2379 - Building Organizational Health Through Leadership and Team Culture with The Intention Collective’s Stacey Bailey

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0:46Visit podverified.com if you'd like to be featured as a future guest. I'm Josh Elledge. Let's get into it. With us right now, it's Stacey Bailey. Stacey, you are a senior consultant with the Intention Collective. You're also an executive coach. Your website, intentioncollective.co. Really looking forward to our conversation. Stacey, it's great to have you. Thanks, Josh. Nice to see you. Yes. So before we kind of talk about your superpowers and the work you do as an executive coach and consultant, I always love hearing what, you know, passionate leaders are into when they're not at work. And so what have you been geeking out on lately or what have you been into lately?

1:36This winter, I have decided to try my hand at embroidery. I bought a kit. I've got a whole little set that I'm trying to see if I can winter and go slow and try something new and test that frustration tolerance. Tell me about what do you mean by frustration? I want to talk about embroidery because I know it's rather meditative. It's not that difficult, but it is one that you just, you know, it's it's you spend some time doing. Yes. Well, you know, so for me, the frustration tolerance is like trying to do something that I've not done before, that I may not be great at out of the gate. There are progressively more difficult, you know, stitch patterns and things.

2:17So I'm working through that. And then realizing like once you've done something and it doesn't look great, like being like, I'm just going to tear it out and try again and try and get it, get it right. but just trying my hand at something different that's totally different than what I normally do which is more sort of outgoing and extroverted usually. So what has been your experience so far? So far it's been very meditative. It is very gratifying when you get it just right and then you look back at the other ones you did and you're like those are terrible. Scratching those, try again. So I've enjoyed it so far.

2:52What's the difference between a terrible embroidery and a good one well so like there I didn't realize this and I'm still only on the easiest pattern but there are different stitch patterns that are like flowers and you have to get the sort of like looping intersections just right otherwise it kind of like will collapse on itself and so then you like once you do it well you realize how bad the two you did before were and so I've just been enjoying like, you know, trying and failing and trying again. Wow. I like that. So, you know, embroidery, do you find that it's something that you can do while you're listening or watching something?

3:29Yes. That's been the best part. I got some new headphones for Christmas. I'm like listening to my podcasts that are maybe not kids safe and, uh, you know, listening to the comedians that I love talk and doing some embroidery while I do that. Any podcast that you care to share? oh um i'm obsessed with amy puller's uh good hang good hang yeah yeah she's so awesome you know i just want to be amy puller when i grow up and and then um smartless is the other one oh my gosh yes yes comedians banter is my favorite yeah if there was gosh the the i think the funniest I was just re re listened to if I'm not mistaken.

4:12Um, it's the one where they had Stephen Colbert and Conan O 'Brien a long time ago. I don't know if you remember those episodes, but they are kind of a, it's almost like a two parter where you have to listen to each of them in order because they had just this hilarious thing that they did with each other. Anyway, just really terrific. Yeah. I love smart list. Love smart list. Well, Stacy, let's talk about the intention collective. Tell me what you do. Great. At Intention Collective, we believe that building healthy leaders and healthy leadership teams is what's going to make a big impact in our communities.

4:44And so we work with small, medium-sized businesses to really develop a healthy, thriving culture and leadership team. And that starts with clear strategic planning and accountability structures and 90-day strategies. So it's been really fun. I come from an agency background, so we tend to work with a lot of service-based businesses, but it's really for the whole spectrum. But we believe in clear as kind and unclear as unkind and really getting leaders to get clear on what they want, what their expectations are of each other and of their teams so that they can move forward from there. Well, tell me more.

5:27you just said, would you say clarity is kind and lack of clarity is unkind? Say that again, and then please tell us more about that. It's a Brene Brown quote. We do a lot of work with Brene Brown's work, but it's clear is kind and unclear is unkind. And a former colleague said this and we just think that it's so great. She said, lack of clarity is just premeditated resentment. When you, what we find often is that leaders think that they're being clear. Entrepreneurs are usually so idea driven and vision driven, and they think that they're being clear, but usually they're clear as mud, right? Their teams don't really know what they want.

6:17Their teams don't really know what's expected of them. So a lot of the work that we do is helping leaders get clear on what's going to be best for the business, for themselves, and for their teams. All right. Well, I'm hoping you can give us like a little mini TED Talk on how we could start taking action in that direction today. I believe I can. So we are all in on doing 90-day planning rhythms. terms, meaning that people's attention span for what they need to deliver at work tends to be about 80 days before they lose the thread. What were we going for? What are we trying to do this year? So we really believe in these 90-day planning rhythms where you can have a one-year goal target, what you're trying to accomplish in that year in your business, and then work back over each quarter so that you've got what are the next right things to do for the next 90 days.

7:14Having clarity there gives everybody the opportunity to go be autonomous, to accomplish what they need to do towards your business's goals, and then come back together every 90 days and say what went well, what didn't go so hot, what do we got to do next, which breeds momentum, which breeds accountability, and which breeds clarity so that they've got that intrinsic motivation. And what we know about satisfaction at work, like based on research, is that the greatest predictor of satisfaction at work is the sensation of progress. When people feel like they're making progress, they feel like the business is moving forward, their satisfaction dramatically goes up.

8:00And we find that these 90-day rhythms really help achieve that. I want to advocate for my fellow founders right now, because I know, Stacey, that this is something that I have really struggled with. I know a lot of other founders struggle with this as well, is that I'm sure you're familiar with the concept of, you know, constantly moving the goalposts, right? I am so guilty of this because, you know, when you're in leadership, you know, especially if you're a founder, there's an endless amount of things that need to be done. And one thing that I'm having to remind myself of, and I'm sure that this has application for our teams as well, is truly celebrating our wins.

8:42And, you know, one thing that I know that I need to start, that I'm looking forward to doing a little bit more of is when I'm looking at something that needs to get done in advance, I say, what does done look like? And what does a win with this look like? so that when I get there, I don't go, okay, good. Yeah, that was just my job. Now I got all these other things to do, right? And so what I've been thinking about or kind of really pondering and realizing is that if you don't figure that cycle out, and again, I'm sure that this is completely applicable to our teams as well, it never ends. You will never get satisfied.

9:24And I've talked with fellow founders and leaders who supposedly get to this holy land of success and they're still not satisfied because they didn't break this cycle. All right, Stacey, help me out. Yes, so you're so right. When we move the goalposts, we never achieve anything, right? Everything was like, well, that's good and well and done, but what's next? The great thing about creating these rituals that happen on a consistent and recurring basis is that you can say, okay, this is where we're trying to go in three years. Let's work back to what we've got to do in the next year to get closer to that, to get a, you know, 30 % of the way there.

10:04And then what do we got to do over the next 90 days? And then we celebrate every 90 days, the things that we achieved, we hold ourselves accountable to the things we didn't achieve that we said we were going to do. And then we reset our expectations for the next 90 days. It's these rituals and patterns that happen and are predictable that help give us that satisfaction, that sensation of progress so that we are actually working our way to those goals. And then we can reset what's happening every three years or whatever to the point of moving gold posts. Because usually what we see is that the founders, the people in that visionary seat, they've got so many big ideas.

10:42They're like out in the far off distance. And the rest of the team is going like, well, wait, what do we have to do? What do we have to do to get there? Where are we going? Right? So we have to create those boundaries so that the founders are focused on the vision and the future, and the team has all of the clarity they need to go make it happen. Well, Stacey, how do you do that work? Your website is intentioncollective.co. Yes. So we work with founders and teams on executive coaching where we can level up leaders to have clear accountability structures, to be better at feedback, to have those crucial conversations.

11:22And we also work with leadership teams doing strategic planning. So that looks like we use a toolkit called System and Soul. And it is all of those rituals and rhythms and recurring patterns that we teach you how to implement. and then we help guide you along the way. And we are part of that journey with you over two years. So we find it to be a really effective way of teaching good habits and behaviors that help create thriving leadership teams and healthy cultures that are growing in whatever way they wanna grow, right? Not just headcount, not just revenue, but in healthy organizations and cultures so that the founders also can take a break and get some rest.

12:05Hmm. So to our friend that's been listening, I know on your website, you've got some free guides. These look kind of interesting here. Do you mind sharing maybe to our friend that's listening how they might connect with you, what resources you offer, where do they go from here? And also to, you know, just anything else that, you know, even if they have to wait before they get, you know, they get to chat with you or whatever, what you might recommend they do in the meantime. Absolutely. So on our website, intentioncollective.co, there are several free guides around organizational health checkup, which is like an interactive guide they can use, a template to try to self-implement a killer strategy.

12:50it will get you at least part of the way and you can get a sense for what that is like. Certainly you can connect with us on LinkedIn. I'm Stacey Bailey on LinkedIn and through the website where we can schedule a free consult, a call at any time that works best for you. All right, intentioncollective.co, Stacey Bailey. Again, you are a senior consultant and it is wonderful to have had you. Stacey, thank you so much for the conversation. Thanks, Josh.

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