Ep 80 Transcript: Turning Uncertainty into Your Greatest Advantage with Meridith Elliot Powell

This transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors in spelling or inaccuracies in the spoken words.

Shauna Lynn Simon (00:02)

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Seanalyn Simon. And today, today's guest is actually someone who knows exactly what it feels like to carry the full mental load as a leader. And if you are listening, you're one of my, as I affectionately call you, my accidental CEOs where you started with more passion than plan. And now you find yourself in that leadership role. Our guest today has actually cracked the code on how to shift the dynamic in the workplace and turn your team members

into strategic thinkers and thinking more like an entrepreneur, which we all know we would love it if people just took a little bit more ownership of things. So today I've got Meredith Elliot Powell. She's a Hall of Fame speaker, award winning author and one of the world's top 15 business growth experts. But what makes her truly special is the journey that she's had from feeling trapped in reactive leadership.

to building teams that think like entrepreneurs. And after over 25 years in the C-suite and doing extensive research with organizations that thrive in uncertainty, Meredith has actually developed the Ask for Change system, which is a proven approach that helps leaders to stop doing all the thinking for their teams and start building cultures where everyone drives the solutions.

We're going to take things beyond standard delegation. You've all been told to let things go, to delegate, to give up some things. But it's not just about being able to feel comfortable giving up control, but ensuring that you have that confidence for your team to be able to take it over. So Merida is here today to share how you can transform from being your business's biggest bottleneck into its most powerful catalyst for growth. So Merida, thank you so much for joining me. Wow, I loved that introduction. Powerful.

Well, I mean, you made it pretty easy for me because I mean, I'm just speaking the truth here, but you've had a really impressive career. And what I really like about what we're talking about today, too, is, you know, a lot of people come on with theories and some basic best practices. And we've all heard it all, to be honest. And it's a lot of it is easier said than done as well. But you're coming on here with a real proven system. What got you so interested in this idea of?

of embracing change. Like that's your big thing of like, let's change things up. Like, let's be disruptors. I'm a big disruptor. I love disrupting things, but I don't know a lot of people who are like, yeah, we're going to lean into this. Yeah. So, Shauna Lynn, it's really interesting. You know, like most entrepreneurs, like most CEOs in my business, I was listening to customers. That's how I decide how I'm going to grow. And way back in 2016, when the economy was riding high and change was not that rampant,

Everybody I was talking to was saying the same thing. I'm having my best year on record, but this uncertainty. And I just started to think, why does uncertainty and change have to be a bad thing? mean, doesn't the world blow up every 20 to 30 years, right? Like you can look back through history and certainly we don't just all lay down and close our businesses when it does. So it just put me on a mission. I just thought, what would happen if you were a CEO who embraced uncertainty? You just decided.

It was a positive. And once I discovered that, I just thought, now I need to help people figure out how to do it. Because like you said, so much easier said than done. I wanted to write a methodology. And the way that I did it was just studying leaders and businesses who have done just that, growing through world wars, economic depression, far bigger challenges than we've ever seen. And I think that's the thing too. I think we forget sometimes that.

You know, we say that, well, we've got so many different things today. Yeah. And that's what they said a hundred years ago and 50 years ago. And, know, like this is not a new thing necessarily, but I can also almost get inside the head of every listener right now saying, but it's comfy cozy when things are not changing. That's right. It's nice to feel comfortable, isn't it? Yeah. But unfortunately that's not business. And unfortunately that isn't how we grow. And even

If it's nice, it doesn't matter. I Gartner released a report, I think it was last year, that said the pace of change has increased 183 % in the last four years. We're moving 183 % faster. And the thing is that isn't going to slow down. So this is a train you need to get on. Right. And I think, you know, if anything in the last five years especially has shown us is the rate of change and that if you're not adaptable, if you're not agile,

If you're not looking to innovate and do something that no one else is doing, you're going to get left behind. You're going to get stuck. There's a lot of things that are happening in the world right now that are causing companies to completely rethink their manufacturing processes and their ⁓ different regulations that are coming into effect. And this is something that is always going to be there. think no matter what kind of quote safe industry you think you're in, like, we're protected from change. We've been the same for hundreds of years. Yep.

There's still a lot of things to certainly embrace there. So now you talk about having employees who actually think like entrepreneurs and having a team that drives change instead of waiting for it. I think that's I can speak as an employer. I've had a lot of employees over the years and there are some times where you just feel like you're at the front of this bus just doing this like rah rah cheer of like, come with me. This is going to be great. And you're dragging them all with you like and eventually they all get on board. But

change feels so slow from the top when you're like, I'm ready to drive forward in this, but I can't quite bring my team into this. So I'm sure a lot of people listening to this are like, yeah, OK, I would love it if my team could drive and embrace the uncertainty. But I can't get them to do simple tasks. you give them give your team a task. They complete it exactly as you've asked them to. But then they miss the obvious next step or they don't flag a potential issue. They're like, well, you didn't ask me to do that. So how do we start?

I mean, how do we even start having this conversation? Let's start with the leaders right now. Like what's the conversation we're having with them to help them to start seeing this from a different perspective? Well, number one, it should feel like you're dragging people to change because the, ⁓ well, because the change initiatives, they, I think they used to be supported by like 79 % of the organization. 36 % of employees, ⁓ support change initiatives now because they're fried, they're burned out, they're overwhelmed.

So where do you start the conversation? You know, I'm going to say that there's really three things you need to have in place. Number one is you need to realize you're the CEO and what you see and what you experience is very different from what the team is experiencing. So the first question in their mind is why should I change? If you are not casting a vision, if you are not giving them something to hold onto and something to understand, then they are not going to come with you.

You said it, change is uncomfortable. So if you're not telling me it's gonna land me in a better place, why should I go through the discomfort of change, right? I mean, one of the stories I like to use a lot of times when I speak from the stage is Martin Luther King Jr.'s, Have a Dream speech. I have no idea what it was like to fight for civil rights, but I can guess it was a step forward, 42 steps back, and people wanted to give up because they didn't know if even having civil rights was possible.

But when he cast that speech, he cast a vision. And then people could believe in that, they could hang on to that, they will push through. So that's where you begin. And I think that's something that's, it's a hard thing sometimes for even our CEOs too, because there's so much decision fatigue from things like they're making all the decisions. And like, and now you want me to kind of drag everybody else up with me.

on this kind of, it feels like that upward battle. And again, like we all want things to be easier and comfy, cozy and such. But I also know from my own experience, when you get those right team members doing the things that where they're feeling empowered and they feel like they have some autonomy to make decisions and they start coming to you with ideas, that is glorious. Like there is, it is very lonely at the top. It is, you know,

Everyone will see that. And it's the reason why we've built communities. Like I've got my group coaching program with my real women, real business ladies who, you know, they all support each other and they're facing similar challenges. And the reality is like, no one's going to be in the business the way that you are. No one's going to be as passionate about the business the way that you are. But if you can get them excited about things and wanting to move things forward, that is so powerful. And I actually was reading a statistic just last week that

30, we make 35,000 decisions a day. The average person. And think about it, it's micro, some of it is micro decisions. Should I turn left or should I turn right? Should I, what should I wear today? What should I eat? Is now the right time to take a bio break? Like what, you know, all these different decisions, 35,000 decisions will now add onto that entrepreneurship and just the number of decisions that we're making. So if we can empower our team members to take on more.

But again, I think a lot of people kind of get stuck in this, well, my team just wants to do the tasks. Like what's happening when the team's operating in that task mode, what's happened to put them into that mode in the first place? You're happening. That's what has put them in the mode. years ago, my husband's a dentist and he was ready to just quit. He was exhausted for every reason that you're saying, every reason that you're saying.

And he decided to hire a woman to be his business coach. And she came in and she said, your problem isn't dentistry. Your problem is how you lead. You're a hero leader. You solve all the problems. You ⁓ determine what the team's going to do. You take all the responsibility. She said, I still want you to control what happens in your organization. You get to decide what they do. They decide how they do it. And when you ask people how, you simultaneously give them voice.

and responsibility. And when people have voice and responsibility, they will commit at a level that is almost equal to the level that you do it. When my husband switched to that style of leadership, ⁓ you walked in his practice and the team would say, Dr. Powell works for us, and he loved it, right? If there was a hole in the schedule, they filled it.

Patient had a problem, they solved it. ⁓ But you have to see, reason people hate change is because they're waiting for it to be done to them. You need to engage them in the process. You need to say, is how our world is changing. How do you think we need to go about? What should we be doing? Doesn't mean you have to do everything the team says. Sometimes they'll have really dumb ideas, but engaging them in the process makes them a part of it and it will bring your stress level way down.

Everything that's keeping you up at night, take it into the office, take it into your business through the form of a question and engage the team. ⁓ I think one of the most powerful things that I did with my team many years ago was, you know, I'd always have this vision that I would create each year and here's the goals for the year and everything else, but I wasn't sharing any of it with the team of like, what is it that we're building towards? Not just this month, not a sales goal, but what is it that we're building here?

And we started having annual vision meetings where we really brought them into it. And we started brainstorming ideas and opportunities. And I am only one person. the ideas that came out of it, like to your point, not all of them were great. That's kind of the point of brainstorming though. Like when I brainstormed by myself, I also have some pretty terrible ideas that come out of this. It's not isolated just to my team members. Not everything that comes out of my head and my mouth is pure gold, despite what some people might think sometimes.

I feel like there's so many opportunities that can be missed when we're not bringing our team into it. But I love the term that you used for your husband of being a hero. Was it a hero leader? that what you said? hero leader. She wanted him to become a transformational. So it was hero to transformational leader. I love that term hero leader because I'm sure there's some light bulbs that are going off right now with people saying like, ⁓ I thought my responsibility was to fix all the problems.

And I was actually just talking with a friend of mine the other day, her and her husband own a restaurant and we were talking about the hospitality industry and I worked in hospitality for a number of years. Oh yeah. If you haven't like, know, you learn customer service from hospitality, but I would often take on supervisor management type shifts. And the team loved it when I was in management because anytime I was managing,

I was behind the bar making drinks. was busing tables. I literally, we started the shift with, I am at your service. You tell me where you need me. I am here to resolve things as needed, but I want you to lean on me where you need me. But that doesn't mean that I'm the one who's making all the decisions or anything. I'm literally the one who's making the drinks behind the bar so that you can be the hero to your guests and you can solve their problems because you don't need me to do that for you. And I found that the nights that I was managing, frankly,

ran a lot smoother than the nights that I wasn't managing. Because people had that autonomy to just like, yeah, do things. What do you think? You think they need a free dessert? Let's give them a free dessert. You know, like it's actually costing a lot less to the company to go and do that than for you to bring me into the mix here. And now it's escalated and everyone's uncomfortable and it's taking more time and focus away from things. And the whole experience just changed. And now we might have potentially just lost that guest altogether when you could have probably just solved it on your own.

So I like the idea of getting out of that mindset of hero leadership, but I need to coddle my team. need to take care of all the things for them. I need to make everything okay. And it's funny because even for myself, as much as I've always tried to be the leader who gives them full autonomy, I will tell you when COVID happened, I immediately was like, mama bear. Like, I got it, I got it everyone. Don't worry, I got this. We're okay. And in looking back on that, I probably could have done a better job.

of making them a part of some of the things that we were doing. I think eventually I shifted pretty quickly, but I mean, it was also, it was an uncertain time. Exactly, exactly. And sometimes there's a need to run in and be a hero in times of crisis. But I'm just a passionate believer that people want to help you build your business. And far too often you're in the way. They would work harder. They would commit it. If you hired, right, you if you hired according to values,

If you're clear on your values, if you know your values and you hire according to ⁓ values, then you've got the right team in place. And if you have the right team in place, they want to help you build it. Just get out of the way. Yeah. And think these are also two different conversations because like you said, there's the building the team in the first place. And but also I think sometimes we think we have the wrong players in place because we're not using them the way that we should be. So like how do we bridge the gap between

I would like to let go and I don't trust my team to actually think strategically. Like how do we, because you can't just like one day say, okay, team, you're on your own. You got this. Like it's not just a, you know, fluff it off and walk away. So how do we start bridging that gap with the existing team that we have in place? Let's assume that we think we have the right players in place, but they are accustomed to us taking over everything. Yeah. 67 % of disciplinary issues are because people didn't understand what was expected of them.

Far too often we give people a job description and the problem with a job description is the last line is, and anything else we ask you to do. And so they're coming to work every day with far too much to do and they're making decision about what's important without any direction from us. And the very fact that they, the idea that they would choose the same priorities that we would, slim to none. So as a leader, you've got to delegate, but the way that you do it is you've got this vision.

And then you say to people with that vision, this is your role in the vision. This is how your job supports that vision. And then every single week, I huddle up with my team and we set the top five priorities for each person for that week. Like if you accomplish nothing else, I need you to accomplish these five things. It's how we as CEOs run our day. We look at our list of things to do and go, absolutely not. No way will I even crack the code on this. And we choose what's most important.

So we have to direct the team the same way. We've got to get them focused. And then you check in with them at the end of the week. And if they've accomplished them, great. If they haven't, you have to determine whether it's a skill issue, they didn't have the skill to do it, or it's a discipline issue. Discipline issue, they didn't do it, fire them. Skill issue, you either need to train them or they're in the wrong seat. But it's pretty simple with that. Get ridiculously clear on where you point them in the right direction.

give them the skills to do it and then hold them accountable. If they do, fantastic. If they don't, get them off the team and get somebody better. And you make it sound so simple. And of course we know there's some nuances to this. And so what I want to circle back to is where you're saying, you know, making sure that they know exactly what it is that they need to do. So we're going to take a quick break right now for a short message and then we'll come back and dig into that.

All right, welcome back to the Real Women Real Business podcast where we are talking with Meredith Elliot Powell and we're talking about how to get your team to really help drive change, especially in times of uncertainty and really embrace all of that. And so basically what you were saying is, know, we've to make sure they've got the skills that they need. They know what they need to do and that they can actually just go ahead and execute it. And I think where I think some of this gap comes in sometimes is ensuring that they actually know what needs to be done.

And we say like, make sure they know what, don't get too involved in the how. And then it all sounds just very vague to them. They're like, wait a minute, what was I actually supposed to do here? So I've always said leading with the objective and the outcome. these are the results that we want. And if there's some SOPs in place, of course, give them some reins, obviously. Give them a little bit of a guardrail if possible. But how do we ensure

that they actually know what's expected of them? Like, do you have a system in place for this? Like, what do you normally suggest? You know, well, first of all, mean, anybody who comes on board to work with me, we have a criteria for advancement. And it's basically a set of seven ⁓ traits that we're looking for in an individual. We want you to be a team player. We want you to take ownership of every situation. Never pass, never pass the buck. We want you to be 100 percent.

customer focus, delight the customer. And we go through those and we say, basically, here is how you advance in the organization. Here's the basic expectations. Then again, I meet with my team, huddle up. I don't have a big team, there's only six of us. We huddle up every Monday morning and I'll say, this week, in order to achieve the vision, here's where I'm focused. Everybody give me what they're focused on. I'm gonna adjust it, make sure it aligns.

I have two team members that are fairly new. I'll check in with them midweek. The other ones will do a huddle up at the end of the week just to see what progress we made, what progress we didn't make, and what if anything needs to be corrected. So you really, I really cannot emphasize enough. If somebody is underperforming, you need to ask yourself, have I been clear of what I need them to focus on? And do I have a skill issue or a discipline issue? And you need to address it.

ASAP. The biggest mistake I see CEOs make is they ride their horses. They have a couple of employees who are so good that they give everything to them and they allow the slack ⁓ to kind of, you know, continue to continue to, you know, get by barely doing things. Do not do that. You need to really, your job is a clear vision, a clear set of priorities and then, and then serious accountability. And I think, you know, there's

Tons of books that have been written on human resources and how to manage your team members and such. And I think the common thread in a lot of these teachings is really the same thing of like, you need A-Team players. Like you need to build your A-Team and your A-Team players are going to be different than another team's A-Team players. But the reality is that if you're bringing someone in to just do a bunch of tasks on the list,

without any sort of critical thinking, without any sort of strategy to it, without the, to your point, like the skill set to actually be able to accomplish it. Like sure, they don't have to be able to do all the things in your organization. There's going to be opportunities to train them, but they need to have the skills to be able to learn for one thing without passing the buck. I had a team member at one point and she was great at asking questions and I really appreciated that. She made sure that she was really clear on things.

But she was also really quick to say, I don't think I should be the one doing this and pass it off to someone else. And initially, was like, OK, she's asking all the right questions. This seems like actually not a bad thing that she's identifying. Maybe this belongs in a different role. But after I started seeing a bit of a pattern, I was like, wait a minute, why do we keep passing this to someone else? Is it a matter of you're not enjoying the work? Is it a matter of like you just don't think you have the skill set? And it came down to she had the skills but wasn't willing to advance those skills.

didn't like the learning part of something new. And when she got stuck, it was easier to pass it off. And so that ended up being, it was actually a fixable problem. It was just a matter of ensuring that she had the skills that she needed for these tasks and making sure that she knew that you're owning this. You're not passing this off to anyone. So we're gonna work together to make sure that you get the skills that you actually need to advance you. So, but it can be so challenging sometimes. So now you're asked for change system kind of flips the script. So instead of you telling them,

what to change they're coming to you with changes. How do we get them to even like, yeah, because it's one thing for, okay, you own the task and you're going to be responsible for its completion from start to finish. Great. But now they're actually coming to you and saying, hey, I've identified this thing that's changing and we need to come up with a solution for and here's the solution. How does this work in practice? Yeah. So I use two tools that I encourage all of my clients to use.

You know, have monthly team meetings and on a quarterly basis, you need to take a few minutes out of those meetings, no more than 20 and run through a couple of tools. And the first tool is called a skeptic, S-C-E-P-T-I-C and it's an acronym for just a few words, society, competition, economics, politics, technology, industry, customers. All that is designed to do is to say to the team, hey.

There's a lot of change happening in the marketplace and the majority of the change that is happening is outside of our business. So let's talk about how society changing, how's politics changing, what's happening with our customers, how's industry changing and just allow them to brainstorm and then ask the question, what if any of those things do we need to be paying attention to now? And what that does is it gets the team thinking that change is coming and they need to be

ready for change and you embrace them as part of the change and they're asking they're saying gosh you know if the political winds change it would impact our business this way we need to be doing this and you know ai is really changing things maybe we should start to get on board with ai so it's this tool to make them think and get ready ⁓ ready for change you know if i said to you let's go run a marathon

We wouldn't wait until the Boston Marathon and go run it. You and I would start getting in shape for it. Well, my gosh, change is a marathon. You better be getting the team in shape. The flip tool of that is to get them to remain productive rather than busy. And it's a tool we use called a Seeds, a Weeds, and a Needs, where ⁓ skeptic is about looking outward. Seeds, Weeds, and Needs is about looking inward. And you just say to the team, what are we doing that's working? What do we need to do more of? That's our Seeds.

weeds, what isn't working, what do we need to stop doing, what isn't effective? And last is what do we need to be doing that we're not doing that could really take this business to the next level? And by balancing those two tools, you've basically set an expectation for the team not to rest on their laurels, that they need to come up with ideas and they feel some level of control to function more efficiently, to be excited about the changes coming in the marketplace and to literally ask

for change when they see something isn't working, you've programmed them to go, ⁓ I'm empowered to question this. That is such a simple way of doing it, but you're basically like rewiring their brains. Essentially, you're you're reprogramming them to, like you said, look at things a little bit differently and have more skepticism because you're literally using the acronym of skeptic as well.

Which I think is so key. I can remember, you know, at a time where we're kind of at our highest employment rate, where we had a lot of a lot of different team members did a lot of different things. And sometimes they would get fixated on things that at the top, I wasn't considering it a big deal. And it usually wasn't. But they were like, but we really need to be doing this. It was very reactive. So I think what's what I've often found challenging with

in my own experience and so maybe you can help me with this. So in my own experience, they tend to think very short term. So what you're talking about in terms of like, you know, there's a lot of change happening that the political wind shift this way and how does that affect things? What I would get a lot of from my team is, well, I don't have a crystal ball. I don't know what's going to happen. And so what you're saying, though, is the whole point is that you don't know what's going to happen. I think my team wanted, but just tell me what's going to happen. They want certainty. They want certainty like.

Give me the magic eight ball. Tell me what's coming down the line so I can prepare for it. And they wanted to be more reactive. Like, we'll deal with that as it comes. And this is the thing that's immediately in front of us and not wanting to pay attention to all the other things that are going on there. So how do you get them to be able to look far enough to be able to say, you don't have certainty beyond, say, the next couple of months?

But if you can look up further and you see things that can potentially be coming down the line, like how do we weigh out what's going to be a waste of our time versus what would be just good, good general practice to have in place as a just in case. Yeah, Sean, only you're making such a such a great point because this is really what I want leaders to understand. I don't care what they answer on any of those. I don't. I could care less. And the reason is because all I'm trying to get them to nobody knows what's going to happen. Nobody has any idea.

But by talking about it, by taking an action, let's assume, I'll give you a great example. I had a company I was working with just ⁓ yesterday and depending on the political wins, they could be impacted one way or the other. And so we were talking about, we were like, well, what if the Republicans stay in office? It's gonna impact us this way. What if the Democrats win it'll do. So we were talking about what could we do to get ready for either one? Now, what we're building is a nimble, agile team.

So whomever wins, we can turn on a dime like that. And that's what you're trying to do. Like your job as a leader is to get your team in shape for change. And right now your team, because everybody's team is out of shape, sitting on the bench, hasn't exercised in two years, and you've dragged them through change initiatives and they're fricking exhausted. ⁓ And you have to take people and turn them into elite athletes.

So it is the repetition of this. It is so simple, but it isn't easy because we are not consistent as CEOs. But I want you to think about like, you know, most of you have children and your goal with children is I don't want them living in my basement the rest of my life. So even though I'm exhausted, I'm going to make sure they do their homework. Even though I'm exhausted, I'm still going to ground them when they're bad. So I have to drive them all over town. You do that because you want them to be a productive adult. We have to do the same thing with our employees. And so

Boy, for the last eight years, every single quarter, my team has done those tools and we have talked about them so that we can turn on a dime. And when COVID happened, never saw that, never came up in any of our tool discussions, but they were ready to move because they expect me to change course. They expect me to change direction. One of the things that you mentioned there was the consistency. And I think it's so true. It's so easy for us as leaders to...

I don't know if it's a matter of getting comfortable or, I'm not really seeing much of a difference. I'm going to stop doing this thing or, or my team's good now. I've, I've got them to a good place. I don't need to keep reinforcing this. And we do lack that consistency sometimes. And whether it's a matter of like life got busy and we're just, Oh, I'm just going to skip a couple of monthly meetings or whatever it looks like. It's so easy for us to start slacking off on things. But like you said, that's it. It's when you're in shape.

all it takes is starting to miss a workout or two and then eating a little bit more. And then you went on holidays and you know, how many people are like, September is a big time for people to rejoin a gym, January and September, because you get out of your routine in December during the holidays and in the summertime during those holidays. And so we let ourselves slack off a little bit like, wait, now we need to get back into things. But if we just maintain it, even to some level, even if it can't be

perfect all the time, but maintain it to some level that helps to build that agility, like you said, and being able to make those shifts a lot easier. because I think, you know, if there's one thing that COVID taught us is that you can't always predict what's actually no one saw. mean, I guess a few people technically saw it, but they didn't know the timing of it. No one could say on this day in March of 2020, this is what's happening. The world is going to shut down. Yeah.

and you're going to have to figure things out. I was operating a home staging business. Our job is to go into people's houses and all of a sudden all these regulations are saying, ⁓ nope, you can't do it. But we had systems and processes in place that we immediately shifted to being able to offer remote consultation. So we would do a zoom call like this. We would get photos from the clients. Like we had all the tools in place to be able to very quickly and easily shift.

And I started teaching other home stages how to do exactly that. And so was it perfect? No, there was still a lot every single day. I can remember every day just feeling so exhausted as a leader of like, what is tomorrow going to bring? Because you just had no idea. would no matter how you slice it, no matter how agile or prepared you were, everyone was exhausted through that. Everybody was exhausted. Absolutely, absolutely. But there were people that opted out and people that that pushed through. And and you know, it's just is

Again, I can't stress enough as a leader, you've got to get your team in shape because this pace of change is going to do nothing but speed up. Right. Yeah. And I think you're so right about that. So what are the signs when you start doing all these meetings? What are some things that they should be looking for to see that things are actually taking hold and actually working, where their team's actually starting to drive the change instead of waiting for it? Like, how do they know?

Cause I can see people saying like, I did six months of the meetings and I didn't notice any change in my team. Like what are some of the things they should be looking for? Because I think some of them are probably not as obvious as their team coming to them with this winning solution. my gosh, I've solved all of our world's problems. They're not, your first step is just that they start to participate. They start to get it. They start to, cause the first couple of meetings, they should sit there like bumps on the logs. Like what are you even talking about? So they're starting to get it. They're starting to come up with some ideas. They're starting to participate. They're starting to come to meetings, ⁓ you know, prepared.

You know, the other thing is that ⁓ as a leader, any small change, they come up with it. They just say we should use blue napkins instead of red. And you think it's silly and irrelevant. If you can do it, do it. Like feed their initiative, even as small as it is. And what you'll start to see is they will come up with some gold nuggets. They will start to look at things and go, wow, I'm not sure that's exactly the way that we ought to do it or could this be done better?

and it'll take time, but they'll start to come on board. The other thing you'll see is a huge division in your team. The people who are not gonna come with you on this journey will stick out like a sore thumb and the people that will, will commit, they'll be so excited they're being asked for their ideas and opinions and you'll really be able to see the division on your team as to who's a keeper and who you need to let go and you'll be far better positioned to attract ⁓ more significant and value.

⁓ That sounds pretty amazing, like that sort of self-selection almost of like they're going to identify themselves as though like they've painted a scarlet letter on themselves and said like, here I am. I'm not the one who's going to be contributing and helping to drive this bus. So, yeah. that's, I really liked that. When you're saying how they're going to sit there like bumps on a log for the first couple of meetings, I think that's the part that a lot of the leaders are probably.

cringing about like it's uncomfortable when you're like, got this amazing thing that we're going to start doing. They're like, gosh, you went to another conference or listen to another podcast episode. And now she has this brilliant idea of things to do. But the reality is though, like, yeah, if you can get them to start coming along and, you've got to lead it to like, you've got to go in there when you're giving the, the skeptic acronym, you've got to have some things to contribute as well. Yeah.

Yeah, and you got to make it a safe environment. Really make it a safe environment. If they, you know, if they said that we should all stand on our head in the middle of the road, go, my God, what a great idea. Anybody have another one? Like you've got to make it safe that whatever they say and they'll come with you and you'll get to a point where you're like, my God, this information is so good. So should they be preempting these conversations with their team of saying like, listen, you might come up with an idea that's a great idea, but we're not actually going to implement or we're not able to like, how do they prepare their team?

for the potential disappointment that some things aren't going to make it through. Yeah, number one is you make one of your ideas not come through because the moment that you as the leader make one of your ideas not come through and you said it, but in the meeting go, I want to hear absolutely everything. We get to the end, everything on the table. We got to have it all on the table. We're going to pick out the couple of things that we can do, which means we can't do them all. We can't even do them all right now, but we're to get it down to what would be the most impactful in the moment. So

Again, make sure that some of your ideas don't hit the map and they'll be more comfortable with that. I like that. OK, so someone's listening to this and they're thinking, OK, I definitely need this, but I don't even know where to start. Like they don't even have team meetings right now. Like it's the first step. Just have a team meeting. it like where? What are some of the starting blocks for people who are listening to this and saying like I got none of this in place? What step one step step? No step one is to get the team together if you've never gotten them together or if you do.

and explain the why. Just say, look, I don't have to tell you, the pace of change is just growing rapidly. And we don't want to be blockbuster and we don't want to be COVID. We want to lead the industry. Here's my vision for where I see us, you know, a year or so from now. And I want to get you all involved in the process. I think I know what we want to do, but I want to talk with you about how you think we ought to do it. So I'm going to get you involved in talking about.

how we change, how we grow, how we transform, and this is how it's gonna work. And that's how you start. I think that's amazing. And I will also even add a small caveat to that of you need to know what you're building first too. You need to be clear on what your own vision is. And I know that I speak to a lot of my entrepreneurs, because again, I speak to a lot of passion driven entrepreneurs who are like, well, I do this really cool thing. I'm super creative, whether it's...

know, photography or you're a fine artist or a home stage or interior designer, whatever it is, you're like, I do this thing and I do it really well. So I started doing it as a business, but you didn't really think beyond just doing the service. I'm going to do the service and I'm going to do more of the service. I'm going to make more money and then I'll hire some people to also do the service. Well, that's not enough to say that you're building a company and building a brand and what that ultimate vision is.

So you need to take some time yourself as well to identify what is it that you are building? And if it is just about doing the service, how are you doing it different than anyone else? How are you doing it better than anyone else? Like, what is it that makes this company and this dream as exciting for everyone else around you and everyone else on the team as you are? And that's something that I think a lot of us get a little bit stuck on as well. So I think in order to get the team on board with your vision, we need to make sure that we're clear ourselves as to what that is.

And then like you say, getting them together and sharing it. I just had one of my clients do it recently with her team. And she said it was just an amazing experience. And I think, you know, until you've done it, it's hard to really explain just how incredible it is. But the team is going to be so excited. And it's almost like this weight gets lifted. This they've had like this barrier where they feel like they're plowing snow.

And then all of a sudden you lift the screen and you're like, look, it's all smooth sailing from here. And it's not that it's smooth sailing. It's just that you've identified here's a clear path. Here's the path that we're taking. So they're trying to plow snow. You're like, oh, no, but I've already plowed it all over here. I already know where we're going. I got the directions. And we're just going to take this path here. And then they can help you all along the way with all the different steps to it. So this has been a great conversation. I love that we've kind of taken it beyond just

Just delegate, because I think that's the challenge where people get so stuck of like, I know I need to delegate because everyone says I need to delegate. But this is just this this word that almost becomes like a curse word for us. like, that's right. OK, now what? So thank you so much for sharing not just your strategies, but like the actual actionable steps that we can start taking. And like you said, they're they're simple. They're not easy, but they're incredibly simple. And I love how you've broken that down for us.

If someone listening to this episode takes one thing away from today's episode that they can, whether it's something they can put in place or just something they can keep in the back of their head as they're moving forward, what would you like that one takeaway to be? Yeah, that's easy for me. It would be to embrace uncertainty and to believe that in the uncertainty, in the disruption is your greatest opportunity for business growth. And I think that's so powerful. So thank you so much for sharing that because I think that that is something that

history tells us that's that to be true and there is evidence to back all of this as uncomfortable as it feels at first the more comfortable you can get with it the better. So thank you so much for for coming and sharing that with us we appreciate it. Thank you. And listen we're gonna have all sorts of information about how you can get in touch with Meredith as well if you want to follow her online it'll all be in our show notes but

What you have built here, the system that you've created, Meredith, not only is it a powerful system, but thank you so much for sharing it with the world because you spend all this time doing all this research. You can just keep it for yourself, but you're sharing it with us. And I love the Ask for Change system. I think that this is going to be a game changer for so many people. So thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you. It's been a great conversation. All right. So if you're listening to this episode and you're thinking, this is amazing because it is.

I hope that you will continue to tune in each week. We drop new episodes every Tuesday at 7 a.m. So continue to allow us to be a part of the journey with you. Don't forget to check out the show notes so can learn more about Meredith. Of course, be sure to leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform and subscribe to us so you always get notifications when new releases come out. And if this episode has really stuck with you.

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