The Way Out Is In

If you are an owner, founder, partner, or leader of a team who deeply cares about helping the people you lead, this letter is written for you.

In my work with thousands of owners, team leaders, and their employees, pretty much every leader has come to me with a desire to get their team, whether it is their leadership team, their employees, or their company as a whole, to trust each other, align, care more, and achieve greater results.

When it comes to retail, they especially want to get their people to “sell more stuff.” Whether it’s buying a product, like a hot tub, pool supplies, restaurant meals, hardware or tools, a new pair of glasses, or purchasing expanded services.

What I've discovered is that most leaders genuinely want these results, but they were never taught how to create them through leadership.

Many owners and leaders were never officially trained in how to lead. They moved into their positions because they were good at what they did. Or they rose to the top and eventually bought the business because they yearned to own and manage a business.

When it comes to getting their team to sell more stuff, their first inclination is to create a plan for how to manage their team’s performance and behavior.

They ask the question: “How can I get my team to sell more?”

Read between the lines...

“How do I manage and motivate my team to do what I want them to do and get the results I want them to achieve?”

Which can ultimately boil down to:

“How can I manage and control my team’s behavior to get the results I want them to achieve?”

This is what I call the management approach. This is exactly the wrong route to be heading down and the wrong question to be asking.

Instead, the first step is to uncover and discover your own personal inspiration and purpose for being a leader.

After that, the second step is to align your team with a bigger vision or purpose that touches, moves, and inspires them. Only after they’ve done that can they create the possibility of selling more stuff with their team.

Why approach it in this order?

Here is why. Many owners are trying to motivate their team when they themselves don’t personally feel inspired by being a leader or leading their team.

One leader shared with me recently:

“I’m so busy trying to motivate my team when underneath it all, I feel exhausted and burned out, and I feel resentful that I’m the one doing all the work. Every day I feel like I have to paste on a smile and hope no one notices how frustrated and resentful I feel underneath.”

This is like trying to light a room full of candles with a match that is barely flickering, or at worst, completely burned out.

A leader who is completely burned out often tries to exert even more energy to motivate everyone else and puts even more effort into controlling and micromanaging the actions of their team.

So what's the solution?

The first step is to discover what personally inspires you about being a leader.

Many leaders have lost touch with the initial inspiration and purpose they first experienced when they took the helm.

It is not possible to cause a breakthrough in your team until you FIRST create a breakthrough in yourself as a leader.

Otherwise, you will be caught in an endless loop of efforting and exerting, but not creating any new results in others.

The question then becomes:

What is the breakthrough you need to create within yourself as a leader?

The way out is in.

The breakthrough begins by rediscovering your BIG Leadership Why.

I call this your BIG Leadership Why because every leader has a deeper reason, purpose, and inspiration for the difference they want to make through their leadership.

Your BIG Leadership Why is what personally inspires you to lead. It gives your leadership purpose, meaning, and direction.

Your BIG Leadership Why is unique to you. It is not something you copy from another leader or create because it sounds inspiring. It is something you discover by looking deeply at the difference you want to make through your leadership.

Discovering your BIG Leadership Why often requires thoughtful reflection and honest conversations with a skilled listening partner who can help you see what may be difficult to see on your own.

Your BIG Leadership Why gives you the fuel and energy to stay the course in your leadership and discover a new powerful perspective for leading the people who keep making the same mistakes, disappointing you, or don’t seem to care.

You will see past your blind spots and discover a more powerful way to coach them, while gaining clarity around the question: “Should I coach them differently, or is it time to let them go?”

The greatest leadership breakthroughs happen when we stop trying to change others and first reconnect with the inspiration that fuels us and gives us energy, purpose, and meaning as leaders. 

When we are fully ignited as leaders, we create the possibility for the people we lead to discover and ignite their own fire and light.

Today is a good day to make a big difference in small, meaningful ways. You, and your leadership matters.

Leslie

P.S. If you are ready to rediscover your BIG Leadership Why and create the breakthrough you want to experience with your team, I invite you to explore a Leadership Breakthrough Virtual Half-Day with me.

Your Next Step: Leadership Breakthrough Virtual Half-Day Session

A private virtual half-day experience designed to help you create a breakthrough in your leadership so you can inspire your team to show up with greater trust, alignment, ownership, and commitment. 

During this focused experience on zoom, we will explore:

•  What personally inspires you about being a leader and your BIG Leadership Why.

• The leadership patterns, assumptions, or blind spots that may be limiting your team’s potential.

• New possibilities for coaching, communicating, and leading your team differently.

• A clear path forward for creating the leadership breakthrough you want to experience.

This is not about learning another leadership technique or finding another way to manage your team.

It is about discovering the leader you want to become and creating the conditions for your team to rise with you.

Your next step:

Send me an email at: leslie@impactandprofits.com and type in the subject line, "Yes, I'm interested"

Next, I will schedule a complimentary Leadership Breakthrough Conversation with you to discuss:

• The breakthrough you want to create.

• What may be getting in your way.

• Whether a Leadership Breakthrough Virtual Half-Day is the right next step for you.

If it feels like a fit, we will design a personalized virtual half-day experience around the outcome you want to create.

ABOUT LESLIE

Leslie Cunningham helps small business owners and leaders create teams that care by transforming the leader first. With more than 30 years of experience, she specializes in personal leadership development that builds confident communication, strengthens accountability, elevates ownership, and creates cultures where people are genuinely motivated to perform. Leslie is an award-winning leadership expert, internationally published author, national columnist, and radio personality.

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