Scale Effectively, Build Internal Leaders with Hana Ngo

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, the only daily show interviewing the world's top entrepreneurs seven days a week. Today, we'll be breaking down how to scale effectively and build internal leaders. To drop these value bonds, I brought to Hanna and to EO Fire Studios. Hanna is an experienced executive and high-performance team coach supporting 300 global companies and 100 teams to elevate leadership, boost performance, reduce turnover, and cultivate thriving, resilient, agile teams and leaders. Today, we'll be talking about building the right internal team, how to stop the good people on your team from leaving during the growth phase and oh so much more.

0:41And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Hannah and our sponsors. Fire Nation, are you ready to launch your own sports betting platform? Odds Jam's real-time API is trusted by companies big and small from lean startups to major players like Stats Perform and sportsbet.io. Visit oddsjam.com slash odds-api to learn more and talk with their team today. Mention promo Fire Nation to receive an exclusive discount. Shopify is the commerce platform behind 10 % of all e-commerce in the US from household names like Mattel and Gymshark to brands just getting started. If you want to see less cars being abandoned, it's time for you to head over to Shopify.

1:23Sign up for your$1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash on fire. Hannah, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. What's up, Fire Nations? Well, one of the things I believe and most people disagree with is rest is a part of the process because a lot of people often think that rest should be earned. Fire Nation, we're going to be talking a little bit more about the balanced life of an entrepreneur as we talk about scaling effectively and building internal leaders. Now, Hana, many founders actually hit a point where they feel like they're the only ones who are making decisions and that can be exhausting.

2:15So why does that happen and how do you fix it? Well, I've been a founder and I've been coaching founder and executive and that happened very often. And that happened not because they are aware of, at least not because they are conscious of doing that. It's just because they didn't think of training and leading the internal people to become the internal leaders. Because at the beginning, you know, the founder, they were the coaches, the strategies, the decision makers. And when they grow, it doesn't work anymore that way. So, well, how to fix it? we need to fix the thinking from doing and deciding to developing and delegating.

3:02That very simple, but it's not easy to do. So can you give maybe a real world example of somebody that you know, maybe it was yourself, maybe somebody that you worked with who was in that situation and what they did to fix it? I can definitely give an example of myself. Well, when I started first leading an international team and I was in charge of international program for investment projects spreading over the Netherlands era and Asia. So in that case, you know, when it first started, you probably thought you could do it all, right? Me too. So I was at that point thought like I can do it all by myself.

3:46There's no need for other people to do that or delegation, right? Well, I thought the wrongs. So that happens and it turned out that I couldn't do it all. So I learned to delegating and also trusting all the people that can do it and also helping them to become the leader that they can actually leading the projects together with me. That's my own example. And I also coached one of the founders, I think, last year around these times. And he started his company, Superior Dex. And at the time, he started with his co-founders. So two people in charge, that's easy. So when his team expanded to 10 people, it's still easy.

4:36Until it gets funded and expanded to 30 people, then it's not easy anymore to do the thing that he always do so making all the decisions and doing everything on his self right so at that point that was the turning points so I coached him to delegate more and also choosing the person in his team who has potential to lead and then also do the thinking transfer with them not so no not just no transfer but thinking transfers. So when you delegate, you need to delegate the outcome, not the output, not the matrix, but the outcome you want to achieve. And that not happens in one day. You need to take that person with you for a journey and do the thinking transfer for a while before they can really take it over from you.

5:32And that also in combination with giving the real ownership with consequences. And one of the last steps that a lot of founders and executives found very difficult to do, which is rescuing, right? So you give someone responsibilities, and if they fail, they swing right in, rescue the problems. But if they did that, the person never learned. So don't do rescue. Instead, review and help them and coach them to do the job. So when you found that person, you coach that person, you help them to become the leader you want and the leader they want to be. Then you can expand their honourships and the scope of what they do.

6:20Now, this ties into what you were just sharing right there. And that's just the reality that many founders, they're hanging on to the decision making process for not just too long, but far too long before building internal leaders. So what is your advice to those people that are doing that? Well, my advice would be when you don't delegate the decision making, when you don't do it all by yourself, then you are stole the companies. People burn out. And one of the examples I had is when the founder I coached didn't delegate customer success leadership soon enough, he lost amazing clients and still stuck in the onboarding course after 18 months.

7:02So when you don't create internal leaders, you and the founders become the single point of failures and high-performing leave because they hit the selling. Well, high-performer, they want to know where they can grow to. And the team get bossy because the team all depended on you and those decisions. Now, you mentioned the word burnout. I want to do a little deeper dive there because when businesses grow fast, burnout shows up. I mean, it just happens time and time again. So what role does a strong leadership team play in preventing that burnout? Well, strongly to see ups of frictions. I coach a fintech founders and her biggest and more than more high, more head cows, but more clarity and say load.

7:53With a great leadership team, they say load and they offer the clarity that people seek. Right. So for example, they set weekly team priorities. They communicate it clearly and help perform the reviews without the leaders. So they do it on themselves without the leader have to be there. What would you say your number one piece of advice if you're talking to a leader who is just on the verge of burnouts? Like maybe they come to you, they're just incredibly overwhelmed. They're stressed out. you can feel like maybe they're on the brink of just being completely overwhelmed. What do you say to them?

8:34I would say that take a look at their own calendars and audit their responsibilities. So I once sit with one of the founder turn managers. And what I did with him is let him look at his calendars and mark out the red, yellow, and green. So red, the thing that only you can decide and only you can do. And the yellow part is a part that you can delegate, but you didn't. And the green is already on by someone else that you already delegate. So the action is to delegate the yellow part. Start with once every week and then expand it. Fire Nation, Hana's just dropping value bomb after value bomb. when it comes to this topic that we've just got started on.

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12:03Like you're just losing your best players, your best team members, your best employees during the growth phase, which, you know, sadly is kind of when you need them the most. So why is this the case and how do we stop it? That is happened so often. And I, well, you know, in every coaching conversation, I hear it back like the turnover and the people leaving the companies and most often the high-performing ones. Well, that's because people didn't get the clear role. Well, in the Startup to Scale Up, it's chaos. The role changes and a lot of ambiguities, a lot of unclear decisions, unclear responsibilities.

12:44And that's chess people out. And on top of all, in Startup to Scale Up, one of the things that are unclear for people is how to grow. What is the growth path? Who can they become? which also can grow to. And one that are unclear and they don't get the personal developments, then they leave the companies. They want clarity, challenge, and care. And all of those things, you can be together with the team to become the high-performance teams in that home. So let's talk about getting teams to break out of the just-getting-buy mode to actually not just improve, but really amplify, really multiply their performance?

13:29Because so many teams and so many businesses, they are in that just getting by mode. I mean, they're just getting by to the next month and the next month is another mountain to climb to just get by again. How do we break out of that? How do we break out of just getting by and actually amplify everything, the business, the performance? I would say the first thing you can do is looking at the work that they are doing Because most often I can bet that most of the work they are doing probably are recruiting tasks or the thing that reactive work. So, kills a meeting that I'm strategic, set one quarterly outcome and focus on that and create some retools for them on the planning and checking the progress on that outcome.

14:20So, focus. Can you give us an example again? Maybe this is with you or maybe somebody you worked with where you did this, where you really did that focus and it worked out very well. One of the team I coach was actually just firefighting all day. When I came in, there was like priority change every hour. And there were changing things every day. So it's very difficult to see what kind of work is going to become tomorrow and how much time is going to get them to get the project done. So project get delays, a lot of delays and very long delays. so we have a lot of conversation about that we take a look at their works and see what kind of work they are doing and a lot of work are just actually the react work which is the operational works solving the incident and problems and that not focus on the outcome that company want to achieve so what we did is we streamlined the process and we create the retours when they look at their work on the Monday and close up on the Fridays and to see which part of the work focus on the outcome they want to achieve, the goals, and which not.

15:36And then we kill a few parts of the job that not contributes to the goals. And gradually, the team achieves the project that they want to achieve and create higher outcome that contributes to the goal of the companies. So if someone's listening and they feel stuck because they're doing everything themselves, let's just go to where you think they should start when it comes to building a team that runs without them. First thing I would suggest is look at the calendar again and see how much of the calendar are the thing that you can delegate to someone else, but they didn't do it, right? So the responsibility audit, look at the calendars and see which part can be delegated to someone else and which part they should do by themselves.

16:31And starting small by next week, start with one thing that you can delegate to the team and help their team to develop the responsibilities and the skills in doing it. Hannah, today we've been talking about scaling effectively, building internal leaders in a team that actually functions without you. With everything that we've talked about, what would you say is the one single thing that you would want our listeners, Fire Nation, to walk away with? I would say build your internal leaders before you get stuck. Hannah, Fire Nation is really connecting with your conversation today with myself and they want to learn more.

17:14They want to implement some of these things. They want to connect with you. They want to learn more from you. What is your call to action for Fire Nation today? Well, go to www.growfeatureleaders.no and make a discovery appointment. Fire Nation, make a discovery appointment with Hana. Have a conversation. It definitely can't hurt and it could change the entire game because you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And you've been hanging out with HN and JLD today. So keep up that heat. And for links to everything that we talked about, visit eofire.com, type Hana, that's H-A-N-A, in the search bar and the show notes page will pop right up.

17:56And Hana, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. See you later then. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Hana for sponsoring today's episode and Fire Nation. Are you an entrepreneur on fire who's looking to share your amazing message with the world? If yes, we're now accepting applications for EO Fire. So if you want to learn more about becoming a guest, visit EOFire.com slash guest. I'll catch you there or on the flip side. Fire Nation, are you ready to launch your own sports betting platform?

18:32Odds Jam's real-time API is trusted by companies big and small, from lean startups to major players like StatsPerform and SportsBet.io. Visit oddsjam.com slash odds-api to learn more and talk with our team today. Mention Promo Fire Nation to receive an exclusive discount. Shopify is the commerce platform behind 10 % of all e-commerce in the US, from household names like Mattel and Gymshark to brands just getting started. If you want to see less cars being abandoned, it's time for you to head over to Shopify. Sign up for your$1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash on fire.