Step into real business leadership — where structure, trust, and self-managing teams turn frustration into flow and leadership into lasting freedom.
Running a small business can feel like walking a tightrope.
You’re the visionary.
The manager.
The doer.
And when things slip, it’s easy to think—it must be me.
Because if someone on your team drops the ball, misses a deadline, or delivers half of what you expected… it can feel personal.
Like proof you’re failing as a leader.
But here’s the thing: leadership isn’t about having all the answers.
It’s about creating the conditions where others can rise.
In this week’s episode…
I open up about the mistakes I’ve made—
The times I lost my patience, blamed the wrong person, or let frustration spill over.
And the systems that helped me turn that around.
You’ll hear about the frameworks I now use every day to build a self-managing team:
It’s not theory.
It’s the real, messy work of growing into a calmer, stronger leader—one who no longer carries everything alone.
🎧 Listen now to learn how these frameworks can free you and your team.
Because sometimes, what feels like failure is just leadership asking for structure.
KEY TAKEAWAYS: Business Leadership in Action—What Works and Why
- Leadership Starts with Self-Reflection: The performance of your staff often mirrors your ability to lead. Recognising where your own systems, expectations, or communication may be at fault is the first step to creating meaningful change.
- Go Beyond the To-Do List: Real progress happens when you make time for growth, encourage your team to bring solutions to you rather than problems and support them in keeping up with the latest innovations.
- Trust, Confidence & Feedback: Regular one-on-one meetings are gold. They open up honest communication and build mutual trust; this empowers people to constructively push back when they see something going wrong and take the initiative.
- The Power of Frameworks: Tools like the Default Diary, Ideas Over Issues, and Task Matrix provide structure, clarity, and consistency. People think independently and prioritise effectively.
- Creating Momentum For Projects: Breaking big projects into clear, phased milestones creates momentum, measurable wins, and keeps your team motivated and productive.
BEST MOMENTS: Real Talk on Business Leadership
00:01 – 💬 “ Small business owners need every single person in our team to perform as A players. We haven’t got room for slack.”
08:19 – 💬 “They (my staff) need somebody to lead them, not just to lead the business forward.”
13:50 – 💬 “ Basic admin stuff, do it when you’re in that carb coma after lunch. Let the mornings be free for the creative, the powerful, the inspiring work.”
24:21 – 💬 “ Trust works both ways. We need to trust them when they push back.”
TIMESTAMPED OVERVIEW
00.00 Balancing your multiple roles with leadership
11:10 Tried and tested management frameworks
18:10 The most effective project management framework
24:15 How to build trust and confidence through one-on-one meetings
31:04 Creating continuous improvement
Episode Transcript
Please note: This transcript was generated using automated transcription tools and may contain occasional typos or inaccurately captured words or phrases.
Dr Steve Day: Us small business owners need every single person in our team to perform as A-players. We haven\'t got room for Slack. We don\'t have an abundance of people where, you know, if a few people drag their feet, that\'s okay. You know, the rest will pick up the slack. That doesn\'t exist because we\'re micro businesses.
The challenges and the frustration comes from when people don\'t live up to our expectations. When things aren\'t done as quickly or as well as we wish they were. And I believe the hardest thing to cope with is the knowledge that this is a true reflection of our leadership. That we feel we are failing as a business owner, as a manager, as a leader, when our staff don\'t perform. Because after all, it\'s only us that are leading them and showing them the way.
In today\'s episode, I wanna dive into this and go behind the scenes in my own business. To explain from a raw and honest opinion why I think I fail. The things I try to put in place to improve stuff, and where sometimes yeah, it\'s the responsibility of the person on the other end to step up.
But what can we do as leaders of micro businesses to facilitate that change. And to hopefully get the best out of every single person that works with us.
Okay, so before I jump into today\'s episode, I wanna just acknowledge something like running a small business is tough. We often wear multiple hats. The visionary, the integrator, the operations manager, the line manager, often the person doing the work as well. We\'re trying to fit all of that into the capacity that you have available through our energy and our time and our focus.
And so keeping that all together is tough. When we add onto the fact that we also have to be expert managers and leaders for our people. To help, to nurture them, to support them so they can grow into the best they can possibly be. It\'s a tall order, and so it is no wonder that it\'s a struggle.
It\'s no wonder that I feel like I\'m failing when I see the work that people do as a total reflection of my ability to lead them. So when people make mistakes, I think like, is it me? Is it my systems? Is it something that I could have done differently in order to improve the outcome of this? Or is it all them?
Uh, is it truly their personality? Are they not really bothered about the work they\'re doing? Are they just showing up simply to collect a paycheck? I\'m hoping that the people I work with don\'t feel like that. I\'m hoping that, you know, my recruitment system eliminates most of those tire kickers or those time wasted, I should say.
People that literally just want to get paid for doing as little as possible. I\'m hoping that actually. The process of working with these people, I see that they are excited about the work they\'re doing. They want to work in our company, they want to see it grow. They believe in my values. And they believe in the vision that I have and the mission that we\'re on. But with all that said, it still can be massively frustrating when people don\'t perform at the level you wish they would.
And the real challenge here, I think as small business owners is that we can often see this as a true reflection of our leadership. We often, maybe we have too high expectations of people that we expect everyone to care about our business as much as we do. And that again, is something that\'s gonna set us up for failure. Because nobody will care about our businesses as much as we do.
They\'re are babies. Other thing that we nurture, that we have developed, that we have grown from nothing into something, into something that actually is giving back to the world. It\'s giving to us, it\'s giving to our staff. We\'re the only person that sees all that. We\'re the only person that\'s lived through every up and down.
The only person that\'s actually put ourselves on the line to make this a success. The staff, yeah, they may invest some time with us. They may actually put some extra energy in. They may actually go through some stresses and challenges. But ultimately it is a job to those people. They can walk away and get another job. But for us to walk away from the business, that means saying we failed.
That means admitting that we made some really bad decisions and we shouldn\'t have gone down the path we\'ve gone. And so most business owners have a lot to carry. And therefore, it\'s no wonder that we find it hard to carve out the time to support our staff in the best way we possibly can. This is something that I have massively struggled with. I know I\'ve lost my patience with people. I\'ve talked in ways I feel embarrassed about afterwards.
I\'ve shown my frustrations openly. Maybe I\'ve done it in public in front of other members of staff. I\'ve regret that massively afterwards. I felt bad about some of the things I\'ve said. I felt like I\'ve just completely missed the point. On other occasions, I\'ve gone down off tangents and then realized had to backtrack \'cause I\'ve just got it so wrong.
I\'ve misinterpreted the situation. I blame people for things that weren\'t their fault. I\'ve done all of these things and so many more besides, but each time I do this, each time I make one of these small and sometimes big mistakes. Sometimes I might even lose staff over this stuff over the years or I just upset people and that\'s horrible and I never intend or set out to do that.
It\'s just because I\'m living with all the stress and the frustration of, of things not going the way I wish they would. And sometimes that just boils up and gets let out. I\'ve got so much better over the years at managing myself and my expectations and about understanding that if I can rise above the feelings that I have and see this in a more objective way and actually.
Look to see how the situation can be improved rather than putting blame on something that\'s happened in the past that can be a stepping stone to creating a far more trusting, more nurturing, and actually more productive work, work environment.
But the challenge over the years has been knowing how to do all that. And I\'ve like with everything I\'ve done, create systems and frameworks and methodologies around so many aspects of this. That have helped me hugely in going from that very reactive, emotional kind of manager, to someone who is far more reflective. Who takes time to most of the time, think about things before I say them. About reacting, about having a framework in place for most of the stuff and decisions and, and comments and feedback that I need to give.
And that in itself has been a huge, huge win. But over all this, over everything I try to achieve over everything I try to do. There still is this underlying issue or this underlying challenge that we have as business owners. And that is that the performance of our staff can feel like a direct reflection of our ability to lead them. And therein lies one of the biggest problems. Because when you are in a situation, when you\'re challenged with something that actually you see in yourself or you blame yourself for, it can be really hard to keep those emotions at bay.
It can be really hard to actually see that, that, okay, we need to work through this. We need to actually create a solution for this and not get dragged into the emotion or the, the feelings of that moment. So again, the frameworks and the systems are how I\'ve put steps in place to try to do this. And this came up in our meeting today, our staff meeting this morning, and we had a new member of staff start last week and they just came back in this week after a couple of days off.
And I was talking about management, about what my role is as a leader. Now, as I said, I\'m a micro business owner. I don\'t have layers of management, and I\'m sort of passing the book down. The book stops with me. My team work directly with me. I have somebody that works in my marketing, somebody in my operations and so on in my backend systems, and that\'s it.
And so they don\'t have line managers. I am that manager, but I\'m also their leader. I\'m also the visionary, I\'m also trying to drive the business forward, create sales. I\'m trying to, you know, create the whole. Authority behind everything. We do create the products and services and all that stuff as well, but I can\'t let all that get in the way of being the manager that my staff need me to be.
They need somebody to lead them, not just lead the business forward. And hopefully they\'re gonna get dragged along in the wake. They need someone to step back in to be the operational level, to be the manager that they need to become the best people they can be. So today I wanna talk about some of this frameworks I play in place that help me to do that, to be the best manager I can be.
This is stuff I work on every single day. I\'ve come to realize this is some of the highest value work I do. I used to think it was all about the vision of all, about the products, the services, you know, dealing with clients and, and supporting them.
But what I\'m realizing is that without supporting my staff and helping them to grow, it\'s all gonna fall back on me. And that\'s happened more times I\'d like to admit, over the years when brilliant staff members leave. And I look back and reflect and like I. What was my involvement in this? How did I push them away?
Or what did I not do to support them when they really needed some support? How did I not see where they were struggling? How did I not put them into position, which they loved? All of these things that we can do as managers, that good managers will do instinctively. \'cause they\'ve maybe got years of experience of doing it, but also they\'ve got the time to think about it.
Like if you are a manager of a team, your job is to support that team to make sure your team. Functions at the best they possibly can and is highly productive.
So if you are a dedicated manager of a team and you\'ve probably got years of experience in doing it. And your role is basically to make the team productive. Like you are gonna get measured on the performance of your team, like you are gonna put the time and effort needed. To make sure those people are in the right roles, they are supported, they are performing at their best.
They, you know, have the right professional development plans in place. They are having their KPIs and KRAS review. They\'re doing all of that stuff that brilliant managers do. But when you don\'t have a manager, well, who is left to do it? As a micro business owner, that responsibility falls back to us. The challenge is that if we don\'t address this, if we don\'t lean into this, if we don\'t continually improve our abilities to manage effectively, then we risk losing everything.
We risk losing the one thing that we need to support us in our visionary role. And that is an effective, productive team.
So let\'s jump into a couple of the frameworks and things that I\'ve used over the years have helped massively in allowing me to develop into an effective manager. To become somebody who supports people. To giving my team what they need to actually progress and grow. And become the best that they can be.
I believe that these frameworks are fundamental. However you interpret these or the versions you use, if you\'re not looking at these different areas. Then you\'re missing out on massive opportunities. To allow you to be the visionary, to be the the lead that you need to be. Because if you haven\'t got these things in place, then your team will not be performing the independence that they can be at the level they should be. And also with that confidence that you need them to, in order for you to just get on with your own work.
So, a few of the things that I work on with them are a default diary approach, so looking at their deep work time in the week. So for example, if you\'ve got a staff member who\'s dealing with your social media. Or maybe they\'re working on your community. For example, or they\'re in your back office doing client support. Or maybe they\'re the onboarding person, if all they do is the tasks around that.
That process, that system, and they never get time to actually reflect and improve and optimize. Then you\'re missing out on a massive opportunity here. Not only will people have far more ownership and accountability for stuff they\'re involved with, evolving, evolve with improving. But also you\'ll level up those people so they start improving.
Your systems from the inside out. You want the staff who are involved in the doing of the work to be the ones that are seeing the opportunities. That are keeping up to date with the latest releases in new software and apps. Or just new theories or methodologies or ideas that are coming out into the world and trying them out and seeing what works. Seeing how those things can be adapted and adopted into your business.
So setting aside time for people to do that is essential part of that process. If people are over tasks. So if you\'ve got somebody that works for you for 20 or 40 hours or whatever. And all you do is throw more work at them. They\'ve got a backlog of, you know, 50 tasks they\'re never gonna get round to.
And all they\'re doing is basically going through task by task, by task, by task. And there\'s no time dedicated time set aside for them to. Do the thinking work, then they\'re gonna stay stagnant and at a certain point they\'re gonna think, you know what? I want more. I wanna be more than what I am right now.
But I haven\'t got the opportunity to grow in this business because all I\'m doing is the doing. I want time to actually improve myself to become a better version of me. So we, as business owners, we as managers, need to support that to allow people to grow. Otherwise they\'ll feel constrained and trapped by the job or the position they\'re in.
If they\'re the kind of people we actually want, they\'re gonna actually be looking elsewhere. Because they wanna be growth oriented in terms of their own professional development. And if we\'re not able to facilitate and support that, they\'ll go elsewhere looking. So the default dary is how we do this. We talk about setting time aside for the deep work. But also about managing time in terms of your highest and lowest energy.
So what kind of tasks should you be doing in that morning, for example, when people are typically their highest energy. And what tasks should be left the afternoon, like recurring basic admin stuff. Stick it in the afternoon. Stick it when you\'re in that carb coma after lunch. And let the mornings be free for the creative, the powerful, the inspiring work that people can actually achieve to do anything creative.
Again, stick it in the morning. Let them actually use the best part of their brain. To actually give you the best work they can and make less mistakes. Similarly, high attention to detail work best done with a fresh mind. Not the kind of stuff you wanna be doing late at night. When you\'re just trying to catch it with your hours.
Because you\'re being, you know, busy in the week. And you are working, flex your time or just do a few hours on a Saturday night. Or something just to catch up. And it\'s just done. Not really to the best of someone\'s abilities. So you can manage that as a manager. You can actually ask people to focus on certain types of tasks.
At certain times a day and actually ask them not to work in the evenings. If you do have flexible time, well put some constraints around it. Flex time\'s brilliant. It\'s something that I actually, uh, try to support within my work. Because I enjoy the flex time that I live as the business owner, the freedom that I actually have created within my business.
And I want my staff to have the same options. To be able to work when it suits them within reason. I still want people to arrive and work at their best, and so therefore I do put some limitations and constraints in when freedom is allowed, if you like. So it\'s freedom within constraint \'cause that then.
Serve them in their life goals and their freedom goals, but also serve me as a business who\'s trying to actually grow as a business to actually support more people and et cetera going forward. So it\'s a balance and I think that\'s the kind of conversation you should be having. The default diary is how we do it.
It\'s about setting time aside for deep work, for admin, for high value work, for high con creative or detailed work, and blocking that out throughout the week. It\'s about knowing there\'s a time block for doing certain types of stuff and not getting distracted with other stuff during those times. Another thing we use is our problem solving framework called the Ideas over issues.
This is about getting people\'s minds into a problem solving mode. Rather than a problem bringing mode, like I don\'t want to be the person that my staff continually ask questions. So I want them to start thinking through problems before they come and bring it to me. Sometimes just that act of thinking it through will prompt them to the next step anyway, and they won\'t ever bring with that problem \'cause they\'ve already figured out.
All they need to do is like, for example. Go and ask technical support of the app because you know that\'s where they\'re gonna get the answer. Why are they gonna ask me? \'cause I don\'t know. And so there\'s always a solution they can bring to the table or a suggested solution about what they might do next.
And that again, creates this problem solving mindset that has to be supported from us. From the, from managers to actually support them in the decisions that they\'ve made and the ideas they\'ve got. And so it\'s a two way street. We can\'t just say yes to everything, but no matter what they actually suggest, but we should be supporting as much as possible so they have the confidence to actually try out stuff without our involvement.
Next thing is about prioritization. So we use something called a task matrix, like a task board for managing all the tasks. It shows us what people are doing on a recurring basis. What people are doing are prioritizing what they\'re in, their backlog, their pending list, and allows them to actually see everything in one place\'s, be able to prioritize stuff based on our quarterly goals.
For example, the outcomes of our team, weekly team meetings, the focus for the week, and they can then look at their tasks as a whole and actually start prioritizing if they need help. They can ask myself, or if there\'s a team member that\'s appropriate, ask them to actually support them at deciding what is a priority task, but having everything they\'re working on right now in one place, it allows that and facilitates that to happen really quickly and effectively.
We can also guide their priorities. We have a. Prioritize your tasks task every morning. And that will then go against our mission and our vision on our quarterly goals and also against our client, uh, success and actually our client concerns. And anything that fits into those categories, that\'s a high priority.
Anything else can probably be just pushed back until maybe never or done when there\'s actually not that much high priority stuff going on, which in very, is very rare, I think in micro businesses. There\'s also these aspects of planning work. Often we throw loads of work at people, especially bigger projects as well, and say, get on with it.
You know, go and set that new whatever it is, up, set that new CRM up and let me know when it\'s done. Whereas actually, that\'s a huge project with multiple different phases it\'s gonna go through. You\'re gonna have like a basic setup, then adding new features and exploring features and you know, whatever it is.
Like you\'re building up this thing that\'s gonna. Evolve over many, many years. We\'ve got tons of examples of this, whether it\'s designing our recruitment system, our, uh, inbox management system, whether it\'s onboarding onto our, or moving onto our new, uh, com community platform or designing our LMS or course development or our CRM or our marketing.
Like all of these things are just constantly evolving, and so by giving people a. Project management framework, it allows them to set the vision for the project, often involving myself as the micro business owners, the vision of the company. So I\'ll set the vision for what this project is about. I\'ll share my ideas, my ideas, what my idea of amazing looks like today, and that may evolve as we sort of go further down the path of the project we wanna set.
At the beginning, at least a guiding vision to where we\'re actually moving towards. I wanna look at, you know, is this in line with our business goals? What are the advantages to our internal staff or maybe to our clients? What are the problems this is over gonna overcome? And what\'s their big picture thinking right now?
What do I, what are the things that myself, other staff members can contribute right now to what brilliant looks like? Then look at, you know, do we have the capacity to take this on? Do we have the knowledge needed to implement this? Do we have the funds available to do this? If all those things are available, or we can get them, you know, by either, you know, bringing in talent or go on training courses or whatever and all those things are tick, tick in the box.
Then we\'re ready to actually start going into this project. Then we can start planning out what phase one looks like, what phase two looks like, what is the milestone of the goal that each of these phases, and that gives people real direction, it gives them milestone points where they can actually work towards in a relatively small timescale.
So they get wins, wins not only for them, but wins for the business. \'cause if we can plan projects in phases that deliver real value for us as a business, it serves us much, much quicker than trying to sort of go too far in one sprint. It allows us to create value and also for that person to feel sense of achievement.
Because they\'ve hit a to predefined milestone and say, yes, I\'ve done this. I\'ve done phase one. The other advantage of this, of working in this phased approach with clear value driven like endpoints is that if things get busy and we get distracting, get taken off a project, we can say, Hey, we\'re gonna just finish off this phase.
It\'s gonna be done in two days. Then we can move our resources. Off this project for a while, put them on this urgent thing and then we can come back to this project later. But we\'ve actually created something of value up until this point, and because we\'ve documented what we\'ve done and how, like why we\'re up to, we can continue where we left off in the future.
So that project management system has been revolutionary. When we apply it properly, and I\'ll hold my hands at, sometimes we cut corners and we don\'t, and I end up regretting it further down the line. So this is something that I\'m still evolving to adopt. On an absolutely militant basis in my business, but every time we apply it, I see massive benefits from doing it, and especially when I see clients doing as well, it\'s wonderful to see it actually working and people feeling like they\'re achieving on a far more, uh, regular occurrence.
And sometimes when these never ending projects just go on and on without real end in sight and no real. Point of saying, yes, done is done for now. You know, we can always come back to it later, but what does done look like today? And so that\'s a great, great way to actually manage expectations from your side, what I expect this to be done, the timescales, we\'re getting things done, but also to manage people in terms of, uh, what they are getting from it.
The value of what they\'re, they\'re getting in terms of getting the win, but also us as a company. Other than that, we also have policies for around communication. How do we talk within the business? How do we communicate? Do we ping things back and forth via email without any discipline, or is there a structure and a process to this?
So having a method to the madness with regards to the urgency of a task. So if, is it a critical urgency, an urgent urgency, or a plain normal urgency, or just not very urgent at all? And we have different ways and methods for actually escalating tasks and issues, depending on the urgency level. That means we\'re not inundated any of our team members.
They\'re not inundated with messages from people, their lung distracting us from our work, we have set times. We have set places where these types of messages depend on the agency come in, and therefore we can address them appropriately without getting overwhelmed and distracted from our own work. We also spend a lot of time working on confidence.
I work with remote teams with. Typical people call it virtual assistants, and sometimes when I work with people, they come and work, have worked in environments before that have been quite toxic. They\'ve had bad managers, unsupportive managers. They\'ve been basically driven by targets and times without any real opportunities for personal growth.
And so they often need some help with confidence. With the confidence to push back, for the confidence to question, for the confidence to say. If you give me this, Steve and I prioritize it, what do you not want me to do? \'cause I\'m already really busy. That kind of feedback or pushback I should say, is so valuable.
I think to us micro business owners. Because we have so many things spinning around our heads, so many things we wanna get done. Sometimes we forget that we\'ve already thrown 15 things on this person\'s plate. If we throw another five, it\'s just gonna sink. So we need to. I believe all we don\'t need, we, we massively beneficial if we have people that are confident enough to push back and say, yeah, yes, but not now, or, no, I can\'t do that.
It\'s not a, I just not have the ability to do that. Can we find somebody else to do it? And ideally the best person will say, look, leave it with me. I\'ll find someone to do it, but I\'m not gonna do it myself. That\'s, for me, is an absolutely gold way for people to deal with problems, but it doesn\'t always happen.
But to have this, to have this confidence, to have this ability to push back, it requires trust. And trust works both ways. We need to trust them that when they push back, they\'re doing it from a place of.
Responsibility for their existing work of knowing that if they do this thing, they\'re not gonna be able to do something else, which they, they believe is a higher priority. They trust that they have the company\'s best interests at heart or the team\'s best interests at heart. That comes from experience of working with somebody, but that trust is so important.
And they\'ve gotta trust us as well as their manager or their leader. They\'ve gotta trust that we\'re not going to throw it back at them. That we\'re not gonna like be angry at them for pushing back that we\'re actually gonna say thank you. Thank you for taking the time to bring this to my attention that this may be a little bit too much for you to handle at the moment.
Let\'s have a look at what else you\'re working on and see how we can juggle things around to free up some time to focus on this. \'cause I actually, I think we really need to do this, but also I value your input. What else do you think you\'re working on right now, which is super valuable or super priority that maybe we shouldn\'t be pushing back?
When you start responding like that, it builds trust. You bring people into the decision process. You give them accountability for the outcomes based on the decisions you make during that meeting, and therefore going forward. They will have more responsibility for getting it done because they\'ve been involved in the process.
And also it builds more and more compounding trust. Another key part we try to work on is initiative. And this sort, it is a product of many of the things I\'ve talked about, uh, but also for people being humble, for people having humility of people being able to own up for their mistakes and take ownership of their wins.
So for this, we use something called the feedback model. Where we try to talk about the action or the events that occur during real time. So for example, like when you are late for meetings, not when you were late last Tuesday, or when you stay late to help a client or when you go out your way to make sure we don\'t miss that podcast, uh, episode being, being performed.
When you then we talk about the outcome. So like, or the, or the, the effect of that behavior. So the behavior is like the, when the effective, this is what happens. Like, it makes me feel like you absolutely are dedicated to your role. Amazing. And the last thing is, what do we want to do in the future? Either keep it up.
Or do less of it. So basically we wanna say what the behavior is. We\'re talking about what the effect of that behavior is, either good or bad, and do we want more of it or less of it. And we can also invite that person into to the solution. Like, how can you make time to do more of this in future? Like bring them into that actual process of self-development.
So these are the sort of things that allow people, or give people the opportunity to show that they are humble. To show they have humility, but also to start taking initiative and as I said before, also to start acknowledging their own wins. To take time in the day to actually look at the gains that they are making for, for themselves and for the company, and not always to focus on the, the gap looking ahead.
So not always focus on the the goals. Always keep moving. \'cause business is continually evolving. We always move the goalposts, but sometimes we need to just take a moment to step back and say, look, look at that amazing stuff you have achieved or we have achieved together so far that it\'s so important to take that a moment to acknowledge that and giving feedback using a feedback model.
Is one of the best ways I think you can do that. Or like I did this morning, literally just taking time out, sitting down with somebody and just giving them a moment to reflect on what an amazing job they\'ve been doing. To actually talk them through the gains that they\'ve made, the wins that they\'ve had, that the stuff they\'ve overcome, the things they\'d, and to have that moment of seeing that person see that you truly appreciate them, to see that you haven\'t.
Being blind to all of their hard work. That builds trust, that builds confidence, I believe. And it is so important. \'cause you know, in this particular example, which is actually one of the inspirations for recording this episode, this person was feeling a bit stressed. They were feeling pretty down and, and feeling insecure about their position.
And I felt the absolute opposite. But it\'s only through building trust. So all the things I talk about, and I\'ll talk about one of the last things in a minute about building trust, but through building trust that she had the confidence to bring this up. And then I realized that, wow, this is an opportunity for me to, to absolutely show my appreciation for this person.
And so I was able to do that. So it turned a well, could have been a stressful, could have been a downward spiral conversation. Into something that was massively uplifting and really positive and beneficial for, I think both of us. So the last thing, and this is actually when this happened in this event, was during a one-to-one meeting.
So we have one-to-one meetings every week with my staff. As I said, I\'ve got a micro team, so it\'s me doing this. If you\'ve got managers and they are solely responsible for like the, their line manager, if you like them, they can do this. But the idea is that I wanna meet my staff and give them an opportunity to share what it is that\'s on their mind with me.
Without me interrupting them. It also gives me an opportunity to give any specific feedback or to talk about professional development based on, you know, feedback or coaching that I\'m currently giving them. It\'s a time aside from everything else I do with work, it\'s about them. It\'s about developing them, and it\'s about nurturing, support them in whatever they feel they need.
Sometimes that is just tasks they\'re working on. But a lot of time it\'s beyond that. It\'s the level deeper, and that\'s where the real value comes, is when you say, okay, great. I see you\'re struggling with this. How can we avoid you ever struggling with this again? \'cause there\'s a question you\'re asking me here, but underline, this is actually maybe a knowledge, a skill, an experience that you\'re lacking to be able to just take the initiative to get on with this.
How do we fix that layer rather than just continually, you know, feeding the answers to questions? It\'s how do we remove the need for those questions being asked? How do we make them better at the thing than you are? And therefore, you are going to them to ask questions rather than them coming to you.
That is what our one-to-ones are about, and that\'s what we try to structure them so there\'s a space for them. It\'s a space for me and it\'s for us to develop together that builds trust, that builds teamwork. I think the combination of all of these things, the default diary, overshoot framework, the task matrix, our project management system, comms policies, feedback models, or one-to-one meetings, and the idea of the gap in the gain and seeing being reflected on the wins or reflecting on the wins that we\'ve had.
All these things combined are the things that I am doing every single day or trying to do every single day to make myself into being a better manager. I don\'t find this, haven\'t found this, I should say, naturally easy to do. It\'s something that I\'ve worked on for many years, but I also feel that. Things that we struggle with, the challenges that we have can become our greatest strengths because we realize, if we\'re humble enough to realize we have an issue, that we, we are open to the idea that we are the problem, that it\'s actually something that we need to work on internally and there\'s a hu and we see the benefit of doing that, then that drive.
It can be what it takes to be the obsessed enough about it to do like what I\'ve done and create countless frameworks and systems for everything I do. All the things I\'ve struggled with over the years. That\'s where all of my greatest achievements have ever come from in terms of business optimization and creating flow within our business and, and, uh, creating all the stuff that I do and I share within our community.
Like this has all come from overcoming my biggest challenges. It\'s not from acknowledging I\'m brilliant at doing something and then sharing with the world. It\'s like saying, no, I\'m absolutely rubbish at this. I\'ve spent the past X number of years, these next thousands of hours going into this in detail about working on myself, about trial and error, about making mistakes, about messing up time and time again, but keeping on persevering to get to a solution that works.
That\'s why I\'m good at this now. That\'s why I can help like people, like my staff, like help them do this. It\'s because this is the stuff that I, I\'m not very good at. So therefore I put an unseen amount of hour hours into actually figuring out how to better at it. And that is why I think that whatever your position is right now, however you feel you are as a manager, however your staff at feel you are as a manager.
It\'s worth reflecting on. It\'s worth actually examining and maybe even talking to your staff about it. Like, how could I improve as a manager? What could I do more of? What could I do a little bit less of? And see what actually comes out of it. And now you\'ve got something to work on going forward to make you into a better manager, and hopefully as a result, make your business even more successful.
Thank you very much for listening in today. If you found this useful, then please do share it with your friends, colleagues, loved ones, anyone you think you might, who might benefit from listening to it. Please do leave us a review and if you\'d like to find out more about how we can help you in any which way.
You\'ve got any comments or questions about this episode or end topics I cover, please just comment on whatever you are listening to this on right now or head over to our website at join.sys.academy. And you\'ll learn more about what we do and I very much look forward to speaking to you very soon.
Thank you very much. Bye now.
VALUABLE RESOURCES
- For our ‘Ideas Over Issues Framework’ and ‘Communication and Escalation Policy’, here’s Our Best Guides, Frameworks, and Templates: https://sys.academy/guides
- Systemize Your Success Academy: https://join.sys.academy/
LINKS TO CONNECT WITH THE HOST
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ABOUT THE HOST
Steve moved to Sweden in 2015 and transformed how he ran his businesses—switching to a fully remote model. A former NHS doctor, with a background in computing and property investing, he now helps overwhelmed business owners systemise and outsource effectively. Through his courses and coaching, Steve teaches how to automate operations and work with affordable virtual assistants, freeing up time and increasing profits. He runs his UK-based businesses remotely with support from a team of UK and Filipino VAs. He is also passionate about helping others build scalable, stress-free companies using smart systems and virtual support.
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