How to Lead a Team When You Didn’t Plan to Be “The Boss”

0:00Over many years of entrepreneurship, I've discovered that few people really set out and intend to be leaders. Most people, like me, like we have an idea or a passion, and then we create a business. And then that business became so successful, or maybe it grew so big, that it became impossible to do everything on their own. So they, just like me, we cautiously build a team. But I have to be honest, unless you're very intentional about it, you, just like me, just kind of stepped into leadership. And then we crossed our fingers and we're like, oh, I hope it works out. And then one day you realize you have no idea what you're doing, no idea how to effectively lead a team, and you make a ton of mistakes.

0:36And it's at that time where you realize that leadership is learning how to play an instrument or learning a different language or a new skill. Leadership has to be learned. And even if leadership doesn't come to you naturally, well, maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, you can always learn how to get better. One of the first people I hired was so good and so knowledgeable about her role that she simply started doing things like, hey, she thought best. And then she didn't share details with me. And then she hid her mistakes when I discovered that she had made them. So, you know, me, the strong leader that I am, instead of addressing them straightforward and right there and then, and immediately I cowered.

1:14I was just afraid. I didn't want her to think I was mad, even though I was. I didn't want her to think that I was holding her accountable, even though she was accountable and I didn't want to make her feel like she doesn't like me because, and this is totally embarrassing, I was afraid that she would lock me out of my own systems. Okay? Like, it's so skewed. She had the ability to change all of my passwords and I was afraid that she was going to be vindictive. I know I could just feel you right now through the internet and you're judging me. I feel the same way. It's totally okay. I'm judging myself too.

1:49Okay, looking back at this, I totally cringe. It was terrible of me not to hold my standards and speak my truth. It was terrible for her to think that I didn't have a backbone as a leader who struggled leading. I have learned so much since then, and I've actively read and I've listened to podcasts, and I invest in ongoing leadership training. In fact, what I'm about to share with you is a very candid conversation I had with a leadership consultant. Okay, so let's just be clear. I'm not wearing makeup. I was at a hotel and I did not think I was going to share the recorded conversation. So I was painfully honest and it was painfully obvious how awkward I was when I spoke about what I was struggling with.

2:29But this show isn't about me. It's about you. So before I show that conversation, I want to share three intentional lessons that I have learned that I've really honed in since the start of the year. So let me back up for a second. At the start of the year, there were three convergent things in my life that happened, and they opened my eyes to see what I've learned and how I've grown. Okay, so first, we hired a sales director, hired a new CFO, and I invested in a leadership consultant to do a deep dive with my leadership team. Okay, so in a previous podcast episode, I shared how specific I got when it came to recruiting the sales director, the hiring process, the onboarding process.

3:10So I will link that in the show notes. But to get very detailed, I assigned the person who was training her, training our new sales director to have 30-minute conversations focused on the culture of Jasmine Star Brands. So I'm going to pause there because getting somebody onboarded to know what to do is one thing. Teaching them how we behave is another. Teaching them our culture and what we uphold, entirely something else. So between her training and my conversations with her, she wasn't going to understand how we do things, but who we are as we do those things. I've taken all of my experiences and I've challenged myself and the team to onboard this new leader to the team to play at our level, to hold our standards, to take ownership of the department.

3:58I've learned that leadership is a mix of things, but for me, integrity is very important. And I define integrity as doing what you say you're going to do by the date you say you're going to do it. Like, it's just one thing to say that, like, yeah, I'll get it done. Yeah, this is my deadline. I'll get it done. And it's an entirely different thing to model, to teach it, and lead through that. Because for me, I want a team that is going to do what they say and deliver it when they say they're going to do it. There's too many people who depend on your integrity, who depend on your word. So, you know, what we wanted to do was to onboard that sales director.

4:35And the team looked at her first 30 days as a way to show her how we lead. Okay, so here's a simple example. After a leadership meeting, I outlined the action items, like what were they? And then I asked her when I could, number one, expect an update on her research and her thesis, and two, expect for the initiative to be complete. I flat out, I told her, Hey, we don't just look at things and arbitrarily assign due dates. We walk in integrity and do what we say by the time we're going to do it. Why? To get it done. Why? Because the team is waiting on her and the department's completion. I was straightforward.

5:13I was kind. And I was very clear. Then the rest of the team modeled what it looked like to work in integrity as proof we all walked the walk. I could never ask her to do something that we weren't doing in other parts of the business. A few weeks later, we onboarded our new CFO and a crazy thing happened. He onboarded us too. So this is the first time this has ever happened. And I absolutely loved his gusto. Okay, my COO and I, we met with him and we were doing annual forecasting because he had just come on and we'd been forecasting for a while. And we were working with a previous CFO. And now we wanted him to come on and say, this is what we've modeled.

5:51This is what we've come up with. Speak into it. So before we began, he asked us a list of questions to expedite how quickly he could understand our working and our communication style. He asked a mix of questions, and they were ranging from, on a scale of 1 to 10, how systems oriented is the team? On a scale of 1 to 10, how direct is your communication? And I was like, it's a level 13, bro. From a scale of 1 to 10, what is priority for profit? And it was incredible for a few reasons. I learned how intentional and how excited he was to learn about the team. It was also amazing to hear how different, we were very different, but we were also in sync.

6:30Like my COO would answer the question and I would answer the question. And when I realized that we are very different and we see things from two different perspectives, but we're very much in sync, not just on a business level, but on a human level, we are quite literally the yin and yang, but we make each other stronger as we lead the team. And the CFO saw it immediately. Okay, now let's go into the third thing that's happened since the top of the year that's really helped shift my relationship with leadership and how I've progressed is a little bit after that, after we had onboarded successfully our CFO, I was lucky enough to hire Jim Zartman of the Art of Growth.

7:06And what he was going to do is he conducted leadership training with myself and the team. So his work and his approach, They're going to be rooted in Enneagram, specifically how different types of people work and how they lead together. So Jim has worked with massive Silicon Valley companies and government agencies and entrepreneurs all around the world. And I found him from a recommendation from my financial planner. And then I dove headfirst. I'm like, I'm going to figure this guy out. So I listened to all this podcast. I was reading his articles. And when he agreed to work with my team, I was so happy.

7:38I was so excited. I was like, okay, Jasmine, you're going to show up. You're going to be professional. You're going to lead the leaders. So he met with each person on the leadership team for a one-hour interview. And then he worked with us over a series of trainings as a group. Now, I'm not going to talk about the team trainings right now. Maybe I'll do it in a future episode. Like, let me know if you like this style that I'm just going to show you. Like, send me a DM on Instagram and tell me that you like it because then we can do more of this as I am investing heavily into our leadership training.

8:06If we would like to share that on behalf of the podcast, let me know. Okay. But what I am going to share and what I'm going to focus on is my one-on-one with Jim. And I'm sharing it mostly because it threw me for a big loop. At the end of our initial interview, Jim looked across Zoom and he said, Jasmine, I know you've taken a lot of Enneagram tests before and you're classified as an Enneagram 3, but I have strong reasons to believe that you're not. You're an Enneagram 7. Okay. Okay. Okay. So listen, this is an episode focused on leadership, so I'm not going to get into Enneagram specifics. But just please know for the sake of this conversation that threes and sevens are different.

8:47Three and sevens are very, very different. And I was shocked. And then I was confused. I really couldn't reconcile what I had heard because I was like, I think I'm deaf in my left ear now, brother. So I pushed back. I explained and then I re-explained why I disagreed. I was like, no, you're a little confused here. It was at the end of the call and I just felt really confused But jim insisted that we get on another call before we had the entire team training Because he wanted to make sure that I can move forward confidently with all of the rest of the trainings and I was like Oh my god, I can't even believe this.

9:18I literally was like who am I am I misidentified? How does this show up in my leadership style? So when the call ended I immediately called jd Okay, my husband and my business partner and we went back and forth because jd didn't agree with jim either I was like, isn't he tripping? JD's like, he's tripping. I was like, he just don't know. He don't know. And then what did I do? I listened to the recorded call. So I had recorded the call with Jim. And I listened to it and I watched it again. And then I read insights from Jim's content. And I just decided, Jasmine, you're paying him a lot of money.

9:52What would it look like to explore this new aspect of my life? If becoming a better leader is about self-discovery, then there was no better place to start than right there. So two weeks later, we had scheduled another call. It was going to be a brief call before the team training. So Jim wanted to know, Jasmine, how have you been processing? How are things going? And he's like, what's come to the surface for you? And to be totally clear, we hadn't even officially started the trainings yet. He was simply checking in on me. How are you doing? And that, that is leadership. holding me accountable to change and also holding space for me to challenge, doubt, and grow from every single learning.

10:33But what happened on the call was a little unexpected. Jim guided me to verbalizing with my words what I needed to identify, not as a strategy, but as a purpose for what I was building, why I was building it, and what I needed to believe before I could lead my team to new big levels. I'm about to share with you a bit of that call with you right now, but before I do, please know I'm going to say it again. I had zero intention of this call ever being made public. I've said it before and I will say it again. I looked tore up from the floor up. Okay. Like I just, I would just like, it looks like I rolled out of bed.

11:09I was intentional, but clearly it doesn't show how intentional I was on Zoom. I wasn't wearing makeup. I was sitting outside of a hotel. I was about to go and work out. I was awkwardly honest about what I was feeling at that time. And even though I don't want to share it, I'm going to share it because I hope it will help you grow your team. And I hope it helps you grow as you step into leadership. So we're now me and my no makeup face. Let's get into that video now. Oh, did it start recording again? Yeah. Cause I think when I got off of it, it stopped recording. So I just wanted to make sure. Cause I literally do go back to the recordings and I listen to the audio because I'm very visual.

11:49I've got harder times distilling BS for myself when I could see myself. And so when I just hear the audio, I just, I can hear, I was like, oh, that inflection in your voice, like, oh, this, like, oh, why did you say that? So hearing myself in third person is like very helpful when you understand myself. Got it. Because you're removing some of the sort of the cosmetic aspect of it, the thing I have to put on. And this is, I think, one of Joel's great questions that he asked people, which is like, what parts of yourself did you have to exile in order to be successful to do the thing that you wanted to do?

12:26Which voices did you have to silence? And so I think this is why I don't find like I've worked in so many different arenas now with people at like all levels of like government, all this stuff. And I'm not impressed with anyone anymore because I'm like, at the end of the day, we are all just people like, and we like, there's nothing like we're all just trying to figure this out there. There's no, like, no one has ever figured out how to be you. And so like a lot of times it, whatever it takes to help to hear yourself is great because there's, we're always in this tension between the person that I need to be to do this thing.

13:04Because if you were completely nuanced and fully yourself in every single aspect, like it wouldn't make sense to people. So you curate something specific so that it's digestible, so that it brings people into what you do. It's awesome. But then there's the time to go, okay, but the becoming, the person who is becoming, who wants to be a whole, a full immersed version of myself that I can experience it's for myself. That has to be the fuller picture, which is why when you hear yourself, you can hear the inflection. You can probably go, oh, I can see there's a little too much try there. I can hear where I was like a listening.

13:47I was, I caught myself entertaining. You know, there's those little things that sevens can catch themselves do when they're doing it. And it's all like, great. Like, we love that about you. It's a wonderful thing, but it's also like, hey, I see it. yeah right yeah how does that hit you i'm more open to receive it i'm more open to receive i'm more open to explore it and you know i i wonder i wonder if so much of my progress getting to this point in my life and career has been um maybe like a matter of acceptance of like who i am and so i'm like i'm not going to fight for a former version of me and i'm not going to fight or definition or classification, I'm just going to be.

14:29And if what in front of me is this new opportunity to know myself in any way and lead my team in any way, let's go. And so that's, I am definitely open. And so I'm like, okay, yeah, let's talk about, let's talk about me as a leader. Let's talk about how I amplify each of my team members' strengths. And then how do I look at myself in any way? How do I, how do I just embrace it? Okay. So you said you just did these masterminds, you did this talk. like what's your superpower when you're up there performing is performing the goal or the strategy strategy so what's the superpower what are you using the performance for to make people believe i'm a conduit for belief and belief what in themselves i deeply believe that any work we do we do it in the pursuit of our own healing wow so what are you saying that you know you need to hear that i trust myself that i believe that i can accomplish and achieve what i'm like what it's like deep in me jim like i i see it like i see this future i see this thing and it's so stupid like there's no there's no reason there's no reason why it would work.

15:47And then I just believe I do against all odds. I do. And so I guess at the end of my life, I don't want to look back and be like, you poor girl, you stupid poor girl. But on the kind days, Jim, I look at my life now. I'm coming at you from a hotel I once dreamt of stepping foot on. And now I get to stay here. My dream, my life's getting so much bigger than I ever let myself believe or dream. So why am I stopping myself from believing that this level of impossibility is just like a step of many levels of impossibility? It's like the person who keeps me down in myself. And I'm like, I don't, I don't want to do that anymore.

16:29See, these are like therapy sessions. Like we're not talking about any ground. This is therapy. What's it's you, it's the core of you. And that's the, that's the same thing. And it's that, How do you release that? Yeah. And is there anything else that comes to mind if you were to sit with that and go, when I say this thing and there's this thing, because everyone, everyone who speaks, you know, we speak publicly. There's certain phrases that we tend to use that are our little catchphrases that are little things that we go. When we say them, we still feel them again. So over the last week, we just did a lot in a week.

17:06And what I said, that resonated in multiple ways. And on multiple fronts was we are responsible for the effort and not the outcome. I also said, you wouldn't have been given the dream on the inside of you if you didn't have the capacity to achieve it or at minimum pursue it. And then the third common thread that I tell people often is it's better to live with failure than regret. And like those three tenants seem to be a thing like where I'm speaking to seven figure founders who are scaling to eight and I'm speaking to people who are trying to get consistent 10K months, right? Like the chasm between that person and this person is so starkly wide and yet it resonates.

17:51And then I'm just basically saying it to myself. Yeah. But that's the thing is you're doing exactly the thing you should be doing to generate it, which is. Right. I remember hearing years ago, we need to be reminded more often than we need to be taught. So what you're doing every single time you're doing that, you're enforcing that voice great, more greatly in yourself. And as you reinforce it in yourself, the overflow is to others. Because if it's happening through you, it's already happened in you. Maybe you don't always appreciate it. Maybe you don't always accept it or acknowledge it. But like, that's the fact of the matter is that it couldn't be happening through you if it hadn't already happened in you.

18:37Oh, I agree. Right. I agree. But it there's certain things that we all need reinforced because they're I don't know, you're going to call them lifelong lies or lifelong beliefs or whatever that we're we're confronting. Like some people, like they have, there's just, they, they don't question themselves at all. They don't, they, they, they don't struggle with this or that, but they struggle with this other thing. And so their work is often to reinforce and strengthen the healing of that thing within them. Right. And so this is something you're doing that is both a gift to yourself. and then whatever the gift you need to give yourself, you're naturally going to give to others.

19:23And that means that's one of the ways you actually know you're in the right work. That feels good. That feels good. Like it hit like really deep. And I think that one of the things that I'm having a hard time just like right now, like internally just like flipping over is you had said you couldn't teach it if you hadn't. What did you say? It's happening through you and it could not have happened through you if it had not first happened in you. Right. So it has to happen in you. Go ahead. The thing I keep on flipping over in my head is just allowing myself to accept that it happened in me. Right.

19:58That it happened past time. That's why I was giving the evidence. You've seen it happen through you. Yeah. Nothing happens through you if it hasn't happened in you. Sometimes we think we give way too much credit to our cleverness. We're not that clever. you ever watched a performer on stage and you just kind of cringe because you're like you don't believe it like I don't believe you because I can hear you thinking like I can feel you trying to convince yourself that you should be up there and then other people that get on stage and that you just have this oh it's okay they are freeing me of concern because they're fine It's that.

20:40That's what I'm saying. It's like, we're not that clever. People don't buy it if it hasn't happened in us. So that's what I'm saying. You have to look at that as actual evidence. Because you're not actually smart enough to fool people. They can see through it. Crowds get up there. And if they connect, if they experience something, that means it's something that has happened within you. It may be ongoing. It may be growing. It may be deepening. but it has happened. It is in there. Otherwise people would just go watch you and they would have that feeling of like, nah, too much try. I received that.

21:19I didn't know that's the thing I needed to hear today. Thank you. Cool. I feel like I'm a, I'm a blooming onion, slowly coming open, slowly. A blooming onion. Sorry. That's like a, Is that an old Applebee's dish? Questionable places that you aimed in the middle of nowhere. Yeah. Yeah. I grew up in the Midwest, so you have a lot of that. But that's what you eat that food in your 20s. If you eat it after that, you're kind of like asking for trouble. Speaking of asking for trouble, how did my team respond to their feedback? Yeah, I was going to ask you how the team would respond. When I got, who did I have?

21:59I had the last person yesterday. Who was the last? Katie. I had Katie yesterday. She was my last one. okay and i was like did you have you heard anything going in and she's like oh yes i've just heard like we're not going to give it away like you just go and just experience it you'll you'll have a great time but just like i don't want to give anything away they were like like they didn't want to spoil a good movie or something um did it like the sorcery that you do why would we give anybody else a leg up it's like no go in don't be strategic all of us are very thinkers like we're very high thinkers and so you don't want to over-strived that and so everybody knows each other well enough to say, no, no, you're going in blind, baby.

22:35You're going in blind. Yeah. They're great. They're great people. I really enjoyed talking to all of them. You, it, it doesn't surprise me. So, okay. Just from the outside looking in like type sevens tend to marry two types more often than others. And they tend to hire certain types more than others as well, especially if they want, depending on their instinctual stack. So like your instinctual stack being hunter, teamer, and then low and farmer, your entire team is farmer dominant. I sent you all of that. When did you send it to me? Just right before the meeting. I said, okay, I come from one of your entire team and all their types and their instinctual stacks.

23:21And every single one of them tends to be, they are strongest in your weakest area. So I'm like, yeah it makes a ton of sense and three out of three of them are ones oh yeah i love me someone i harvest i'll bet you do because i'm like you you've you've hired exactly the antidote to all of your weaknesses i can't tell if that is that is that okay so it's smart okay because i was like well i mean the worst thing people do is hire themselves right oh god no because then they And they're like, oh, I don't need more me. Right. But you specifically hired like to outsource all of your what would typically be the weaknesses.

24:06So you've got real farmer instincts and type one. So you have body action oriented people, which is what you want. So things don't stay in idea world. And that they are all like they want to get things right. And they want to button things up. They want to get things done. and they have a really strong structural organizational instinct. I think, yeah, all of them had that as their dominant, even if the other two in their stack were different. But, I mean, straight up dominance. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Amazing. So Katie, Jade, and Crystal are one? Yep. And then what's Rosie? Six.

24:54uh very good to know yeah very good to know okay throw them in the chat here you can see like you can see their full stacks and everything but yeah a lot of type one and then type six so you have all the toward what we call the toward energy or the dutiful energy of wanting to like get things done wanting to get things right wanting to there's a bit of a pleasing kind of element. And it actually, if the one is the boss, the seven, there's a lot of frustration because then they end up feeling like the parent. But when the seven is the boss of the one, it tends to work a lot better. I was laughing because a lot of sevens are either married, you know, you have this triangles on the Enneagram and I've seen so many times they're either married to ones or fours.

25:36There's a lot of that movement happening. So the most frequent for a seven are those lines. And then the second most frequent is on either side of them, an eight or a six and it goes in like stacked orders so like most common do you know your husband's type yeah and i mean now i feel like i'm i'm doubtful of any sort of assessment on my own but caitlin met my husband because caitlin carlson spoke and my mastermind and she turned to me and she's like oh my god he's a two i was like i know like he's a thursday too oh yeah oh yeah okay i know that's a less common uh less common pairing but yeah that's funny that's cool is so she out there uh caitlin oh no well we have it for the mastermind it's virtual and then we have in-person events she came to one of our in-person events to speak oh that's so cool it was awesome she killed it like she killed it it was amazing it was awesome so type six i'm very familiar with type one type six at the loyalist or is that how you classify them we typically have used that but there's uh we had several people recently um at a with a corporate kind of thing they thought in the modern culture, they didn't like the term because it felt too kind of like being blindly loyal.

26:49So we've been using the term, the supporter, because that's really what they want. They want to give support and receive it. So like they're, they're entirely motivated by security. Like, am I going to be okay? And are we going to be okay and support? So how do I support you? How do I give that? Cause that's what I'm hoping to receive in exchange. That's so good to hear because she's head of client success. And so I think that I feel more attuned or honed in to understand how we might be able to support her since she goes in and supports so many people. Like she supports our coaches who supports our clients.