The Heightened Leaders Blog Site

Our Purpose: Ensuring the Success of Others

Ensuring the success of others is the reason Heightened Leaders was founded. Providing the tools, guidance, and space to reach the business goal you seek is why Heightened Leaders serves local Business Owners and their teams. Success means something different to each and every person. To us, success is more of a feeling when you’ve accomplished something great. Success makes you feel complete and accomplished.

To a business owner success may mean you’ve reached a revenue or profit goal, won the talent war, landed the client, or survived a pandemic. It could also mean you are able to live the life you always dreamed without stress and anxiety.

As a team manager, it may mean that you were able to have a critical conversation with a team member and have a positive outcome or solve a process problem that has been holding your team back. It may also mean your team is excelling beyond anyone’s expectations.

From a team members point of view, success may be hitting KPIs each week or being recognized for great effort or being involved in a project that moves the business forward. It may also mean you’ve learned a new skill.

No matter the person or circumstance, success is a joyful feeling. The feeling of triumph, or overcoming adversity elates most of us. It encourages us to yearn for more. It motivates us to continue to grow and climb. Success, the result and the feeling, is the reason most continue to reach new heights in their journey.

Helping business owners and managers achieve success is the root of our mission at Heightened Leaders. Climbing the mountain, reaching the Pinnacle, and looking for the next path, it is our motivation every day. We are always looking for the best tools and guidance to be able to help anyone succeed in whatever journey they are on. Are you yearning for success? Start a conversation with Heightened Leaders, www.heightenedleaders.com or call 832-306-8284.

Increase Employee Delight

We are seeing talent challenges in every area of business today. Every business owner, manager, and leader is frustrated and bewildered by the fact that people are voluntarily leaving jobs with little or no notice. Those people are not only leaving the job, they are leaving the job market. Leaving a large number of vacant jobs. Those vacant jobs are impacting the supply chain, customer satisfaction, and overall goal achievement for the year.

Over the summer, I read an article from a restaurant that I frequented as a kid. The owner was beyond angry with the way her staff was being treated by patrons. People, who are living with a high level of stress, were taking out frustrations on the staff. They were frustrated that service was slow. They dont realize, the reaction to the stress that they were having was actually causing the lack of people to service them adequately. The best part of this article was the reaction of the Business Owner. She saw the pain in her team and decided to close the dining room on a Sunday (a big revenue day) and she took her whole team out for fun. The prioritization of the team member and their mental and physical health took precedent.

While every scenario wont be solved by a lunch or fun afternoon out, there are a few things you can do to help increase your team members satisfaction. Small things, can make a big difference!

15 Ways to Grow “Employee Delight” without spending a fortune:

1. Ask for input. They are on the front line and want a voice. Give them one.

2. Reward and recognize good work, good effort and good citizenship.

3. Share! Share the vision, share your thoughts, share your pains.

4. Be purposeful in everything. Let your teams know why we are doing what we are doing… even if it is a meeting!

5. Reward tough work with fulfilling work.

6. When you see signs of burnout, redirect them to something fulfilling.

7. Act as ONE team, not segments.

8. Break down all silos and barriers.

9. Build Trust! And keep it!

10. Redirect Mistakes! Innovations lives in mistakes.

11. Celebrate every win! Large or small!

12. Meet Together! Share the vision and the plan together – you’ll get on the same page!

13. Stay on the same page

14. Understand your team and what motivates and fulfills them!

15. Stop doing their job for them. Teach them!

Want to learn more? Start a conversation with Heightened Leaders http://www.heightenedleaders.com or call 832-306-8482.

Dont Skip The Foundation!

Imagine you are building a house…

You want the most luxurious house with an open floor plan, the most functional appliances, plush carpet, warm wall color, comfy furniture and, well… a feeling of home so wonderful you never want to leave it.

You know this house will be the center of so many great memories and experiences. Your legacy will root from what happens in this house. It will be your story.

Then you start to actually build the house. The foundation contractor comes to you and says “The land is a bit sandy. We will need to bring in material to build it up before we pour. It will delay the start.” Your reaction is “We are on a deadline. Just pour!” So they pour. Then when getting ready to frame, the framers point out flaws in the wood they have, you instruct them to use it anyway. The roof goes on with no issue. The walls go up and you decide to texture just in case there are imperfections. The warm paint colors go on, the appliances go in, the lighting is perfect. You’ve met the deadline and are ready to move in.

Then, a year in, the walls start to crack, nails start to pop, fixes are required and costs go way up. You’ve created a money pit!

Why?

Because you skimped on the foundation!

That dream home is your business and the experience you want your client to have. The foundation is your people! Don’t make “warm body hires”! Hire the right people and make sure they have the desire and ability to do the job the business needs. From there, build them up – always. Encourage, teach, and grow the right people so your dreams can come true!

For help with your people, the greatest resource at work, go to http://www.heightenedleaders.com to start the journey.

5 Things for the Health of Your Team

The health of your team is the most important element of business right now!

With everything going on around us we have become more individualized than ever before. Working from home or not working at all, division among personal opinions… just naming a few reasons. In life that may be okay. Personal drive = personal success. (I do believe you need support and help but “you do you” there.)

In business, it doesn’t work that way. Teamwork is the critical element to success. We need to collaborate. We need to learn from others. We need to share ideas and build upon those ideas. We need to have common goals. We need to win together. We need teamwork.

I believe that teamwork is the ultimate advantage. Patrick Lencioni said it best: “Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare.”

As leaders we need to bring our teams back together. Whether you are back in the office together or virtual, or a mix of both. We need to focus on teamwork and collaboration. By doing this, goals are more easily achieved, less seasoned team members grow, and a higher level of thinking and execution will exist in your organization.

Don’t know where to start? Here are five things you can start today to bring your teams together:

1. Know each other – You spend more time at work than you do awake at home. Encourage everyone to get to know everyone in the organization. Who they are, where they are from, why they are there…

2. Understand each other’s gifts and frustrations. Knowing these will help you collaborate better to achieve goals. It may also save on burn out and reduce high turnover.

3. Share everyone’s impact on the business and our common goals. Its not a “sales goal” or an “operations goal.” It is the business’s goal. Share those with your team and let everyone know how they impact those goals.

4. Focus more on the process and the team members who impact that process, rather than forcing people to work in silos. The Lead Generation Process isn’t always just Marketing. Sales, Finance, Operations all play a part. Every process in your business has multi-function touches. Make sure everyone knows how they can impact the process positively.

5. Bring your entire team together weekly. Share the vision and business goals, share successes, and highlight team members. Operations should know that Sales landed two new clients. Operations should share successes that can lead to Marketing stories. Everyone should know what everyone is up to! That is a team.

Bring your team together. Collaborate and grow!

If you need help or want to brainstorm more on bringing your team together, go to www.hl.coach and schedule some time with me. I can help you understand your team and help you bring them together!

Effort Drives Results, Not Circumstance!

Last week ended with an AMAZING Quarterly Session with a fantastic team! The session work was stellar and the team worked great together. I never expect any less from them.

What made it amazing?

1. A perfectly green scorecard

2. 100% Rock Completion

3. More than 90% Right People Right Seats

The quarter wasn’t smooth sailing at all. This team lost a BIG client, had to make tough people decisions, had a completely remote workforce, even had a few team members fall ill. It, by all accounts, should have been a really “you know what” quarter.

But the entire team, not just the leadership team, is rooted in a vision for their business that drove them to do extraordinary things. The effort they put forth to achieve what they did is beyond anything I could have imagined. They pulled the team together, they reviewed the goals every day, and they made it work! There certainly was a lot to celebrate.

No matter what gets you down, its your effort that can pull you through. And your team is looking at you for guidance. You want them to work, you are going to have to work harder. You want them to be excited about your future, you are going to have to be twice as excited.

Don’t let circumstance get your down, fight for your future!

Need help prioritizing and figuring out where you should be focused, schedule your call to build a plan! www.heightenedleaders.com

Grooming the Next Generation of Leadership

“I never want to go through this again.”

That is a statement I’ve heard more than once over the last five months. Business Owners who have gone through one too many of these crisis situations. The stress that weighs on them has really put them over the edge this time. And now the question is: “How to I groom the next generation of this business to take over?” Seems easy, right?

For most, its not. Those same business owners have looked around their company and realized they don’t have the next generation of leadership. And, hiring from outside – that’s very scary. So, they keep on fighting another day. They keep leading the team and carrying the stress and burden.

The reason they don’t have the next level of leadership, often times, is because they chose a life of reverse delegation. Not allowing strong people to do the what needs to be done. They didn’t have a way to encourage others to join their journey and ended up with a high payroll and low productivity. And today, when they want to think about retirement, they can only think of all the “stuff” that isn’t done, that they now have to do.

I’ve helped so many of these business owners find their way to delegate themselves out of the day to day so the next level of leadership can man the helm. Here are a few things to consider:

Have a system that guides how the business is run, with discipline and accountability top of mind. You know I am a giant fan of EOS® for just this!
Have a simple set of guiding principles or Core Values that guide who is part of your team. We can be from all walks of life and share the same Core Values. It means a lot when you spend 8-10+ hours a day with those you work with!
Have a vision, and a team that shares it. This goes without saying, but… If you want your business to achieve something great, but you are ready to have someone else get it there: you need a crystal clear vision and a team that knows how and wants to make it happen.
Create an environment of Accountability. I teach the EOS® tool “Accountability Chart” to help with this. You know who is accountable for what area of the business and they will know their career path. This will help to identify the next generation.
Trust them to do the job they’ve said they can do. Verify their work through a scorecard or score board.
Document they way you want it done! We forget that we have to write down and train our team on the way a task, or job should be done. We assume they know. This is where delegation goes so off track, because they don’t know.

Notice I didn’t say anything about Family. Often, the business owners who are the most frustrated are the ones who have family working in the organization. They aren’t ready to take over and there is no real path for the owner to make that happen. They follow the same guidelines as any other employee. They have to do what they are accountable to do, just like every one else.

Family or not, with the right tools in place, the team will truly flourish into a well-oiled machine. The trust will grow and it will be very easy to see the next generation of Leadership.

Grooming the next generation should be a fun, rewarding task that should leave you feeling ready for your next adventure. A Business Management System, like EOS® can help with this.

If you would like to learn more about how this can help you, visit www.heightenedleaders.com and schedule a call with Megan. She’ll walk you through what it could look like for you.

_{By Megan Alarid, Certified EOS® Implementer and Leadership Team Coach}

“Let me show you how it’s done!”

My Dad was a “Let me show you how its done” kind of guy. He would have a list of things we had to do: plant trees, fix screens, pick weeds, grease the attic stairs. We would get up early on a Saturday morning, ready to get our chores done. Yes, we were excited to them! (Most days). We would meet him out in the backyard and wait for our instructions. And we’d get started… we’d pick up a tool, or start digging, and then we would hear it: “Let me show you how its done!”

Then our sprits would fade and we would end up standing there watching Dad do the work for the next hour. We were reduced to holding the hose or flashlight, standing on the edge of the action. Never really learning what ever the chore actually was going to teach us.

Why do I tell this story? Well, this habit extends to the office a LOT! Leaders and Managers tend to be the “Let me show you how its done” kind.

Our teams need us to lead them and manage the systems and processes that they support. However, we tend to take on more than that. When they come to us for help, guidance, and advice, we tend to look at that as a cry for the answer. Instead of guiding them, we end up giving answers and doing the task. It is easier. It is quicker.

But what does that do for your team?

If we are the ones leading, managing and doing the work… we are the problem. We have teams who want to WIN. They want to be successful. They want to truly learn how to do what we’ve hired them to do. They want to master the skill and be better.

If we are the ones doing it all, what does that do for you team? Does it reduce them to paper pushers, or task masters?

How do we break “Let me show you how its done” cycle?

Ask more questions than you make statements? How do you think we should do this? What path would you take? Why? Tell me what your experience tells you to do?
Focus on the Finished Product, not the path to get there. When I set Rocks with my Teams we focus on “What Does Done Look Like?”! With the end in mind, the team is empowered to build a successful plan to achieve it. Then they work the plan and seek help when they feel they need it.
Have a regular meeting cadence with your team. This will ensure they always have a way to bring their issues and concerns about what they are working on.
Document your way of doing things. Systemize your business so that “the way” to do things is referenceable, always. NASA has their procedures documented and within arm’s reach. You should too!
Use a Scorecard to “Trust by Verify”. Your processes and procedures have measurable behaviors in them. Use those to make sure the team is meeting the process so you don’t have to micro manage.
Make sure you have the Right People sitting in the Right Seats. If you don’t have a team who has the ability and desire to do the job you are asking them to, you will end up having to do all the work.

We want our teams to be the best. Doing the work for them isn’t the way. Let them strengthen their skills and abilities by allowing them to learn and grow. Yes, it will take a little more time. And yes, it will be stressful for you in the beginning. But ultimately, you’ll have a team who will excel in all areas.

_{By Megan Alarid, Leadership Team Coach and Certified EOS Implementer(TM)}

It’s time to start the climb again!

For so many of us 2020 was supposed to be the “best year yet”. We were set for growth, amazing client success, making some awesome new hires, rolling out new products and services, and maybe even ready to dive into a new building due to the amazing growth we were supposed to have.

2020 was going to be the greatest part of our journey. Then it gave us all a nasty shiner.

We’ve spent the last five months holding a T-bone on our eye and hoping the bruise would go away! Some of us are still a little too shy to even leave the house and venture into what’s left of 2020.

There is good news in all of this.

2020 tested us and taught us all some great lessons. It taught us that we CAN solve crazy issues, we can move quickly with little data, and we can make tough decisions for the greater good. These are the kind of things that have held teams back in the past. It is hard but, when you are forced to, your true power comes out.

My clients even went a little further to say they were ready for all of this. They had the tools to help them make those big, difficult decisions. They had the ability to work together as a team to do right by the business and its people. They were ahead of the trends because they have been watching them. They knew their winning formula could be scaled up or down, as needed. They were ahead of the competition when it came to the “pivot”. And, they had the right meeting pulse in place to ensure the teams still felt they were in this together.

The biggest win for them was that their teams were rooted in their culture and that dispersing into a “work from home scenario” wasn’t even a blip on their screen.

Having a system and tools to truly helped guide them along this journey. They ran their business, not the other way around.

Being ahead of the game is a big deal these days. We are moving at both the speed of light and the speed of a sloth – at the same time. We have to be ready for anything. When you know how your business works and why, you can go with whatever the flow is.

If you want those results for your team and, to get on track for 2021 Recovery, it is time to look at an operating system for your business. You and your leadership team being 100% on the same page, fighting the same battle with tools and resources to help you make great decisions and bring your team together! A system will give you the path and the tools, to achieve your dream!

You want great things for your business. You want to achieve big goals! It is time to start the climb again!

Lets talk about your plans for 2021 and beyond. We can build a plan to take control back and thrive in 2021. www.heightenedleaders.com

_{By Megan Alarid, Leadership Team Coach and Certified EOS Implementer(TM)}

What Does Your Business Need?

Whether it is a people decision, process decision or just any old business decision, it is so hard to decide. Decision making is the hardest, most dreaded part of leading and running a business. The impact of the decision makes the act of deciding painful for so many. We know that with every decision our people are impacted, and our customers and clients are impacted. And, the worst is, change comes with a decision. Change is disliked by many.

The problem with all of that is: Your people need you to DECIDE! They need a clear path forward. They need direction. They need answers. Without it, they won’t know what success looks like. Without that guidance they will start to create their own path.

See the thing is, most of the problems we face in business have people involved. Customer satisfactions, process optimization, efficiency, culture issues, etc. People is the common denominator. If you decided to change a process, people will shift around. If you decided to fix a customer satisfaction issue, people will be impacted. If you decided to fix a culture issue, people will be reprimanded.

People make decision making hard.

That’s a good thing and a bad thing. Good because we care about people and we never want to see them negatively impacted. We never want to lose sight of that. But, its bad for the same reason. Personally, I was afraid to make people decisions. I allowed the “Head Trash” to navigate my decision making quite often. I allowed Culture Vultures to pick apart my teams and my client’s teams because I was afraid to write someone up. Fearing the short term impact for me, the person and for the organization.

Then this question came up for me:

“What Does Your Business Need?”

When we ask that question it takes “me and my feelings” out of it. It focuses back on the Vision, the Greater Good and our Strategy of the business. We know what the business needs to be successful. When we focus on the business and the what it needs, we can make decisions quicker and easier. The path to the actual decision is much clearer.

Now, I must ask this question 10 X a day. And the result is always on point. We know what the business needs. While, I know the emotional connection to your people is grand. It does cloud our judgement in many cases. Once you are clear on what the business needs, you can make even better decisions for what the team needs.

You will address Culture Vultures quickly. You’ll optimize that process to ensure the team is working well, without redundancy. You’ll remove more barriers than you ever thought possible.

Get crystal clear on the Vision for your business. Know your winning formula, or strategy to achieve it. Be rooted in core values and purpose. Have an environment of accountability. With those things in place, you will know what your business needs. Your path for decision making will be much clearer!

If you need help understanding what your business needs, schedule a call with me today. www.heightenedleaders.com

_{By Megan Alarid, Leadership Team Coach and Certified EOS Implementer}

How Do I Keep Top Talent Happy?

The problem I hear most often from Leadership Teams is about keeping and retaining TOP TALENT. They believe it is so hard to find and keep the best of the best, and end up settling for less and doing more work. That is not the way business should work, in any climate!

Here are 5 tips to find and 5 tips to keep Top Talent:

To Find Top Talent:

Be honest with what the job really is and with what you expect from the beginning!
Interview, Interview, Interview – Don’t offer after the 1st Interview. Have the entire team meet with the candidate and provide feedback.
Evaluate on Culture Fit, Skills, and Experience… in that order.
Let the candidate interview you. The questions will be telling.

To Keep Top Talent:

Be rooted in your culture!
Have a documented, proven strategy to WIN for every job!
Measure success with a scorecard or scoreboard! Winners want to WIN!
Celebrate Success – out loud, and often!

The number one tip for both is DON’T LOWER YOUR BAR! As a Leadership Team, set the standards for your organization and don’t settle for any less. Going back to my favorite quote – “What you tolerate, you encourage”.

Top Talent wants to win, and they want to surround themselves with winners. They are looking to you to build a team of Winners!

Want to talk more about Top Talent and how to keep them happy within your business? Schedule a call – www.heightenedleaders.com

_{Written by Megan Alarid, Leadership Team Coach and Certified EOS Implementer(TM).}