bananas, I think you, like, really put me on the hot seat there in a nice way. Put me on the hot seat there, because literally, as you were talking about that, I wrote down, in my notes again, that when there are days of like 9 to 10 meetings, there was like a 14 hour day and I got to inbox zero and it’s like etc.
Challenges solvable by looking for things or whatever. After the end of the day, it’s easy for me to feel like, you know, really like there was a lot of accomplishment, right? Like things got done. But then as I’m listening in and learning from you, I’m like, oh, wait a minute there. I spent 75% of my day on business development.
I did not feel really good about all of those things and all of the activity. But did I move Predictive ROI forward? If my business development I spend an entire day looking for problems putting out fires? Probably. To your point, something that I probably didn’t need to jump into, but I did anyway because it felt gratifying to get my hands dirty and and yet, what I actually may have done in this might sound a little bit extreme, but I may have actually weakened, the business by doing that, even though it felt really good at the end of those 14 hours.
Right. Do we call it the comfort zone? So it’s natural for all of us to lean back into the things we’re comfortable with and what you just described there, Stephen, is leaning back into what is easy. Right? Because doing the work is easy. Finding the problem, solving it is easy. But again, this is about that journey from that doer to leader, right?
And so in any type of change, it’s going to require you to grow right and become a person who is going to be a good marketer or good salesperson for your business or focusing on business development. These are all things that can be very uncomfortable for an agency owner who has been in the doer seat for so long, right?
And you know, what I’m saying is, if that’s you, if you’re experiencing that for yourself, where you feel like, man, like I’m still in that doer seat and I really step up into that leadership role, that leadership seat. It’s natural. So again, Stephen, like, I think we can spend a lot of time beating ourselves up for not being that business development person just yet.
But at the same time, like I just mentioned, it is a journey, right? So and that’s what we’re on right now. We’re talking about that journey. And I think part of that journey is really recognizing that behavior first. Right. Which is why I really, really want to point it out here. I think with James and with all my clients, it really is recognizing what that behavior looks like first before we can even figure out what the solution is.
And then, you know, gently moving down that journey line, I think that’s so great. And I think you may have just given me the title of this episode, The Doer to Lead Her journey. And, what I’ve loved about this conversation is, not only did you give us the strategy, but like at a high level, but then we also went eye level and you peeled these apart and gave us very tangible, examples to really cement into place what you were teaching.
This is fantastic. So I know our time is quickly coming to an end, and we need to come in for a landing. And, and I know that we covered a lot, but before we go, before we close out and say goodbye, Audrey, anything you think we might have missed, any final recommendations you’d like to make? And then please share with our audience the best way to connect with you.
Rewiring Leadership: Final Advice and How to Connect with Audrey
Yeah, I think the one point I want to stick to, and I’ve mentioned this earlier, is that we hear a lot in our online world of the words just delegate. And I just want people to be aware that leadership isn’t just about just delegating. Right. I think that’s the point. I really want to take part. And, we are offering a free live workshop for agency owners and their teams to help them activate their leaders quickly on those four leadership styles.
So, you know, to see if your agency is a good fit, you can go to audreyjoykwan.com/leadershipstyles. It’s free. And we only ask that you apply through the link because we want to make sure it’s the right fit. Again it’s not a sales application. We’re just making sure it’s the right fit. You know if you think that you’re either not good at managing people or you’re leaning back and doing the things that you know you should be doing, or maybe you’ve promoted people and they’re good doers, but they’re not good managers.
And you’re frustrated that this would be a great workshop for you. So just go to audreyjoykwan.com/leadershipstyles and we’ll get connected to that workshop. That is awesome. And we will include the link, everyone, in today’s show notes as well. And, okay, everyone, no matter how many notes you took or how often you go back and re-listen to Audrey’s words of wisdom, I sure hope that you do.
The key is that you have to take all of this, all of the advice, recommendations, all of the golden nuggets that she so generously shared with you. Take it and apply it, because when you do, you will accelerate your results. And Audrey, we all have the same 86,400 seconds today, and I am grateful that you said yes to come on to the show, to be our mentor, to be our guide, to help us move our businesses onward to that next level.
Thank you so much, Audrey. Thank you. Stephen.
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